Thank God for portable DVD players! I just got back from visiting my sister in Jacksonville, FL and I that gave me the opportunity to watch a couple of new DVD’s.
This DVD really gets me excited for the future. Marvel has teamed up with Lion’s Gate formed their own production company which will produce animated features of all of our favorite Marvel heroes. Their first project: Ultimate Avengers: The Movie.
Marvel felt the Avengers was the perfect launch product. For those of you who don’t know, the Avengers is basically the Justice League for the Marvel universe. It has teamed up numerous Marvel heroes into one team to form a “greatest hits” comic. The core of the team has always been Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. Different runs of the comic have also featured Spider-man, The Hulk, The Scarlet Witch, Wolverine and Black Panther.
For the film, some staples of the original comic were used. Some newly added features of the “Ultimate” Avengers book were used and some new things were thrown in for the film.
For this film S.H.I.E.L.D. General Nick Fury (who is African-American in the Ultimate universe) has hired Bruce Banner (The Hulk) to recreate the formula that was used on Steve Rogers during World War II to make him into Captain America. Unfortunately, Banner has no information on how to recreate the formula. The only way to jump start the program is to find Captain America who has been frozen in a glacier for the past 50 years.
S.H.I.E.L.D. finds Cap and the timing could not be better. An alien race that helped the Nazis during WWII is attacking the earth. Fury decided to put a team together to fight the aliens. Headed by Captain America, Fury also recruits Tony Stark (Iron Man), Thor, Natalia Romanova (Black Widow) and husband and wife team Henry and Janet Pym (Giant-man and Wasp) to form the Avengers.
As with most origin stories things are a little shaky at first. Fury and Henry Pym have a long history of hating each other. Thor and Iron Man are used to working alone. No one wants to listen to Cap. Hence, the first few missions are complete failures.
Meanwhile, Captain America is once again portrayed as a man out of time. Being frozen for 50 years, the world has passed him by. His girlfriend married his best friend, his morals are no longer the norm in a deteriorating society and he has this love and passion for America that he feels took everything else in his life (like his girlfriend) away from him.
Eventually the final showdown between the aliens and the Avengers takes place, but that’s only half their problem. Banner gets angry. REALLY angry and of course he becomes our favorite monosyllabic “superhero” The Hulk. After the aliens are defeated the team now has to deal with the big green machine and stop him from destroying New York.
In the end many things are left unfinished as the new team deals with all of their personal problems.
That being said, Ultimate Avengers II is scheduled for release July 2006.
This was a good film. Not great. But it was a strong start to what I hope is a long running franchise. Origin stories are always tough. The filmmakers feel obligated to inform the audience where the team began, but die-hard fans just wanna get to the good stuff. Now that the origin is over I want to see the sequel to see where the franchise is going and whether it will live up to its comic book counterpart.
The voice acting in the film was great and the script was as good as to be expected for a cartoon/origin story. I am really stoked though that this was rated PG-13. A lot of innocent bystanders die in this movie. I was surprised to see that in a cartoon/comic book movie.
The animation is OK. I am glad they stuck with the 2-D style and did not try to use 3-D computer animation. The animation is not as bad as the old X-men TV show but it also is not as good animated films by the big dogs (Disney, Dreamworks, etc…). This may distract some animated film buffs but I thought it was pretty good looking for a low-budget newbie company.
On the DVD:
There are a few extras on the DVD that I enjoyed. The best feature is “The Ultimate Voice Talent Search.” Apparently Marvel put some test scripts on their website and told ANYONE who wanted to try-out to send in a video. This feature puts the best of the bunch together. By “the best” I mean the geekiest, Trekkie-lovin’, no-date getting losers on the planet. Some even wear costumes (Did anyone tell them this was an animated feature?)
“Assembling the Avengers” is a mini-doc covering the history of the comic from its inception. It’s pretty informative but nothing to drool over.
There is also pop-up video trivia that takes the place of any commentary. It’s pretty informative and a nice addition since a formal commentary was not included.
Alas, I lent my copy of the DVD to a friend so there is no favorite screen shot in this review.
Overall, this movie got me really excited about what else Marvel is going to make. I enjoyed this film and hope that they just keep getting better and better.
Final analysis:
RENT THIS DVD
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