The Ultimate Avengers

So have you heard about Marvel Comics' latest movie? It's a straight to DVD cartoon about the Avengers. I know, I just completely turned your world upside down. It was Marvel's first film on its own, and after seeing the trailer on TV (and after calming myself down with geeky-excitement) I went out and rented it at Blockbuster. Monday night, we gathered in my living room, nuked some soup, and watched this 71 minute cartoon.

I'm not about to go nuts with some review that you may not care about. Instead, I am more interested in the plot structure of this film. The key word in the movie is "Ultimate," which refers to a highly successful line of Marvel Comics that involves retelling the origins of popular heroes. In this "ultimate" universe, Nick Fury (Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) is responsible for calling together the Avengers; and for some reason Thor (Norse God of Thunder) is a member of Greenpeace. Aside from that strange character choice, the bulk of what people know about the Avengers remains true. Captain America, Iron Man, Wasp, etc are all in tact. So is Iron Man's drinking problem. The movie was pretty excellent, and Marvel wisely went with a PG-13 rating (which allowed lots of people to get killed in very exciting ways).

The main problem with it was the story arc. The writers chose to actually tell two parallel plots (instead of one main plot and one subplot). One plot revolves around an alien menace threatening America. The other involves Bruce Banner's search for a way to allow him to control The Hulk. As the 71 minutes tick by, the stories keep up with one another, all the while giving proper backstory about the heroes, and their eventual troubles working together as a team. There is alot of complex stuff going on, especially involving the marriage of Wasp and Giant Man (yeah, figure that one out), Captain America's flashbacks to WWII, and the previously mentioned Iron Man drinking problem. I often had to wonder why they chose to put this cartoon in the family section at Blockbuster... Regardless of this, the story builds nicely to a climactic battle between the Avengers and the aliens. Or does it? Just when you think the story has reached its climax (which seems to come out of nowhere), the Hulk emerges and becomes the real test for the Avengers teamwork skills. So just as one gigantic fight scene with aliens finishes, another begins with them battling their teammate, who has lost control of his primal urges. Once they finish this, the movie ends with everyone sitting down to dinner together, toasting their victory.

What? That's it? It seemed as if the writers of the cartoon said "Hey, this is good enough for straight-to-video" and just stopped writing. The special features on the DVD reveal that they plan to release a sequel in July. Meanwhile they could have just combined the two movies and released something that was a little more satisfying in the end.

But hey, at least Vision wasn't in it.