Howdy boys, the Movie MILF here with her thoughts on the premiere animated team-up effort from Marvel and Lion's Gate Studios, Ultimate Avengers: the Movie.
Okay, I know what you're thinking... what does a 30-something hottie like me know about comic books? Hey, you geeks don't call me a MILF for JUST my looks do you? Teehee! But seriously, growing up with 3 older brothers, I've read my share of comics, although we were primarily a "Marvel" family. I always thought Green Lantern's magic ring was a goofy concept as a girl... Spiderman and Gwen Stacey were where it was at for me!
So when my oldest started to read The Ultimates, I would sneak a peek when he was at school. Can I just say I LOVE the whole Ultimate line-up from Marvel? Not having read the comics for many years, I think it's great to see modern writers take the characters I grew up on, distill out the essential parts, update them for the current times, and embellish them with some of the great ideas they've had brewing in their heads all of these years. Mark Millar's take on the Avengers was, for me, a real thrill... great stuff!
So when I heard that Marvel and Lion's Gate were working on an animated version of The Ultimates, I was probably just as excited about it as my son... maybe more! So, now that this direct-to-DVD feature has arrived, what's the verdict?
I wish I had better news, O' True Believers! Let's just say that "ultimately," I felt let down by the overall package. That's not to say there aren't shining moments of greatness... indeed, there are a few. But overall, they are outweighed by the negatives. But there's hope for the future... more on that in a bit.
The feature (and I use that term loosely... it clocks in at just around 71 minutes!) opens very similarly to the printed matter, i.e. Captain America's sort-of origin in WWII. The opening fade-in features some nice sound work with vintage music playing on a transistor radio, nicely setting the tone. We get pretty much the whole opening scene from the book, from Cap flying in on the Germans to cap taking out the nuclear missile and dropping into the Atlantic to the voice-over reading of his letter to his sweetie back home, as he slowly sinks into the depths. Great, exciting stuff!
From there however, the story veers from the source material in order to fit a complete and coherent story into a 70-minute timeframe. The fanboys are sure to make a fuss (sigh... what is it with you guys, anyway?) but I thought the changes fit well within the scope of the film. But it's a double-edged sword, if I may say... because while the scope worked for the movie, it really did lose its "epic" quality from the books.
And herein lies the biggest problem with the movie... the books indeed seemed epic, while the movie just... doesn't. Reading the opening scene in the book was absolutely thrilling for me because it reminded me of the fun of reading the comics as a girl, once again completely losing myself in the story, and yet I was a grown woman! When Captain America first jumps out of that plane and hits the ground running, you turn the page and see that glorius full-shot from Bryan Hitch where we finally see Cap charging in all his vintage glory and he yells "what are you waiting for ladies, Christmas?" SWOON! That's what I'm talking about!
In the movie, it's all there, but the overall animation direction seems flat. There's no real thrill to it, and the exact same scene in the movie is almost laughable. When we get the equivalent of the full-page vintage Cap shot, his "money shot" pose is, dare I say it, downright effeminate!
The overall character designs have been vastly simplified from Hitch's printed versions. I can understand that for animation purposes, but I would have expected something a little more Ghost in the Shell-ish(oh boy I'm really outing myself here... did I mention I had 3 brothers?) and less GI-Joe-ish. The animation is primarily a mix of hand-drawn 2D and CGI 3D animaton styles, and I suspect the 3D modeling was used more often than not. Photography is a hobby of mine (when you have 3 kids, you take a lot of pictures) and it seemed to me like a lot of the scenes were filmed as if they used a long focal length with a high zoom factor, like when they photograph sports... the end result being the depth of the scene is compressed.
Some of the action was animated well, but with very unspectacular camera angles. Much of the dialog is just head-on shots of the characters talking to each other. It would have been nice to mix up some of the camera angles and lighting to add some dramaticism to the whole affair. Again, this goes back to the whole idea of scope... it wasn't epic enough... more like Saturday morning TV cartoons, but with a more mature storyline.
Not too mature though... certain elements were left out, like Hank Pym's penchant for wife-beating. As a mother, I have mixed feelings about this, but I think I understand why the decision was made. I know that Marvel and Lion's Gate have mentioned that there will be other animated features coming, some possibly featuring Hank Pym, and they were concerned that the audiences would not want to return to this character if he was portrayed as the bastard he is in the books. Fair enough. He gets enough of a treatment in the feature that he comes across as an arrogant showboater, which is good enough. And when he gets his ass kicked by the Hulk, you say "serves you right!"
Most of the other characterizations are fine, but short. I really would have liked to see another 20 minutes added to this movie to flesh out the characters. I think the biggest deviation from the book (which was yet a deviation from the original Marvel universe) was Thor's portrayal. In the book, he's more of a hippie-guru kind of guy... in the movie, he was a little closer to the original character, with some mead-swilling thrown in for good measure. I also missed Tony Stark's sense of humor from the book, and Nick Fury's sense of "cool," but that one could just be my imagination since I basically thought of him as Sam Jackson. Andre Ware, I'm sorry honey but you ain't got NOTHING on Sam Jackson.
The movie's biggest set piece has to be the fight with the Hulk. This was great in the book, and it's pretty cool in the movie too. They did a good job of portraying him in a "berserker rage" mode. This also featured one of my favorite scenes in the movie, where Thor flies in and kicks some Hulk butt, and then Hulk says basically "oh no you di'int!" and swats Thor away, and Thor drops his hammer. Hulk is then super pissed-off, and walks over to pick up Mjolnir (yes, I know the hammer's name... isn't that hot?) and he can't, because of course, he's not Thor. But he IS the HULK! So as Thor starts to approach him, Hulk struggles with the hammer, really putting his muscle into it and then sure enough, he lifts it... high above his head. And you can just see Thor's face go all "oh shit!" because he knows he's in for a beating... GREAT scene!
Oh and for those of you keeping score at home? No cannibalism from the Hulk in this movie. Sorry.
So, it's an admirable first effort, but I found it lacking in some areas, most notably the flat direction and animation style. Hopefully Marvel and Lion's Gate will earn enough money from this one and learn from from their experience to make The Ultimate Avengers 2 (for which we get a small preview of on the DVD) that much better. Hopefully my son will still be into it enough by then that I'll still be able to sneak a peek without fully outing myself as a comic book geek!
