Transformers - a surprisingly enduring franchise with so-so beginnings

When you talk about Transformers these days everyone (understandably) assumes you're talking about the blockbuster movies from the last couple years. But before Michael Bay brought us humping dogs, racist ghetto robots, mechanical testicles and - of course - more humping dogs, there was actually a child friendly version of these famous robots in disguise. Premiering in 1984, the Transformers cartoon was an instant hit with children of my generation, and went on to sell millions of dollars worth of toys, comics and other paraphernalia. The show itself was awful of course (like most cartoons of the time), but despite its typically terrible origins the Transformers franchise continues to endure the fickle mistress that is pop culture better than any of its peers.

Growing up, Transformers was one of two shows that consumed the imagination of me and my friends (the other being GI Joe). I watched it every day after school, and probably saw most of - if not all of - the episodes as a kid. Of course, who could blame me? You had giant robots fighting other giant robots, and they could all transform into cars, trucks, airplanes, guns, cassette decks and even a microscope! For whatever reason, this fascination with shape changing mechanical warriors has endured the test of time surprisingly well. Besides the original Transformers cartoon - which lasted 98 episodes - there have been numerous reboots and re-imaginings of the franchise over the last 25 years. From the Michael Bay movies to Transformers Beast Machines to Transformers Armada to Transformers Animated and most recently Transformers Prime, there have been a half-dozen versions of Optimus Prime and pals ready to enlist new fans for parent company Hasbro. Still, it all started with that cartoon in 1984, and that's what I'm here to review. Or at least the first 65 episodes anyway (I'm saving the movie and the final 33 episodes for later).

Given the popularity of this series, I don't feel that an involved synopsis is necessary. Basically there's a planet called Cybertron where two factions of warring robots have been doing battle for millions of years. The good guys are referred to as Autobots and are led by Optimus Primes, the bad guys are Decepticons and their leader is Megatron. Given the enormous amount of natural resources necessary to wage this seemingly endless war, the planet Cybertron finally ran out of energy and groups of both Decepticons and Autobots were forced to leave their home in search of new fuel sources. While battling one another in space, these Transformers crash land on earth where they lay dormant for millions of years. Upon their reawakening, the Decepticons (in typical bully fashion) set out to steal earth's energy from us weak humans. At the same time Optimus Prime and the Autobots set out to protect humanity from Megatron and his evil cohorts.

Conceptually, this is a pretty solid idea for an 80s action-adventure cartoon. The parallels between our own energy crisis and the situation faced by the Transformers is surprisingly relevant for the time, and remains so today. Equally impressive is the fact that the whole premise behind Transformers was written around an existing toy line. For those who don't know, the Transformers started life as Japanese toys with no background story whatsoever. When Hasbro decided that they wanted to repackage these playthings for American consumers, they thought it would be best to create an overriding mythology to get kids interested, thus Transformers was born. Despite this solid premise, however, the overall writing for this series is about what you would expect from the time period, insulting to its audience and merchandise driven. I was especially amazed by the overwhelming number of new characters introduced during the initial 65 episodes in this series. Within just the first 13 installments you not only had a relatively large cast of Autobots and Decepticons to keep track of, but you got Dinobots, Insecticons, Starfire and then more Dinobots almost right away. After that things only got worse with Constructicons, Stunticons, Aerobots, Combaticons, Omega Supreme and plenty of other robots being shoved down your throat. This was - of course - a sales driven decision, and just one more example of how cartoons of this time were ultimately controlled by people whose passion was selling toys, and not telling good stories. Still, the fact that Transformers was probably the worst when it came to introducing new characters for the sake of merchandise (GI Joe would be a close second), this was not an uncommon practice, and I try to only compare properties of the 1980s to one another, and not to the current standard. So, with that said I'll move on and start discussing the writing of Transformers, as related to its peers.

I've reviewed a couple 1980s action-adventure cartoons, and one of the side effects of this (besides the massive loss of brain cells) is that I find myself saying the same things over and over. While this is personally frustrating, it's also unavoidable since most of these shows used the same writers and followed the same formula as their contemporaries. So, like GI Joe, Thundercats and others, the stories from Transformers have very little good, mostly bad and far too much ugly writing.

Let's start things off with the ugly. One obvious problem with Transformers is continuity. Early in the series all of the robots (Autobot and Decepticon) were able to fly, regardless of what vehicle/object they could transform into. As the show progressed, however, it was revealed that Autobots could fly, but not very well. Finally, by the time season two got going none of the Autobots could apparently fly unless they were capable of transforming into an airplane or spaceship. Basically, the writers just couldn't seem to collectively make up their minds about when Autobots could, and could not take to the air until they were half way through the series. Another example of bad continuity can be found in the building of the Dinobots. During season one Optimus Prime okays the creation of Dinobots, Transformers whose physical appearance and strength stems from the dinosaurs who roamed earth millions of years ago. Later, during season two, Megatron decides to create Stunticons, Decepticons who could transform into cars and thus challenge the Autobots domination of the roads. When it came time for Megatron to give the Stunticons life, however, he had to travel to Cybertron and petition Vector Sigma, a long dormant piece of mysterious technology to give his creations personalities (or souls I suppose). The reason for this is that all Transformers were given life by Vector Sigma, and without its help the Stunticons would never be anything except mindless automatons. Unfortunately, this little bit of mythology completely ignores the fact that the aforementioned Dinobots somehow received unique personalities without the aid of Vector Sigma. Like I said, inconsistent continuity.

Equally ugly were the episodes that just should've never been made (even by 1980s standards). Like GI Joe and Thundercats, Transformers has a handful of stories that are just so bad it's insulting to audiences of all ages. The worst offenders were City of Steel (a story were Optimus Prime is cut into pieces, and his body parts turned into weapons against the Autobots), Attack of the Autobots (which features the insanely overused plot device of mind control) and Kremzeek (an episode so surreal, I can't even describe it). I'll spare you any further details concerning the plots of these animated abominations, but take my word for it, these are some of the worst cartoons of the 1980s.

As for the "good" episodes of Transformers, I found that almost all of them had the same thing in common, they didn’t take place on earth. Though a little strange given the strength of the energy crisis premise, I found episodes like "The Search for Alpha Trion", and "The Secret Of Omega Supreme" far more enjoyable than any of the stories based around earth and the show's central themes. I can't say for sure, but I think that the writers of this series enjoyed doing stories set on alien worlds and plots delving into the history of the Transformers more than they liked the show's primary mythology. Of course, this could just be my own personal bias as well. Either way, I think this show was better suited for fantastical outer space science fiction than urban street gangs and worldwide car races.

Another positive thing about the writing of Transformers is that the violence - though hideously tame - did have more intensity than most of its contemporaries. This was apparently the result of the main characters being robots. For whatever reason, the idea of robots punching, kicking and shooting one another didn't bother censors - or parent watchdog groups - back in the 1980s, so the writers of Transformers were able to take things a little further than other cartoons of the time. Speaking of parent watchdog groups, I'm shocked (in a good way) that the episode Microbots slipped by these ever diligent and overprotective outfits. I say this because the second act of Microbots featured a group of Decepticons getting drunk on Energon Cubes (Energon is the fuel used by Transformers) and clearly stumbling around intoxicated before passing out! Though showing inebriated individuals was done in other 1980s action-adventure cartoons, the act was primarily reserved to show the negative consequences of drinking underage, or drinking and driving. Such was not the case here, so I guess the writers slipped one by, good for them.

At the end of the day though, the writing of Transformers was - more often than not - mediocre (which would be considered bad by today's standards). The stories had tons of bad science and logic gaps (how do the Autobots manage to drive almost anywhere in the world within a matter of minutes?), plenty of preachy PSAs (don't steal, be nice to others etc.) and a plethora of awful one-liners. I wish I could get excited - or even angry - about the work done by the writers of this show. The first 65 episodes are just so typical, however, I'm stuck with the meek acknowledgement that Transformers is simply "par for the course". It's kind of like the Ben 10 of the 1980s, haphazardly written, shamelessly geared at merchandising and lacking substance, yet somehow not completely evil.

Visually speaking, Transformers - once again - has some good points, bad points and a whole lot of in-between. On the positive side, a handful of episodes in this series looked really good. Notables include, Atlantis Arise, Microbots and Megatron's Master Plan. Each of these stories had some really impressive and ambitious animation, the kind I wish we saw more of during this time.

Another excellent aspect of Transformers would be the design work. I really liked how Cybertron was built entirely out of metal, with seemingly endless corridors and buildings stretching clear down into the bowels of the planet. Also impressive were the general Autobot and Decepticon designs done for the show. Though based on the Japanese toys, the actual animated versions of all the Transformers were changed a lot for the cartoon. True, they still resembled the toys themselves, but anyone who actually owned Megatron or Optimus Prime knows that the cartoon renditions of these characters looked a lot better than the toys themselves (to be fair the cartoons didn't actually have to transform in three-dimensions though). The thing I liked most about the design of Transformers, however, were the "classic" Cybertron Transformer designs. Characters like Alpha Trion, Aleta-1 and Devcon all had cylindrical styling and rounded corners that were fantastically alien and nothing like the boxy designs of the earth based Transformers. It was just so different looking (probably Japanese) and original I would have personally liked to seen more. Fortunately the remaining 33 episodes of Transformers - along with the movie - use this style a lot, so I have that to look forward to at least.

Negatively speaking, Transformers has more animation glitches than any action-adventure show I've ever seen. Things like the wrong character talking, or a character that wasn't supposed to be in a scene showing up in the background are omnipresent throughout the first 65 episodes. This usually happened with Transformers that were near identical in appearance to other robots in the show. For example, Starscream looks just like Thundercracker, the only real difference is the accent colors for each character. Given this similarity, it's very common to find scenes where the individual being shown was supposed to be Starscream, but the studio accidently used the color scheme for Thundercracker. Though I imagine it must have been very difficult for the producers and directors of these cartoons to keep track of this sort of thing - especially given the demanding schedule of the show - one cannot ignore the fact that Transformers has far too many of these animation mistakes.

Another issue I had with the visuals from this series was the background looping. Anybody who's ever watched the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons has probably noticed the way HB looped backgrounds while characters were walking, running or driving. This technique is used to save money and it involves having the same background go by over and over again. As you can probably imagine, this cost cutting trick was also popular in many of the action-adventure cartoon of the 1980's as well. Its effectiveness, however, varied depending on the execution. Sadly, the use of looping backgrounds in Transformers was not good. The biggest problem was that the beginning and end of the loop just didn't match up very often, thus the film appeared to "jump" every time the background began a new cycle. Though other shows of the time may have had the same problem, this issue was only exacerbated by the fact that a large percentage of the cast was made up of cars that spent a lot of time - shockingly enough - driving around in settings were backgrounds could easily be looped.

Poorly looped animation wasn't the only problem stemming from the Transformers general nature though. Radical shifts in scaling were also commonplace thanks to the Transformers ability to ... well, transform. I'll give you an example, Megatron (the leader of the Decepticons) is one of the larger robots in the show. He stands several stories tall, and very few of his minions can equal his stature. Yet, when Megatron transforms into a handgun, anyone of his soldiers could hold and fire him like a normal weapon. Now I'm no expert in physics, but even I know that a machine as large as Megatron can't just shirk himself down to an object 1/100th of his original size, not unless there's magic in those Energon Cubes they drink. This same problem shows up with characters like Astrotrain as well. Despite being the same general size as other Decepticons, Astrotrain could transform into a space shuttle and easily transport a number of his evil comrades with room to spare. Now, to be fair the producers of Transformers really didn't have many options outside of "magically" scaling robots. Since the characters in Transformers could change into such a wide variety of objects, making those objects exist in the same space with one another required a "leap of faith" by the audience. Unfortunately, this unusual variance in proportion - coupled with poorly executed cost cutting techniques and constant animation mistakes - take away greatly from anything Transformers did right visually.

When it's all said and done, the visuals from Transformers standup okay for the time period in which they were created. The show had a couple of standout episodes (though very few), and some of the styling and character design was pretty good. Sadly, the overall presentation of the series does suffer greatly thanks to the very nature of the show itself. I suppose it's a little ironic that the thing that has helped keep this franchise popular the last 25 years (transforming robots) is the same thing that made the execution of the original cartoon so frustrating and distracting.

In terms of Audio, Transformers has very solid voice acting. The show was recorded with an ensemble cast (which is a good thing), and veterans like Peter Cullen and Frank Welker gave distinct personalities to the characters they voiced. Cullen in particular was so iconic as Optimus Prime that Michael Bay was forced to cast the actor for the same role in his live action movies.

Musically speaking, Transformers was - at best - average. The opening theme was pretty weak, and the in show music was typically redundant and overused. The show also shared some music with its "cousin" program GI Joe (both shows were produced by the same outfits for Hasbro), so originality wasn't a strong point either. Interestingly enough, the considerable amount of "sharing" that took place between Transformers and GI Joe led to a pretty funny mistake in the Transformers episode "The Autobot Run". Every time this story went to commercial, the bumpers (that's the lead out and lead in sequences) used the GI Joe music with the Transformers animation. At first I was confused and had to rerun the commercial bumper, but upon further review this was indeed a production mistake, funny stuff.

If it sounds like I was disinterested when writing this review, that's because I was ... and for that I apologize. The truth is I've gotten a little burned out on the 1980s action-adventure shows, and I need to recharge my batteries with something a little less ... well, crappy. So for the foreseeable future I'm going to be watching cartoons that came before, or after 1980 (I'm actually watching some classic Popeye and Looney Tunes right now). As for Transformers, it's a decent 1980s action-adventure show. Though mostly average in execution, the show did have a couple bright spots, and the premise is one that continues to find new fans, even today. Still, the negative aspects of this cartoon are glaring, especially when viewed with older eyes. If you're a big fan of this show, pickup one of the slim pack sets and give it a watch. They’re pretty cheap and have some fun extras including: original commercials, PSAs and interviews. People who have never seen this show - or don't have a strong sense of nostalgia for it - should stay away, nothing about this show has aged well.

Treasure Planet is a decent little gem

Though mostly remembered as another post 2000 Disney flop, Treasure Planet is actually a much better film than most people give it credit for. Released in 2002, Treasure Planet takes Louis Stevenson's classic tale of Treasure Island and adapts it into a science fiction adventure set in space. The film was directed by the solid team of Clements and Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules and The Princess Frog) and cost a whopping $140 million dollars to create. Sadly, Treasure Planet was unable to make back its production budget during the initial release (even with the world wide box office) and has been written off as just another Disney mistake.

I'm little ashamed to admit that I didn't even see this film in theaters when it was released in November of 2002. I had a lot going on at the time (buying a house, getting married ... you know, little things) and I was still feeling burned by the whole Titan A.E. and Atlantis fiascos from 2000 and 2001. Basically I just didn't see anything in Treasure Planet's advertising that made me think this story could succeed where other animated sci-fi features had failed in previous years. Upon its release on DVD in 2003, I decided to pick the movie up and see if its story was as bad as I feared. Much to my (pleasant) surprise however, Treasure Planet featured excellent animation, some superb character dynamics and a good (albeit not great) story.

Our movie begins with fifteen year old Jim Hawkins getting into trouble when the local authorities find him solar surfing through a restricted area. Upon his capture Jim is returned to the local inn run by his mother - whose name is Sarah - and is given a stern scolding for his repeated run-ins with the law. Shortly thereafter, a mysterious alien crashes on a nearby landing pad and Jim helps the mortally wounded stranger back to the inn. Once there the alien tells Jim, Sarah and family friend Dr. Delbert Doppler (he's an anthropomorphic, dog-like astronomer) to "beware the cyborg" and hands over a golden sphere to Jim before dying. Within moments a gang of pirate-like ruffians attack the inn forcing Jim, his mother and Delbert to flee the once peaceful establishment. After escaping to (what I presume is) Delbert's observatory, Jim unlocks the newly acquired golden sphere and discovers it's a holographic map leading to Treasure Planet, the fabled world where legendary pirate Captain Flint hid all of his treasure. Though difficult to convince at first, Sarah allows Jim to undertake an expedition with Delbert to follow the holo-map and see if it does indeed lead to Treasure Planet. In need of transportation, Delbert commissions a space vessel called the "RLS Legacy" and its commander Captain Amelia (she appears to be half cat and half human), to provide passage during their journey. Once aboard, Jim is relegated to "cabin boy" and put into the care/service of John Silver, a cyborg cook that Jim is initially skeptical of. So begins the journey to find Treasure Planet.

Taken at face value, the story of Treasure Planet isn't exactly overflowing with originality. It's based on a novel from 1883, and the formula of pirates riding the high seas while following a map to hidden treasure is a well worn one, even if the film is set in outer space. This decision to use outer space as a location was actually declared "gimmicky" by some critics, or at least the ones that wanted the story to stay closer to its origins (admittedly, I did sense a bit of old man "curmudgeon" from those critics). Personally I had no issues with the overall story - which made for a good adventure vehicle I thought - or its cosmic setting. Still, neither of these ideas really endeared the film to me when it was all said and done (which is one of the reasons I didn't go to theaters to watch it).

So why did I like Treasure Planet so much? Well, despite its derivative nature, Treasure Planet does one thing very, very well. It develops the father-son bond of Jim Hawkins and John Silver magnificently. The best example of this would be in the film's second act montage when we see a young Jim Hawkins being neglected, and eventually abandoned by his biological father. These somber moments are interrupted by scenes of Hawkins and Silver bonding over various chores and learning experiences aboard the "RLS Legacy". The result is a fantastic montage that quickly - and convincingly - establishes John Silver as a surrogate father to Jim, a role Silver finds himself conflicted over given his true intentions. This is the driving force of the film, without Hawkins and Silver's perfectly executed father-son relationship, the rest of this movie just wouldn't work. Luckily, directors Clements and Musker understood the importance of this character dynamic and nailed the execution.

The decision to focus on the dynamics of Hawkins and Silver does have its consequences however. Delbert - who appeared to be an important character during the films first act - all but disappears during the middle portion of the film. Even his reemergence in the third act doesn't quite bring about the characterization the story obviously wanted to give him. Still, the movie does manage to keep its secondary characters alive. While predictable, the bickering romance of Dr. Delbert and Captain Amelia does have its funny moments. The relationship is of the "opposites attract" variety, so while Amelia is a confident woman of action, Delbert is an awkward intellectual ... oh and he's a dog/human and she's a cat/human, so there's that too. Anyway, I liked the decision to hammer home the father-son relationship of Hawkins and Silver, even if it required secondary characters like Delbert to fade into the backgrounds at times. This is what good directors do, they figure out the stories main thrust and do what it takes to get it across.

Overall I think the story of Treasure Planet is good. The movie is well paced, the plot is nicely executed and the main character dynamics are awesome. When compared to the plot hole riddled Atlantis, the horrible characterization of Titan A.E., and the awful character dynamics of Sinbad Legend of the Seven Seas (all films released around the same time), this movie is great. By itself, Treasure Planet my not shine quite as bright, but it's still a good story.

As you would expect, the animation of Treasure Planet is excellent. Being a Disney film, it should come as no surprise that the traditional portion of this movie is expertly crafted and beautifully designed. Since it was created during the turn of the century, it should also come as no surprise that CGI was used extensively in the film. As I've mentioned in past reviews, the early days of CGI and traditional animation merging were a crap shoot. Some of the films did it well (Tarzan, The Iron Giant), others did it terribly (Sinbad, Titan A.E.). Overall I think Treasure Planet's creators did a good job of marrying the traditional animation and CGI imagery. There are some scenes where I felt the digitally rendered backgrounds lacked the detail of their hand drawn counterparts, but even at its worst I was never taken out of the moment. On a more positive note, the CGI used for John Silver's mechanical hand was awesome. Not only did the traditional and computer portions of the character blend seamlessly, the decision to use CGI for Silver's bionic prosthetic was completely appropriate and helped enhance the film in a tasteful way. I only wish other directors of the time had been this fastidious with their projects.

Besides the excellent animation, Treasure Planet also has some really nice design. The overall look of the film is very much inline with traditional pirate-colonial stories, the kind you would see in old movies and storybooks. Because the film is set in space, however, various objects and locations are "tweaked" in such a way that they reflect the sci-fi environment. Things like flintlock laser pistols and spacefaring sailboats make for a fun combination of classic and futuristic technology. Though not quite the animation milestone you would expect for $140 million dollars, Treasure Planet is still a very impressive looking movie all around.

When it came to voice acting I felt Treasure Planet's cast did a very good job overall. Nobody really stood out as exceptional, but all of my expectations were met. The film's music however, was a source of mixed emotions for me. On the one hand I thoroughly enjoyed the score of Treasure Planet. Beautifully composed with just the right amount of celtic influence necessary to evoke an "old world" sensibility, I thought that James Newton Howard nailed the sound of this film. On the other hand, Disney's decision to include two modern songs in the movie was ill-advised. Written and performed by John Rzeznik (of the Goo Goo Dolls), these two songs ended up dating Treasure Planet noticeably. Even worse, the song "I'm Still Here" is played during the aforementioned montage sequence involving Jim Hawkins, and takes away (ever so slightly) from the scenes impact. Though the inclusion of these numbers doesn't ruin the film in any significant way, I definitely felt their age during my latest viewing. If I could change just one thing about Treasure Planet, I would have Rzeznik's songs replaced with celtic scores similar to what Howard did throughout the rest of the film.

Treasure Planet will never be a Disney "classic". The film just doesn't have enough magic to be mentioned in the same breath as Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King. Make no mistake though, this is a good movie. On its own merits, Treasure Planet is a well executed story with excellent production value. Compared to most of the other animated features of the time however, its straight up awesome. In fact, I would rank Treasure Planet as the best post 2000 animated Disney feature after Lilo and Stitch. I won't go as far as to say you should run out and buy the 2003 DVD - which is still available since Disney never even bothered to put it in the "Vault" - but if you haven't seen Treasure Planet it's worth at least a rent (heck, you can probably catch it on the Disney channel for free).

Ultimate Avengers is ultimately abysmal

When I first heard that Marvel was teaming up with Lionsgate to create animated DTVs of their popular comic book characters, I was cautiously optimistic. Though Marvel was inexperienced with direct to video productions, they had chosen good source material to adapt (Mark Millar and Bryan Hitche's "Ultimates" comic), and they had good road maps to follow with DCs existing DTV films. Upon the release of "Ultimate Avengers", however, I found myself disappointed by Marvels lack of effort, both with the stories adaptation and visual presentation. Still, I held out hope that things would get better and purchased "Ultimates Avengers 2" when it was released several months later. After watching this planned sequel I can definitely say that I wasn't disappointed again ... I was just pissed.

The story of "Ultimate Avengers" is really the story of Captain America (one of my favorite comic heroes). It begins in WW2 with Cap leading the assault on a Nazi military base. The purpose of this attack is to stop the Third Reich from launching a nuclear missile at the United States, unfortunately our hero is unable to stop the rocket from lifting off. With no other options available, Cap hitches a ride aboard this doomsday weapon and disarms the device in mid-air ... with a grenade. The resulting explosion hurls Cap into the Atlantic Ocean where he is subsequently frozen into ice for the next fifty plus years before being found by S.H.I.E.L.D. This is all well and good, and though it does take some liberties (Buckey isn't a superhero sidekick, there's no Baron Zemo and the Avengers don't find Cap) it doesn't stray all that far from the original 1940s story ... except for the aliens of course. Oh, did I forget to mention there were aliens? Apparently Hitler and his "master race" were receiving aid from an alien race known as the Chitauri. These generic looking extraterrestrials are led by a shapeshifting Chitauri by the name of Herr Kleiser, and I guess they want to take over earth, or steal vibranium, or something ... it's kind of hard to tell. Anyway, once Cap gets thawed out by S.H.I.E.L.D. he soon discovers that the Chitauri are still on earth doing ... something bad I guess. Our only chance of stopping these dastardly aliens is for Cap to form a team of super powered heroes called the Avengers to fight them.

The first Ultimate Avengers film is loosely based on the first thirteen issues of the "Ultimates" comic book. With a contemporary re-imagining of the Avengers origin - not to mention massive popularity - this selection of source material made perfect sense for Marvel. Unfortunately, the challenge of adapting this mature subject matter proved too great for the movies writers. The biggest problem was probably the decision to combine two different story arcs from the comic book and turn them into a single plot (the first arc was in issues 1-5, the second was in 6-9 and the third was 10-13). At a glance this may not seem like a bad idea, but when you take the alien centric third arc of Ultimates and infuse the first arc - which is mostly about Cap and the Hulk - with it, you get a very muddled narrative. One that loses a lot of its credibility because it introduces aliens far too quickly into the story. It all comes down to pacing. The comic book allows you to immerse yourself in the world of the Ultimates before it introduces Herr Kleiser and the Chitauri, an intentional decision that helps set the proper tone of the series. By contrast, it doesn't even take five minutes for aliens and spaceships to show up in Ultimate Avengers, thus the film takes on a completely different - and quite frankly silly - feel. Obviously the writers did this because using two separate story arcs in the same film wouldn't work as a single narrative. This is an understandable concern, but ignoring the source materials pacing was a huge mistake and ultimately the movie suffers greatly because of it.

Not helping matters is the fact that none of the Chitauri aliens seem all that scary. They're just too bland and expressionless to feel like a real threat, kind of like a Saturday morning cartoon. Don't get me wrong, the movie tries to make them look badass by blowing up space shuttles and killing army guards, but it just doesn't work. I'll have more to say about this when I get to the films visuals.

As I said earlier, Ultimate Avengers 2 was a planned sequel meant to tie up the hanging plot threads from the first film. The big difference between this story and its predecessor, however, is that Ultimate Avengers 2 was based solely on the previous movie, and not on any of the "Ultimates" comics. This then begs the question; does the writing of Ultimate Avengers 2 suffer because of the lack of strong source material, or does it benefit from the freedom of not having to adapt it? Well ... to be frank, this movie benefits about as much from an absence of source material as a boxer does from not wearing an athletic cup ... right before getting punched in the balls. In other words, the story of Ultimate Avengers 2 is worse off for it.

Continuing the alien invasion theme from the first movie, this film introduces us to the isolationist nation of Wakanda and its leader the Black Panther. Apparently the Chitauri have been trying to steal Wakanda's greatest natural resource - a giant Vibranium meteorite - for decades, and now the conflict has come to a head. Of course, this in no way explains why the Chitauri got involved with the Nazi's in WW2, or why they're just now stepping up efforts to take possession of the meteorite. But hey, who needs logic when you got the Black Panther? Anyway, this plot - while melodramatic - isn't terrible or anything, it's just boring. To find the real problem with Ultimate Avengers 2, you need look no further then the film's horrible characterization.

I mentioned before that the writers of Ultimate Avengers weren't up to the challenge of adapting the stories mature subject matter. Nowhere is this more prevalent then in the films characters. In the original Ultimates comic books Mark Millar took the strongest - and often darkest - attributes of all the different founding Avengers members and amplified them ten fold, thus we ended up with a cast of very flawed - and even despicable - heroes. Unfortunately, due to the intensity of this subject matter, the films writers chose to tone down these characteristics in the first movie, then they just crapped all over them in the second.

In the original world of the Ultimates, Hank Pym (Giant Man) is a bipolar disaster. Not only does he beat his wife Janet (Wasp) when he becomes frustrated, he's been doing it ever since they were in college. Worse, Janet's self-esteem is so low she constantly returns to her abusive spouse despite knowing he'll never change. Obviously these character traits lack heroism, so the writers of Ultimate Avengers try to tone things down a bit when adapting the story for film. In the first Ultimate Avengers movie Hank isn't a wife beater, he's just a jerk who talks too much. Meanwhile his wife Janet isn't portrayed as self-loathing, but simply loyal to a fault. I understand why the writers chose to do this, but to be honest, the dumbed down versions of Hank and Janet just aren't all that interesting. Similarly frustrating, the original Ultimates story has Tony Stark dying of a brain tumor. Faced with his impending demise, Tony begins to liquidate his assets and make the world a safer place as Iron Man ... all while drinking himself stupid of course. Here again the writers of Ultimate Avengers sought to alter the character in a way that made him seem a little less bleak. To do this they made Tony a non-dying playboy who moonlights as Iron Man, but doesn't like the idea of being a part of a team. To be clear, I didn't hate the changes to Giant Man, Wasp and Iron Man, I just felt they were misguided and generic. As I said earlier, it's more disappointing than terrible. The same cannot be said about Ultimate Avengers 2 however.

Now free of the source material, Ultimate Avengers 2 takes the already pared down versions of Giant Man and Iron man and tries to set them on a path to redemption. I don't want to say exactly what happens, but basically Hank and Tony selflessly sacrifice themselves in one of the most pathetic displays of contrived heroism I've ever seen. Now this may seem like a crass assessment of the situation, but after watching the road traveled by these characters (and knowing the road they should have traveled), I cannot help but get angry when I see something this uninspired (especially Iron Man's heroics, talk about slapped on). Oh, and did I mention Black Widow? I should probably do that. As much as I disagree with the adapted versions of Giant Man, Wasp and Iron Man, none of them sucked as bad as Black Widow. Beginning with the first film, the Black Widows only real role in both Ultimate Avengers stories is that of sympathetic ear. Seriously, she just goes around listening to peoples problems and gives them a hug if they need it. I'm not even going to complain about how far off base this is when compared to the source material, the fact that the Black Widow has been reduced to nothing more than a expository plot device is all the reason I need to throw a %$@* fit. Anyway, the first Ultimate Avengers film certainly wasn't good, but the excellence of the source material helped keep the characters from becoming a complete disaster. Lacking this guiding light, however, the characterization in Ultimate Avengers 2 becomes cliched, contrived and just plain awful. To be fair not all the characters in Ultimate Avengers were bad. Steve Rogers (Captain America) and Bruce Banner (Hulk) were actually pretty good in the first movie. Not so much in the second film mind you, but you take what you can get.

Misguided in its adaptation, and hampered by a mostly boring cast with uninspired characterization, the writing of the Ultimate Avengers duology just doesn't work. Had I been ignorant of the source material I probably wouldn't have been so upset after watching both films. That said, I have no doubt that my opinion of these movies would've still been extremely negative.

A lot of the problems experienced by Ultimate Avengers stem from the stories uneven tone as well. The film tries to take itself seriously while at the same time playing things safe, a problematic situation only exacerbated by the movies subpar visuals. Let's start with the movies technical missteps. Ultimate Avengers uses one of the ugliest shading techniques in the history of animation, soft shading. Instead of using the hard edged shading style found in most animated films, Avengers went with a soft, almost airbrushed edge. The result of this is that a lot of the characters and clothing lack the crisp lines and definition needed to give the film polish. This same mistake is repeated with soft hi-lights being used in many of the characters hair. I am not exaggerating when I say that there were times when the hi-lights used in this film looked like something an amateur did in photoshop, absolutely hideous. Then there's the color pallet. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but the colors used in Ultimate Avengers are so poorly chosen, designed and coordinated that it can actually become distracting at times. Basically, the whole thing comes off looking cheap and unprofessional, more like a poorly made Saturday morning cartoon than a mature themed DTV. Sadly, this isn't the end of Ultimate Avengers visual woes, far from it.

Keeping our unfortunate trend of poor craftsmanship alive, the design work done on Ultimate Avengers was abysmal. Outside of the character costumes (which were thankfully based on Bryan Hitches Ultimates art) the rest of clothing, costume and alien design in Ultimate Avengers was both uninspired and generic. Equally unimpressive were the vehicle designs (both terrestrial and extraterrestrial), and the hilariously disproportional guns used by characters like the Black Widow and Nick Fury. Overall, I just didn't see enough effort being put into any visual aspect of either movie. Besides the Hulk fight from the first film (which was actually ok), the rest of the execution in Ultimate Avengers looks decidedly half-assed.

The rest of the films production is pretty standard. I was neither impressed nor offended by the musical score or voice acting in Ultimate Avengers. Yes, there was room for improvement in both areas, but even if things had been better it wouldn't have saved either film. Not to sound trite or anything, but given all the other problems found in these movies I'm willing to write this off as "no harm no foul".

So it's pretty obvious that I didn't like Ultimate Avengers. Yes, a lot of my frustration stems from the affection I have for the source material, but I feel confident that this bias only amplified my displeasure, it wasn't the source of it. Sadly, being burned by these two films resulted in me ignoring subsequent Marvel DTV releases. I just couldn't imagine films like "Doctor Strange" and "Avengers Next" succeeding where Ultimate Avengers failed. Thankfully, Cartoon Network aired these movies soon after there release and I quickly realized that both films (as well as the Hulk Vs. and Planet Hulk) were excellent. So don't let the ineptitude of Ultimate Avengers dissuade you from checking out Marvels other DTV offerings, they got their act together now. Just make sure you stay away from this debacle.