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.
