Saturday, September 15, 2012

Review: Ultimate Avengers Vol. 1 & 2


Directed by Curt Geda
Voice cast
Justin Gross      as Captain America / Steve Rogers
Olivia d'Abo      as Black Widow / Natasha Romanov
Marc Worden    as Iron Man / Tony Stark
Andre Ware       as General Nick Fury
Grey DeLisle    as Wasp / Janet Van Dyne-Pym
Nolan North      as Ant-Man / Hank Pym
David Boat         as Thor
Fred Tatasciore  as The Hulk
Michael Massee as Dr. Bruce Banner
Nan McNamara  as Dr. Betty Ross
Jim Ward            as Herr Kleiser

This disk is the first of two and pretty much pulls a pretty conservative line for a plot. I haven’t seen the live action Avengers yet, but what I can see, seems to follow a very similar timeline. Plus if you catch the Avengers on Sunday mornings you will recognize the alien Chitauri. These alien beings are in fact backing the Nazi regime with the subjugation of the human race that they plan to accomplish by destruction of SHIELD satellite. Since SHIELD is all but hamstrung, Fury has the distasteful duty of trying to recruit superhumans that are at best difficult to deal with.

Fury has already recovered Captain America / Steve Rogers, but Bruce Banner / Hulk , Black Widow, Iron Man, Ant Man, Wasp and a person very likely unstable and who believes he is Thor.

Together they somehow have to work together and in the meantime defeat the Chitauri.

Being straight to disk, I mainly wanted to get an idea of what to maybe expect from the live action. Plus there was some curiosity as to how the DVD might compare to the weekly offerings. I have to say I was mildly surprised. The animation is not bad, seems to have something of an anime influence, the plot actually took chances with the characters that I never thought would take place. The extras are interesting and if not enough to make some happy, more than adequate.

I would give this first offering a grudging recommendation. Lets see how the second holds up.

Ultimate Avengers 2

Voice Cast
Justin Gross Steve Rogers / Captain America
Marc Worden Tony Stark / Iron Man
Andre Ware General Nick Fury
Grey DeLisle Janet Van Dyne-Pym / Wasp
Nolan North Hank Pym / Giant Man
Dave Boat Thor
Olivia d'Abo Natalia Romanov / Black Widow
Fred Tatasciore The Hulk
Michael Massee Dr. Bruce Banner
Nan McNamara Dr. Betty Ross
James K. Ward Herr Kleiser
Jeffrey D. Sams T' Challa / Black Panther
Mark Hamill Dr. Oiler
Dave Fennoy T'Chaka / Black Panther

As you can see, no big surprises in the voices and no big ones for the characters. I did notice some origin differences, but realistically there are characters here that were relevant 40 or 50 years ago and were at risk of being dropped. Hell I thought Thor was dated even in the 60s! Plus
a lot of them had not aged well through the 60s, 70s and so forth. So with this series and especially 2 you see some pretty major changes and even a character death!

In UA #2 we take a slightly different track to once again be introduced to T' Challa / Black Panther that really diverges from the Black Panther DVDs that I reviewed a month or longer. Here we have T' Challa becoming the Black Panther after Kleiser kills his father. Not so different, but Kleiser is not as he appears plus the Chitauri were not wiped out and they now have their sights set one Wakanda and if you follow the Black Panther and Avengers you know why, but I will pass on being a spoiler.

As usual no one gets along, everyone has their own agenda and even the couples aren’t happy, until they all MUST get the job done.

If you like the Ultimates comix they you’re going to love this. Pretty much all hand drawn and very well done. Almost NO CGI and then only when it works better and thank goodness for that!

The extras are excellent well worth a 9 and that is because I still would like to hear a commentary voice tract, The movie is a solid 8 for entertainment and animation, if that is your thing, you will enjoy it! And that gives the overall score to 1 and 2 to an 8 and from me I would say give it a go if you like comic and animation you will enjoy this. It is mainly for early teens, but I know the older fans are out there, cause I talk to em! So they would enjoy them as well.

6 comments:

kallamis said...

I certainly did, and I also enjoyed Next Avengers: Heroes Of Tomorrow. I even enjoyed the Doctor Strange anime movie, even though it was wrong in all kinds of places. Still a lot better than that thing they did back in the 70's of Doc Strange, that's for sure.
I am so hoping that they don't do that movie of Strange they are planning. It'll be destroyed the same as Logan's Run was, and is going to be again. I am so dredding that movie coming out. No one in it is even young enough to play Logan. Okay, I'll stop now before I put out a 500 page rant here about my man Logan.

Beam Me Up said...

the book "Logan's Run" was way more suspenseful than the movie. Plus the fact that they died off MUCH earlier in the book, the movie was dependent more on obscure references and bizarre scenes. To the end, mostly what I remember about the movie was people floating around a room getting zapped by a laser and that absolutely stupid guardian that tried to freeze everyone! an aluminum foil covered box and silver grease paint! It was obscenely bad! I have however taken your advice and rented the Strange and Avenger movies. I will give em a go!

kallamis said...

Yeah, they really messed up boxx in that badly. Very badly. And not even the base explanation of how he got that way. Oh I have to get away from that. I loved Logan's Run and every time I start on that movie it gets bad.
But let me know how you like those 2 anime films. I really liked them. Like I said, Doc has a lot of things that are either just wrong, or they over updated again. But I still enjoyed it. Always was a Strange follower back in the day.

Beam Me Up said...

Yep, movie is a sore spot for me to. They missed badly on Ustinov's character. He was such a talented voice actor that to see him degraded to that level and then to portray a character that was nothing like what they wrote.

It really was a shame

kallamis said...

The thing there was that they split one character into two. Francis was Ballard.
Think of Ballard
Think of Ballard
Think of Ballards name
He's lived a double lifetime
Why can't we do the same.

Like I said, Logan's Run was and is one of my main books in life, and i don't even have a copy right now. Driving me batty not having a copy right now.
Francis, or I guess Ballard actually used the new you shop so that he could appear young and blend in. He then manipulated the thinker in order to be a sandman so that he could reach runners when he could in the fastest and easiest way possible.
They took a great... oh screw it. They just screwed that movie and the characters every way from sunday. Basically, they did the design for the new movies made today like the live action of DBZ, (of which I refuse to speak about) and etc etc etc.
For destroying original concepts, they wrote the book on it.
I admit that planet of the apes had basically nothing to do with the original novel, but at least they did something that worked right. I'll keep my complaining of the new concept to myself for now.

Beam Me Up said...

Yep, I can tell it is a sore spot, but it is true and worthy of conversation. The movie and the series trashed the concept set by the book, no doubt. Wow, have you checked the Amazon price on that? Trade used 25 or 35!
My book....would have to be a toss up...Dune and Foundation were great but I was well into reading SF by then. Sam Delaney's Dahlgren was a tour de force, Shute's On the Beach really moved me, but I would have to say that Asimov's I Robot pushed me over the edge to being a science fiction fan. But Favorite...that is a hard one...Anderson's Tau Zero or Anne McCafrey's White Dragon (I know seems like fantasy but she kept building the science fiction back story.)

Hard hard choices