Alrighty, so this film has gotten a bunch of good reviews and i'd like to firmly post myself as one of it's naysayers. the fact is, this movie appeals mostly to fans of current Avenger comic books, namely, Mark Millar and Bryan Hitches absolutely incredible The Ultimates.
now in the midsts of it's "sequal" The Ultimates is one of the most cinematic comic books you're likely to ever come across, if you did what they did to Sin City with The Ultimates, you'd have a smart, cool, funny, deep, politically charged action film unlike anything by the likes of Micheal Baye or Tony Scott.
the idea of The Ultimates is rather simple: the story of a government recruited super-hero team, set in the real world. so when we refer to "mister president" we are indeed referring to George Walker Bush. and so fourth and so on, taking the idea of marvel (comics set in real settings) one step further.
so considering all this, i was actually somewhat exited to see The Ultimate Avengers film, but man. was i disappointed. the film is corny, draggy, poorly animated, all the characters are just bleak, flat versions of themselves in the book. everything that makes the ultimates special has been replaced by awful one-liners. the most interesting characters have been reduced to one-trick ponies who get tiresome within the first three seconds.
Thor went from a radical left winger/Asgardian god who may just be a crazy nurse with delusions of grandeur and a super-weapon, to this flaky beardless moron with a hammer that can somehow be picked up by the hulk.
Giant Man went from a genius scientist with a superiority complex and a pension for beating his wife, to an archetypal "team leader." and so on, and so on.
all the depth has been sucked from these great characters. Mark Millar's distinctive and imaginative world has been replaced by marshmallows and Hulk fights that are placed in harmless warehouses where no innocent bystanders can get hurt. (in the book, this fight took place in Manhattan, and the death-toll was in the 300's and a lot of the story afterward has to do with Bruce Banner's guilt.) some of you reading this might just think i'm nitpicking, i'm being a comic book geek and i need to lighten up and let the movie be the movie and the comic be the comic, but y'know something? if they had just changed the plot, and kept to the core of the stories allure, i might have let it slide, but all they did is repackage The Ultimates to be none-threatening and unimportant, and it's not that. it's far from that.
2/10
now in the midsts of it's "sequal" The Ultimates is one of the most cinematic comic books you're likely to ever come across, if you did what they did to Sin City with The Ultimates, you'd have a smart, cool, funny, deep, politically charged action film unlike anything by the likes of Micheal Baye or Tony Scott.
the idea of The Ultimates is rather simple: the story of a government recruited super-hero team, set in the real world. so when we refer to "mister president" we are indeed referring to George Walker Bush. and so fourth and so on, taking the idea of marvel (comics set in real settings) one step further.
so considering all this, i was actually somewhat exited to see The Ultimate Avengers film, but man. was i disappointed. the film is corny, draggy, poorly animated, all the characters are just bleak, flat versions of themselves in the book. everything that makes the ultimates special has been replaced by awful one-liners. the most interesting characters have been reduced to one-trick ponies who get tiresome within the first three seconds.
Thor went from a radical left winger/Asgardian god who may just be a crazy nurse with delusions of grandeur and a super-weapon, to this flaky beardless moron with a hammer that can somehow be picked up by the hulk.
Giant Man went from a genius scientist with a superiority complex and a pension for beating his wife, to an archetypal "team leader." and so on, and so on.
all the depth has been sucked from these great characters. Mark Millar's distinctive and imaginative world has been replaced by marshmallows and Hulk fights that are placed in harmless warehouses where no innocent bystanders can get hurt. (in the book, this fight took place in Manhattan, and the death-toll was in the 300's and a lot of the story afterward has to do with Bruce Banner's guilt.) some of you reading this might just think i'm nitpicking, i'm being a comic book geek and i need to lighten up and let the movie be the movie and the comic be the comic, but y'know something? if they had just changed the plot, and kept to the core of the stories allure, i might have let it slide, but all they did is repackage The Ultimates to be none-threatening and unimportant, and it's not that. it's far from that.
2/10