Ultimate Avengers: The Movie
Published by Kaonashi December 2nd, 2006 in Action, Film Adaptation, Adventure, Animation, Comic Book.
Title: The Ultimate Avengers: The Movie
Year: 2006
Director: Curt Geda and Steven E. Gordon
Starring Voices: Justin Gross, Grey DeLisle, Olivia D’Abo, Marc Worden
Rated: PG-13
NoFace for film rating: 3.5 out of 7
My boyfriend is a huge, HUGE fanboy of “The Ultimates” comic book series, so when he heard that an animated movie was made based on it he got all excited. Unfortunately, unlike The Transformers: The Movie, Ultimate Avengers: The Movie did not warrant theatrical release and instead went straight to DVD. So we rented it.
Like the comic book series, The Ultimate Avengers starts off interestingly enough in World War II, with Captain America (Gross) leading the American troops against the Nazis. He succeeds in saving the day but appears to be killed in battle. Fast forward to the present. General Nick Fury (Andre Ware) is the head of government military agency S.H.I.E.L.D. . Totally badass and looking a whole lot like Samuel L. Jackson, Fury -with the aid of his second-in-command Black Widow (d’Abo)- recruits Thor, Iron Man (Worden), Wasp (DeLisle), and Giant-Man (Nolan North) to form a kickass superhero team. Dr. Bruce Banner (Michael Masee), who is on heavy meds to prevent himself from turning into the Hulk, also works for Fury but in the lab.
I thought that this was a relatively faithful adaptation of The Ultimates storyline and comic (which is pretty cool, BTW), but there were some changes. For example, comic book Thor has a short beard and moustache, while movie Thor is clean shaven. Also, Betty Ross in the movie is a really nice woman and a scientist, whereas comic book Betty is a bitchy, mean, and annoying P.R. person. As you read, you wonder why the hell Bruce is still in love with her. Henry Pym (aka Giant-Man) is a mild smartass in the movie, while his comic counterpart is a real dickhead, not to mention a wife-beater.
But the biggest difference between the comic books and movie adaptation is that the latter caters more to teenagers, which I think (and my boyfriend wholeheartedly agrees) weakened the movie. As I said, Betty is made to be a nice person, and there is no mention of the Hulk eating people. Also, the art in the comics is better than in the movie, which is a shame. It’s not just that they toned down the violence though; the movie just seems…simpler, more basic. A lot of the mature (and I don’t necessarily mean dirty), sarcastic humor is lost, and the characters are less three-dimensional.
Like the Transformers movie, The Ultimate Avengers will appeal mostly to fanboys of the comic book series, though naturally they’d be criticizing it the whole time for not being more like the comic book (as my boyfriend did). And although I know that an Iron Man film is in the works (starring Robert Downey Jr.), it would be cool if someday, someone made a live-action version of the Ultimates. I doubt it though, because from what I’ve heard, studios would prefer to make movies starring each individual superhero so that they can make more movies and therefore more money.
Technorati Tags: Marvel, The Ultimates, Ultimate Avengers: The Movie, Captain America, Nick Fury, Black Widow, Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Wasp, Giant-Man, Betty Ross
4 Responses to “Ultimate Avengers: The Movie”
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There was a sequel to this movie. I saw both of them on the Cartoon Network.
Marvo- indeed. Guess what’s in the Netflix cue?
Translating comics into movies is a really tough sale especially to for the comic book fans. In your opinion, which comic book character translated best into movie?
My vote goes Batman. The first and last one (Batman Begins) are the best.
Yes Damon, translating comics to movies is always hard. It’s hard enough to adapt a book into a movie, but at least a book is just one source of text. The whole story is contained in just one book. But characters and stories from comics can span decades- how in the hell do you compress 30 years’ worth of storyline into 2 hours?
And of course, you can never completely please the fans. No matter how faithful you stick to the story, the fans will always find something to gripe about. We all have our own ideas on what Spider-Man or Batman should look like, and we get disappointed when the actors portraying them don’t live up to our own, biased, personal ideas.
I can’t really say which comic book characters translated best into a movie since all comic book movies have taken some liberties with the original story and characters. I think however, that I’ll have to go with Clark Kent/Superman, in “Superman I”. I loved the first Batman movie and Batman Begins, but they take some strong liberties with the villains. It was never mentioned in the comics that the Joker (as a young man) killed Bruce Wayne’s parents, and they turn Ra’s Al Ghul into a mortal (but badass) man, rather than someone who has been around for centuries due to his Lazarus pits.