The Avengers has been one of the flagship Marvel titles since the team first debuted in the early 60's.  One of the keys to this success is the group's willingness to change.  They've altered the lineup and even rebooted the series a couple of times.  In 2001 Marvel decided to relaunch the group again, but this time they did it a little differently: they started from the beginning once again.  Marvel remade the team from scratch and ignored all that went before.  They were able to update the heroes, making them more realistic and also do away with decades of sometimes confusing continuity at the same time.  To avoid confusion with the original Avengers title, this new super group was dubbed The Ultimates.

Now Marvel has brought the Ultimates story to the small screen in the first in a series of straight to DVD movie: Ultimate Avengers.  While this group has many of Marvel's most dynamic and interesting heros, including Iron Man and Thor, they movie itself leaves a bit to be desired.  Trying to shoehorn too many events into a short 71-minute film in addition to having only mediocre animation leaves this movie falling far short of its potential.

The movie starts in 1945, with a group of GI's invading one of the last Nazi strongholds somewhere near the North Sea.  The tide of the battle is with the Allies, mostly because they have Captain America (aka Steve Rogers) on their side.  Just before the base is overrun though, an atomic bomb is launched.  It's destination: Washington D.C.  Captain America selflessly jumps on the missile and destroys it and afterwards falls lifelessly into the ocean.

Skip forward to the present.  General Nick Fury, the head of SHIELD, is aboard a submarine  under the ice pack in the North Sea looking for the Captain's body.  Finding it, he brings it back shore where Dr. Bruce Banner needs the cadaver to duplicate the super-soldier formula that was given to Captain America during WWII.  Much to everyone's surprise Rogers is still alive, just in suspended animation.

Captain America has woken up just in time, because the aliens who gave the Nazi's the secret of atomic power are back.  It's up to Nick Fury and Captain America to recruit a team of super powered individuals to combat this invasion, but that is easier said than done.  They eventually form a team including the Black Widow, Iron Man, Giant Man, and the Wasp, and though Thor declines their offer, he knows about the group.

No sooner have then formed than the aliens attack a SHIELD base and hack into their mainframe.  Soon after that they launch a full scale invasion.  If that's not enough to worry about, Dr. Banner has stopped taking his medication, and the Incredible Hulk goes on the rampage too.

I was really looking forward to this movie, I'm a big Avengers fan from way back, but this film a bit disappointing overall.  One of the problems, albeit a minor one, was the title.  They wanted the name recognition that the Avengers brings with it, but also wanted the updated story that is being told in the Ultimates.  This is going to be a source of confusion for some people.  Older Marvel fans who haven't read the new series (launched in 2001) will note several differences such as the fact that Bucky doesn't die in WWII, Captain America doesn't have the wings on his cowl, Thor is a member of Greenpeace, and Nick Fury is now an African-American (who apparently doesn't smoke.)  These changes are fairly easy to get past though.

The story for this animated feature is apparently taken from the first six issues of the original Ultimates comic, and it really tries to cram too much into the short 71-minute run time.  A big part of The Avengers comic has always been the interactions between the members with their various personalities.  In this movie there are over half a dozen major characters and they try to give each one a distinct personalty, but there's not enough time to do that properly.  Instead they give each hero a single character trait and leave it at that.  That wouldn't be a problem in most hero cartoons, but this one focuses on the group having to work as a team and the internal frictions that they face.  Since the characters aren't developed, all of the heros (with the exception of the noble Captain America) come across like petulant children.  It's hard to like a movie where just about everyone in it is a jerk.  It takes a while to establish even this much though, and the first hour of the movie is pretty slow.

The plot had several holes in it that even my 9 and 13 year old boys caught, and this detracted from the movie a bit.  Why was SHIELD looking for Captain America's body at the beginning?  What could possibly make them think that it would still be intact after being at the bottom of the sea for 60 years???  The aliens and their motivations are not discussed at all and that's pretty confusing.  They decide to give nuclear weapons to the Nazis in 1945.  Why?  If they are after world domination it would be easy for them to conquer the earth in the 40's.  What did they do for the next 60 years?  No one seemed to think it strange that they just disappeared after WWII.  Why have they come out now?  Why attack SHIELD instead of securing a source of fuel or materials that they may need?  It was hard to get into the big battle with the aliens at the end since there didn't appear to be any reason for the attack.

Even with the problems that this movie has, the battle with the Hulk at the end was very exciting and a lot of fun.  Thor goes toe-to-toe with the big guy, and then the whole group joins in the melee.  It's too bad that rest of the movie couldn't have had the same amount of action and excitement.

One thing that would have made this film more exciting is if they had spent more on the animation.  Unfortunately they didn't, and it shows.  The animation is pretty crude overall.  Everyone has stiff movements and whenever someone walks across a room it's a bit jerky.  They put more money into the action scenes, but even these weren't very impressive.  The backgrounds have little detail and even less movement and this makes the whole production look bad.  (Check out the drummer in the nightclub scene where Tony Stark is introduced.  Man, that's bad animation.)

Audio:

This movie comes with both English and Spanish soundtracks, both in 5.1.  The English track sounded good with the explosions really surrounding the viewer and giving the subwoofer a good workout.  Unfortunately when there wasn't a battle going on, the soundtrack collapsed to basically a two channel mix.  The quality was very good, with the dialog coming through nice and clean and audio defects being absent.

Video:

The anamorphic widescreen image looked fine.  The colors were solid and bright, and the lines were sharp.  Aliasing, a digital defect that plagues animation, was absent, as were other compression artifacts.  A good looking disc.

Extras:

This disc has a good amount of bonus material.  First off is an Avengers Trivia Track.  Viewers have the option of turning this on and seeing pop-up information about the Avengers and the heroes who make up the team while the movie is playing.

Avengers Assemble is a 23-minute look at the team, in all of its incarnations, with artist George Perez and Avengers editor  Tom Brevoort.  This was nice, but it wasn't as focused as it could have been.

The Ultimate Voice Talent Search is a very funny look at some of the amateur submissions that Marvel received when they announced that they were looking for people to voice the Avengers.  Edited to make some of the people look foolish, I sure hope these fans got some reimbursement for their appearances.

There is also a Which Avenger are You? game for DVD-Rom, a peek at the next Avenger movie, and trailers to other Marvel films.

Final Thoughts:

I haven't read The Ultimates comic book, but I'm sure that it's very good.  I can see where the story that's told in this movie could have made an interesting comic series.  Unfortunately the feel of a monthly comic isn't easy to bring to the screen, as this film illustrates.  The characters presented here are flat lifeless parodies, and unlikeable ones at that.  Super-heros should be just that, super.  To show them being petty, jealous, and arrogant makes them loose a lot of their appeal.  The movie was also pretty slow at the beginning never really picking up speed until the last quarter.  Add to that the fact that the animation is done on the cheap and you have a fairly unappealing product.  This would make a good rental since it was fun to see this updated take on some classic heroes and the end battle was fun.  I can't see this getting a lot of repeated viewing though.