Review: Ultimate Avengers DVD

An odd title that will get many people confused. Is it The Avengers? Is it The Ultimates? It ends up being the latter - the title was most likely changed to draw more "old-school" comic book readers in... or did I miss the memo that stated Ultimates was shorthand for Ultimate Avengers?



Any who, this DVD promises to be the first of many for Marvel (The second Ultimate Avengers is pretty much finished and ships in June, I believe). They even have a Dr. Strange movie in the works for next February. Pretty sweet. On with the review! (Review System)

Cinematography, Packaging: Cartoons featuring combat between characters can always be hit or miss. However, these guys draw comics that portray battle all of the time and it really shows in the animation for Ultimate Avengers. Over three quarters of the movie is hand-to-hand fighting and all of it looks great, although sometimes the video quality skipped out and showed some frozen blocks for a moment after a quick cut from one character to another. There's also some odd-looking CG used for alien ships that feels entirely out of place. They would have been fine make the entire movie 2-D cel animation. 7/10

Sound: Most of the voices are spot-on. Marvel obviously worked with some of the writers to get their opinions on how each character should talk. If you have a surround sound system, definitely pump it up for this title. 9/10

Value: There are some pretty good extras on the DVD. An entire history of The Avengers told by some of the original artists and writers is pretty neat if you're a fan of the material. There's also a feature compiling some of the best entrees into "The Ultimate Voice Talent Search." Some of them are hilariously bad or poorly shot with digital cameras. One guy spouts off a bunch of lines in various impressions, from Christopher Walken to Sean Connery - definitely the most memorable nerd of the bunch. There's a first-look at Ultimate Avengers 2 which is short and barely whets the whistle and a pretty cool "What Avenger Are You?" feature if you put the disc in a PC. The possibilities are unlimited, too - apparently every single hero that was ever an Avenger is an outcome. The price is right for a rather short movie (about 70 minutes), at below $15. 7/10

Enjoyability: The movie itself was pretty good in terms of a short, animated action flick. Those that read Ultimates Vol. 1 will find nothing new in terms of story, although it's always nice to have voices added to each hero and see each fight translated into motion. It's best to watch with others that read the book or are aware of the characters in it, as well as a kick-ass sound system. 7/10

Overall Score: 7 out of 10 (Good)

-Casey