Marvel's first animated movie was Ultimate Avengers, which came out in Feb. 2006. It was so successful, that its sequel, Ultimate Avengers 2, came out in Aug. 2006. The remarkable thing about that quick turnaround is that the sequel was just as good, if not better than the original. Two new directors headed this movie — Will Meugniot and Richard Sebast — and all the original voices reprised their roles, with the addition of Jeffrey D. Sams as Black Panther.
My favorite thing about this sequel is that it ties directly into the first movie. Steve Rogers is still struggling with life in the future. Not only that, but he's struggling with life off the battlefield. He went immediately from World War II to fighting aliens. He hasn't had any time to decompress, and I love that this movie acknowledged that. I also really enjoyed seeing that Bruce Banner must pay the consequences of his actions. He purposefully and deceitfully turned himself into the Hulk and made a huge mess of things. Now he has to stay constantly sedated in a glass prison, being forced to relive the moment he lost control. I think it is a bit of a stretch to make his interrogator have a personal grudge against him — wouldn't Nick Fury know about that and prevent it? — but altogether, I really enjoyed this plot line. Plus one point.
Now, the whole premise of this film is that Black Panther's kingdom, Wakanda, is being attacked by the lone shape-shifting chitari, who went under the guise of Herr Kleiser in World War II. Since Kleiser fought Captain America, Black Panther seeks his aid in this fight. It's nice to give Captain America a personal connection, but I couldn't stop wondering why the shape-shifting chitari continued to remain in the form of a Nazi leader. We know he can change into other things — he disguises himself as Black Panther at one point — so why does he feel compelled to continue to pledge allegiance to a party that was destroyed 60 years ago? And what was he doing for the 60 years Captain America was frozen? Was he also frozen? Who found him and why? It would have been better had this chitari been revealed as Kleiser later on in the movie, but even if he was, they still would have had a few questions to answer, which I don't think they were prepared to. I have to take a point off for that.
But I will restore the score to a 6 for the extended background stories on all our characters. The first movie gave us just the bare essentials, but kind of made me mad with how vague some things were. But this movie clearly spelled out that Thor is indeed an Asgardian and regularly has conversations with Odin — although it was a shame we never got to see him. We also got to see Tony Stark's artificial heart and a great shot into his lab with his many replacement suits. And we even got to learn that Giant-Man's powers have some specific limitations. All these moments were made possible with the movie series format, and it makes me sad that we didn't get any more of these.
Just as with the first one, this movie suffers from occasionally having things happen for no apparent reason. When the chitari launch their full-scale invasion on Earth, a couple of soldiers head directly to Bruce Banner's prison. They can't break through the glass, and they indicate to the corrupt scientist that they want to kill him, which he tries to do by administering a lethal amount of sedatives. Now, it is nice that this chump was killed for his efforts, but it raises the question: Why did the chitari want to kill Bruce Banner? Did they know he was the Hulk? Is so, how? Or were these aliens simply extremely efficient killers and wanted to make sure that even Earth's prisoners were killed? I don't know. It's annoying. What's also annoying is that the filmmakers try to make it look like Banner died here, and gave him a touching scene with Betty Ross. But shouldn't the Hulk take over anytime Banner's life is in danger. True, we do see the Hulk later in the movie, but it's much later. Why did this transformation take so long? I have to take off a point for this.
We'll now fall to a 4 for the Black Panther. He's the new guy here, and for the most part, I liked him and his country. It was neat that his dad was the Black Panther and he passed on the role after his death. But they didn't explain the suit or its powers at all. At first it seemed just like a normal suit with some fancy claws, but then occasionally it would turn the Black Panther into an actual panther for a limited time. Huh? What? This movie went to great lengths to explain that all of Wakanda's power was technological, but now all of a sudden we have some supernatural elements in here? And I am fine with having magic and stuff in a story with Thor in it, but I would have liked the movie to address it.
One great thing this movie did that the first failed at was conveying that the chitari is a true global threat. The heart of the battle was in Wakanda, which was intense enough, but then we also saw the aliens landing all around the world, causing destruction wherever they went. The first movie's fight with the chitari seemed to go by very quickly, but this one lasted an appropriate amount of time. And that may be because we didn't have a Hulk rampage here, which is fine; I wouldn't want an exact repeat of last movie. So I guess I'll stop complaining about Black Panther and make the score a 5 again.
I really do enjoy the ending, but probably not for the reasons I'm supposed to. Giant-Man sacrifices himself and dies, which makes me very happy, because he was a big lame jerk through both of these movies. Oddly, the filmmakers decided we needed a second near-death scene immediately after Giant-Man's death, and we had Iron Man sacrifice himself to save everybody one last time. This was, of course, preceded by tons of talk about how selfish Tony Stark is, etc., etc., and the whole thing was repeated in the live-action Avengers movie. But instead of lamely being awoken by the Hulk's roar, this Iron Man was revived by a bolt of lightning from Thor. That makes more sense and is a lot cooler. Ironically, nobody mentions that maybe Thor should try to revive Giant-Man. True, he doesn't have a mechanical heart like Iron Man, but they still could have tried. However, I'm completely fine with this. I hated Giant-Man, and I was glad that nobody tried to save him and nobody seemed particularly sad that he died in the first place. Even his wife, Wasp, didn't even seem to shed a tear. I should be criticizing the film for this, but I can't. I was happy that Giant-Man died, and I think everybody else secretly was. Plus one point.
So there we have it. A direct sequel to a perfectly average film that was only slightly better. The main story, scope and action of this movie was superior, but it also suffered many of the same flaws of the first one. And most of those problems I believe come from the too-brief 70-minute running time. However, I was happy to have a nice little movie series of this Marvel Ultimate universe building on itself. I would have loved to have had a few more movies here that continued to teach us more about our favorite characters and introduce us to more heroes and villains. Instead, Marvel went on to make a handful of separate, disconnected movies and try a few more cartoon shows that I never really could get into. So with this, I bid farewell to the short-lived Ultimate Avengers movie series.
Final score: 6
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