Ultimate Avengers [2006] / Ultimate Avengers II [2006]
Digging up some old DVD's I own at my house, I found a pair of interesting old forgotten ones with pictures of the Avengers on them... and I had a vague recollection of watching these at some point in the past, back in 2006 when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was still a burgeoning franchise, and the premiere Marvel Comics movies and cartoons were still Spider-Man and the X-Men. I knew of the Avengers, because even in 2006 I was already kind of a geek, but I merely knew about them from reputation, seeing them by proxy showing up every now and then in a Spider-Man comic or two, with the biggest exposure I had to them being the Ultimate Alliance game, and Hulk's 2003 movie. Hell, Iron Man hasn't even had his first debut yet, and in my head he was just a B-lister that showed up in Ultimate Alliance!
So yeah, they made this pair of movies, very loosely based on the very first Ultimates comic run (which I've never read), presumably to cash in on the hype as the live-action movies started to build up towards the huge Avengers movie in 2012. And... the first of the two, Ultimate Avengers... is an interesting one, following a lot of the same beats that its 2012 live-action counterpart would, but diverging wildly in others.
For one, Ultimate Avengers is honestly primarily a Captain America movie. All the other cast members have adequate screentime (other than Thor), but ultimately, it's more of Captain America's day in the limelight, and honestly, it's something that is pretty smart, giving the movie a bit more of a focus on one of the characters as opposed to delving too deeply into the origins of everyone else. And it's not like they aren't explored, but without the benefit of them getting individual movies (or episodes) before, it's smart not to over-extend the movie's run by diverging our attention to seven different origin story. We get to see Captain America fighting in World War II against Herr Kleiser, get trapped in ice, and then excavated and find himself a man out of time.
And Captain America's backstory even ties in with the main villain of both of these movies -- the Chitauri, who are a lot more goopy-space-monster looking than the more armored-cyborg-esque look of their live-action counterparts. Apparently in lieu of Hydra the Chitauri had been behind the spooky Nazi conspiracies in the past and had been a thorn in Captain America's side during the war, and the attempt (and failure) to detect the Chitauri ship ends up causing SHIELD director Nick Fury to, under the pressure of a bunch of world leaders, assemble the Avengers Protocol.
And it's from this that we are introduced to the other characters and members of the Avengers. The movie takes a long time trying to build up the mystery of who Iron Man is, while also simultaneously introducing Tony Stark as the billionaire playboy that helps fund SHIELD. Black Widow is quickly shown in Stark's introduction as well, as, well, a SHIELD agent. Ant-Man/Hank is a giant prick, and his wife Wasp/Janet is a lot more amiable to SHIELD, and they are more or less reluctantly recruited quickly.
Thor briefly shows up hanging out with a group of people protesting whale hunting, but basically disappears until the climax. We do get a vague bit of hints that Fury has at some point reached out to these guys, and there's a sense of a world that's lived in, which is nice.
Perhaps the character that gets the most screentime in these early scenes other than the good Captain himself is Bruce Banner, which, considering how Hulk's the only one out of these characters to have a live-action movie, was probably because they thought that he'd be the most recognizable to the children at home. Again, it was 2006. Bruce here is portrayed in an almost desperate, pathetic state. He's already known and had rampaged as the Hulk, and is extremely desperate to use Captain America's status as a Super-Soldier to cure his condition and impress not only his superiors, but also his estranged girlfriend Betty Ross. There are many scenes of Banner's scenes in this movie that really highlight his desperation and at points he's not even being subtle at hiding the fact that he's got ulterior motives -- while not quite anti-hero territory, it's still a relatively far cry from the far more heroic and stable Banner we see in the MCU movies.
The movie paces itself relatively slowly and lets us meet the primary characters one by one, and it's not until around the 45 minute mark that the present-day alien invasion plot really ends up actually taking place. Sure, there's a random satellite that gets destroyed by a Chitauri manta-ray-spaceship
but the Avengers don't even assemble for more than half the runtime. And it's an honestly predictable cock-up as the civilian members all either are too gung-ho to listen to Captain America's orders, or are simply unaccustomed to do so, leading to the Chitauri completely succeeding in their plan to wipe out a military base and steal all of its secrets. Complicating this matter is the aforementioned Bruce Banner problem, where he's been using the super soldier thing as an excuse to experiment on his own cure, and when Fury and Betty find out, the anger causes him to Hulk out.
After the failure of the mission we do get a couple of scenes for everyone sort of sulking on their own, but honestly, the Pyms and Tony really don't do much and we don't get a real idea of what's going on in their heads or why they return to fight the alien invasion later on. Cap's the only one that gets adequate screentime, again, actually struggling with his failure and whether he's needed in this post-WWII era. Black Widow, surprisingly, ends up becoming Cap's confidant during this scene, which is an interesting dynamic in these two movies.
Of course, the last 15 minutes or so is full-on action as the faceless Chitauri alien hordes attack the SHIELD base, all the while the Hulk is rampaging. Everyone who left or doubted their role return and help out, and hey, Thor shows up to light up the scene with lightning bolts and a brief ominous choir. And honestly, clearing out the Chitauri took minimal effort, because in an interesting twist, it's the Hulk that ends up being the actual final villain in this movie, taking up the final ten minutes of the runtime as he absolutely pummels every single Avenger present. There is a genuine sense of him being a truly unstoppable creature that bats around the other half-dozen Avengers with ease, and he's even somehow able to lift Mjolnir and use it as a crude weapon to bash Thor's face in. Ultimately, they manage to stab a cure onto the Hulk and stop him, but not without a lot of effort and beat-down from the Hulk's part.
The voice-acting is decent if a bit stunted, and I'm not the biggest fan of the 'talk to a can' effect they put over Iron Man's voice. The writing's... all right, although the movie's perhaps a bit too serious for its own good. Ultimately I do feel like the movie does focus a bit too much on introducing the characters that they kind of just lobbed a generic group of aliens as the final villain -- and it's something that the actual MCU movie would actually fix by having Loki as the face of the invasion. The Chitauri invasion honestly feels like an afterthought in this movie, and it's a good thing that the movie ended with that pretty brutal fight against the Hulk. The animation's all right, if nothing particularly special.
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And then we've got Ultimate Avengers II, which definitely feels more of a follow-up and a sequel, because as much as the first movie was a neat, stand-alone thing, it really lacked any sort of conclusion or any sort of interesting interpersonal dynamic between the actual members of the cast. This movie still focuses a lot more on Captain America, but is a lot more interesting than the first movie by actually building up this rivalry with Herr Kleiser, who we briefly glimpse in the first movie and we get an expansion of in this one.
Also, while the first movie doesn't really do any origin stories, this one does it for its newest member, Black Panther. Indeed, a significant portion of the movie is devoted to showing off Black Panther, newly-crowned-king of Wakanda, whose nation is under siege by the very same Chitauri. Turns out that in this continuity, Wakanda became so extremely advanced because they not only had access to a gigantic underground storage of Vibranium, they are also able to salvage a fallen Chitauri ship, one of the ships shot down during WWII. Of course, this puts them at the crosshairs of Herr Kleiser and his alien goons, leading to the death of T'Challa's father. And we really do get the sense of Wakanda's isolationist culture, because T'Challa keeps arguing with this array of nameless old council members that they need outside help, and is clearly reluctant to break tradition... but does so anyway to try and seek out help for Wakanda.
And if you will forgive another comparison to the MCU movies, it's an interesting thing instead of the 'learning to share our super-advanced technology' moral from the Black Panther movie, this version of Wakanda basically had to learn the lesson that sometimes they need help from other people and they can't be isolationist forever, which is a very good lesson. Just kind of a shame that said help, as unintentionally as it probably was, ends up sort of looking like a 'white man savior' deal going on.
Speaking of looking for help, Captain America is basically throwing himself headfirst into beating up random terrorists and eschewing rest, much to the worry of his love interest in these movies, Black Widow. He doesn't quite go as unhinged as someone like Bruce Banner, but it's clear that he's just throwing himself into one battle to the next because the good old Cap just doesn't know what to do with himself. We get a scene in the first movie with him seeing that everyone from his old life is either old or dead, and during the briefing of their mission to investigate Wakanda, we get to see Steve bristling and getting absolutely angry at the mere sight of Kleiser.
The other Avengers do get scenes, although this is still ultimately the Cap-and-Panther movie. Bruce is still held as a prisoner of SHIELD, with him being endlessly tormented by some asshole scientist that he slighted before, Doctor Oiler, while he's basically left to wallow in his guilt and failure. Hank and Janet, meanwhile, have an increasing amount of friction as Hank is... well, kind of an egoistical dick in this one. Thor, again, sits out half of the movie because just like Age of Ultron, he's busy receiving visions. This one has him argue with Odin a lot, because Thor wants to fight for humanity against the express wishes of his father, which isn't much to go on due to Thor's limited screentime, but it's something to help infer his motivation.
The main plot gets a bit more engaging by the virtue that the stakes are a bit higher with a Chitauri mothership ready to attack Wakanda and steal its secrets, while both Steve and T'Challa have personal stakes with Herr Kleiser being the architect of their respective tragedies. The movie doesn't really go too deep into the themes because it prioritizes action, but there's a sense that the two men, in desperation, allow themselves to do things that their peers wouldn't approve of. For T'Challa's case, it's seeking the aid of outsiders, a gambit that paid off. In Steve's case, it's his carelessness that actually allowed Kleiser to get on board the Quinjet and nearly kill the Avengers if not for Thor's deus-ex-teleportation powers.
And that part of the movie is admittedly fairly clunky, but it does lead to a very abrasive Hank confronting Steve for his carelessness causing Janet to get wounded and be stuck in critical condition. Again, it['s not something that gets dwelled on a lot, and I really would've like some payoff of showing Cap really embracing his role as a leader or something. But we need the huge action scene, and the Chitauri start deploying their cool organic war-machines all over the world and cover the earth in a weird dome. Despite the Wakandan elders' confidence, Kleiser manage to pinpoint the crashed Chitauri ship and blow it up, nullifying Wakanda's most powerful weapons. Of course, the moral of the story ends with T'Challa's willingness to accept help being the right way, and they start working together with the Avengers to beat up the Chitauri goons. Also, Cap and Panther, together, kill Kleiser and drown him in like fast-dry concrete.
A B-plot running through this is the Hulk stuff, which is... neat? Thanks to Banner's input while being forced to watch the Hulk's rampage over and over, he helps Betty figure out that gamma radiation can weaken Chitauri structures. There's kind of a sad scene where Dr. Oiler offers to help the Chitauri kill Banner for them, and it seems for a moment that he's dead, but of course he Hulks out and starts Hulk-smashing his way through random Chitauri vehicles, although he spends the rest of the climax basically off-screen.
While this is going on, Hank, having seen Janet wounded so grievously, basically takes up a lesson in superhero heroics and gets a bit more heroic in his actions. I really would have liked to see a bit more of a contrast, though, because even prior to their argument, it's not like Hank was particularly cowardly or anything. It does lead to Hank joining Iron Man (dressed up in the War Machine armour!) on the run towards the Chitauri warship, blowing a hole in with a gamma cannon and causing the requisite reactor overload that takes out all the Chitauri war-machines. And Hank... actually does die. There's a moment when Iron Man seems to die too, after repeating a line from Cap earlier in the movie about sacrifice and stuff... but turns out that a jolt of Thor lightning is able to zap his chest reactor back to life.
Ultimately, it's... a bit of a messier movie, with the Banner B-plot being a bit of a glaring oddity compared to the relatively tight focus of the Chitauri and Wakanda storyline. It's not that bad, though, and while Ultimate Avengers II still struggles in juggling characters (Iron Man and Thor get hit the hardest, but Hulk also effectively disappears through the movie and the two women are essentially just love interests when they're not shooting stuff) the core story of Cap and Panther is still pretty solid. I do also like the surprising bit of Hank Pym's death, and while the writing for Hank could've been better leading up to his heroic sacrifice, it's a surprising bit of mortality in what's otherwise been a movie geared towards a younger audience. Nothing particularly spectacular, but still a decent watch all around.
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