When it
comes to direct to DVD flicks, DC is leaps ahead of Marvel. Whilst DC has had
its slip-ups (JL: War and Son of Batman being notable examples), Marvel haven’t
really had much success. But these are a few I’d recommend as only a casual
Marvel comics reader
Doctor
Strange: a nice introduction to the sorcerer supreme with great moments for the
character as he overcomes adversity to become the sorcerer supreme. There’s
debate about the addition to his back story and I think it adds depth and
emotional weight to the character. People very rarely are jackasses just for
the sake of it.
The Hulk vs
Series: Both Hulk vs Wolverine and Hulk vs Thor are very fun romps within the
Wolverine/Hulk universe, with Deadpool appearing as part of the weapon X squad
in the Wolverine one (voiced by Nolan North)
And that’s
about it. There are a couple of decent ones I’ll cover in future Guilty
Pleasure reviews, but those are the two that stand out to me. (Thor: Tales of
Asgard and Young Avengers are in the line-up for some-when)
We also have
the following which I’ll cover briefly
The
Invincible Iron Man – Largely forgettable
Iron Man:
Rise of the technovore – confusing
Iron Man and
Hulk: Heroes united – Childish
Iron Man and
Captain America: Heroes United – Childish
Planet Hulk
– Decent-ish
But today,
I’m doing Ultimate Avengers 2. In 2000 Marvel began the launch of the ‘Ultimate
Universe’ imprint. It was a way of establishing characters without being
hampered by decades of continuity, hopefully attracting new readers in the
process.
It started
with Ultimate Spider-man, still the most popular of the series (although it got
a new titular character after the supposed Death of Spider-man) then Ultimate
Fantastic 4 and X-men. But the Ultimate version of the Avengers came out
initially in mini-series called Ultimates (1, 2 and 3) it was the original Ultimates book that drew the inspiration for Ultimate Avengers. (Given the
synopsis from Wikipedia, it follows most of the story (minus the wife abuse
storyline for Hank) folding in the Hulk plot within the Chitauri invasion plot)
it was a decent success that a sequel was made, Ultimate Avengers 2
Unlike the
original, Ultimate Avengers 2 is a unique story, it does not follow the
plot-line of Ultimates 2, at all (largely because it hadn’t been fully written
yet) and we have tagline: Rise of the Black Panther. Black Panther is a
criminally underrated character in Marvel. I’d go into his origin, but this is
more or less the subject of the movie.
For this
review, bare two things in mind: 1) I haven’t rewatched Ultimate Avengers for
this, so don’t expect me to latch onto continuity errors between films. And 2)
the only Ultimates book I’ve ever read is the Avengers vs New Ultimates: Death
of Spider-man tie-in book
With that
out of the way, let’s dig in:
