Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow Reviews

Thank God there were only eight of these direct-to-DVD animated films from Marvel, because the quality certainly wasn’t there. We started off strong with Ultimate Avengers, but the films quickly fell apart. Instead of adapting interesting full company storylines like Infinity Gauntlet or Civil War, or giving time to beloved story archs like “Demon in a Bottle,” we had a series of origin stories that merged elements of traditional Marvel continuity with the Ultimate line. And we only dealt with heroes, except for Dr. Strange, who had live action movies coming out fairly soon. Usually they tied in with them, like The Invincible Iron Man did.

None of that would have been a problem if the material was given a more richly and fully design and animated look, something that expanded beyond the Saturday morning cartoon parameters. Or if they had smartly written, adult-orientated scripts which developed and engaged with the material on a deeper level. None of them did that.

What we have here is one of the few original works to come out of the eight film series. And if this one isn’t the worst, I’m sure Planet Hulk gives it a decent enough run for its money. Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow tries to replicate a Monster Squad/Goonies vibe, but with superheroes. That it fails isn’t the only problem. It’s the teeth-gnashing script which insists on cutesy, overtly precocious kids as substitutes for developed characters.

You could go down a list and check off each character stereotype: the leader/hero that will unite them to defeat their enemy but keeps running away from his destiny, the nerdy tech whiz who is insufferably quirky, the token girl who overcompensates, and the rogue hero who joins into the fight at just the right time. Each goes through the proverbial hoops and storytelling clichés that you’d expect. There are no new developments in this hollow character sketches, and nothing original is done to break from the formula.

To make matters worse, one of Marvel’s greatest villains, Ultron, is used in this mess. He’s the lone successful part of this whole thing. Appropriately thirsty for knowledge and power, menacing and coldly calculating as only a sentient android could be, Ultron seems almost too dark for this batch of unproved heroes. If the film wanted to really push the boundaries and try something new, it could’ve at least killed off a few of them before we end up on the resolution which we all knew was coming from the first second of screentime. And bringing out original Avengers characters like Hulk, Iron Man and Vision just proves that an Avengers film based on, say, the Kurt Busiek/George Perez run or the Kree/Skrull war would’ve made for a more entertaining film.

At the end of the day this just looks and sounds like the rejected, overly long pilot for an animated series that never went into production. And maybe if it had been apart of a Saturday morning cartoon lineup on, say, Disney XD or Cartoon Network, I would’ve been more forgiving.