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I’m fairly confident that I’ve mentioned this before in other reviews for Marvel’s direct-to-video animated films, but they’re nothing in comparison to the work that DC has been doing. Granted, even DC’s films have varied wild in quality of story, animation, and vocal acting, but they’ve also given us ones as great as Batman: Under the Red Hood, Batman: Year One or Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths. DC has explored their characters in a deeper way, bringing to life stories that are too adult/violent for their animated series or too fringe to use to introduce a major audience to in a live action film.
Marvel has yet to do anything quite so adventurous or daring with their films. A typical one is poorly written, lazily delivered by the actors, and cheaply animated. Iron Man & Hulk: Heroes United is no different. The sense that every sentence is written in bold and delivered with an exclamation point isn’t the worst choice, but the voice actors don’t deliver it with a wink and a nod, or any real life. Compared to something like Batman: The Brave and the Bold which embraces the goofier aspects of comic books and delivers with panache, this feels like a lead balloon.
Shame, really, cause I adore Marvel, always have. The Avengers are a group of characters that they haven’t cracked the code on in animated form just yet (moment of confession, I have not yet watched Earth’s Mightiest Heroes which I hear nothing but praise for). The 90s animated series was a blast to my twelve-year-old self, but finding old clips of it now is a painful reminder of what used to pass for quality entertainment in that decade. And the two Ultimate Avengers films are a mixed bag. Taken as solo entities, Iron Man: Armored Adventures wasn’t anything special, and the less said about his solo animated film the better. I don’t know why Marvel can’t seem to produce a quality animated project in regards to many of these characters, they’ve got Disney money backing them now, but they seem to do better with Spider-Man or the X-Men. This is just the latest in a series of duds featuring Marvel’s finest.
