Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to "Tales of the Longbox" here on Reaction & Review. Yes, guys, it's that time, once again, where I take a look at a group of comic book related movies. But this time, I'm doing it a little bit differently here. See, normally, I would spread it out to two months. However, instead, I've decided that I'm gonna be dedicating a whole month to this marathon. And that's also gonna happen for every other marathon from this point forward, because I feel like I'm motivated enough to covering more movies rather than just doing 4 to 5 movies a month. And for this marathon, I have 9 comic book related movies and, like I said, I'm gonna be covering all of them for this month.
And we're gonna kick this marathon off with...another follow up. Yeah, this has been kind of been on going for the last couple of weeks, since both movies I covered during the tail end of last year were both sequels to movies I had already covered. I didn't really plan on that, it just kinda happened, really. But anyway, tonight's movie came out in 2006. That movie is "Ultimate Avengers 2". Though technically, some sites I've read up on call it "Ultimate Avengers 2: Rise of the Panther". Which I'll talk about that in a second here.
But yeah, for those of you who may not happen to remember, last year, I reviewed the first "Ultimate Avengers" movie in my previous "Tales of the Longbox" marathon. And I wound up kinda liking it. Mind you, the movie wasn't great, and it certainly wasn't worth holding onto, but I still would say that the film is worth watching, if at least once.
Which then brings me into the sequel, and this one is a little...odd. See, as I mentioned in my review for "Ultimate Avengers: The Movie", that movie came out in 2006. Specifically in February of 2006. This movie also came out in that very same year. Now admittedly, I don't know what month exactly it came out in, but it's very strange to release a sequel months after your first movie. I would normally expect a sequel to be released maybe a year or two afterwards, but not a few months after you release the first movie. That, to me, just seems kinda odd.
But anyway, setting that aside, as I already brought up in regards to the movie's title, this movie marks the debut of Black Panther. In fact, if I remember correctly, the first movie's advertisements were also showing previews of it's sequel, and they were showing Black Panther in action. Now I should mention, before anyone might ask me of this, I have seen the first "Black Panther" movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And while I thought the movie was decent, it probably would've been a lot better if the film wasn't being heavily politicized by retards. I won't go into details about that, but let's just say it was really fucking stupid and leave it at that.
So anyway, we have the sequel here and, much like the first movie, it's also really short. It has the same runtime as the first movie, so I won't be losing a whole lot of sleep if this thing ends up sucking. I'm hoping that it doesn't. I really want this film to be good, but I won't know for sure unless I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Ultimate Avengers 2".
4 minutes later
OK, guys, I'm not really the biggest expert on Black Panther, or at least this iteration of him anyway, but did he ever, like, turn his face into a *literal* panther whenever it was necessary? And also, his costume looks vastly different compared to what his more traditional costume looks like. Maybe this is before they discovered vibranium, but still, this costume doesn't look really impressive to me.
20 minutes later
All right, I have a question. So, this alien has taken the form of Kleiser, who was the Nazi General from the first movie. And Steve Rogers has a boner hatred for Kleiser and wants to kill him. And mind you, we've already learned from Fury that the alien is capable of shape shifting. Wouldn't it make more sense for Steve to focus on the aliens themselves rather than Kleiser, since he's probably already dead and the alien just needed a body to morph into simply because. I get that Steve hates Kleiser and all, but it still makes more sense to focus on the alien that's shifted into him rather than the man himself. Just my opinion, really.
8 minutes later
So one of Iron Man's weapons was disabled by a throwing spear and also damaged by a large wooden log. Admittedly, I don't know the timeline in which these particular animated movies take place, but if it was after this one, then maybe it *was* a good idea of Tony to ditch that suit in "The Invincible Iron Man" if it's able to be damaged by old age weapons like throwing spears. That's pretty fucking sad.
11 minutes later
I'm gonna tell you, guys, I don't think I would be able to stand watching the same footage like Banner has been doing throughout most of this movie. I would probably be driven insane. Or if not that, then probably bored to death. And yet, somehow, Banner is still at it. Not exactly by choice, mind you, but still.
5 minutes later
OK, I was wrong. Apparently, Vibranium *does* exist. Which makes me question what the hell kind of progress the Wakandans have actually made on this since their discovery? But then again, I'm not exactly what you would call a Wakandan myself so what the hell do I know?
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Ultimate Avengers 2", or "Ultimate Avengers 2: The Rise of Panther" if you want to be technical about it. I'm gonna go ahead and shut the movie off now...OK. Well, I think I can summarize my thoughts about the film with this: It's pretty good overall. Mind you, when I say it's pretty good, I am in no way saying that the movie is great. Or in my case, it's worth watching a second time. But I can say that the movie is still pretty enjoyable for the most part.
So, let's go ahead and dive right into this one by first talking about the writing. I've noticed a pattern with almost all of the animated movies that are put out by Marvel. Almost all of them range on being sorta average. They're not completely horrible or anything, aside from "The Invincible Iron Man". But none of them have completely wowed me either. And because of that, I don't really feel like keeping any of them for my DVD collection. Now part of the reason being is because I'm more of a DC fan rather than Marvel. I usually am invested in more of DC's animated films rather than Marvel. Their live action movies are somewhat of a different story, but I'm not gonna get into all that. But yeah, I've given Marvel's animated films a few chances here and there, and none of them have really stood out at me as of yet. And this movie is really no exception.
Now that I've gotten that little tangent out of the way, the writing in this movie is decent for the most part. I mentioned earlier about Black Panther being a part of this and, in a small way, it is something of an origin story for T'Challa becoming Black Panther. I say it's a small way, because the most you get out of it ties into the plot of the movie where Kleiser, who was the Nazi General from the opening of the previous movie, ends up somehow alive and has murdered T'Challa's father, who was the reigning king of Wakanda, to which it falls on T'Challa to take his place. Aside from that, his origin story here is kept to a minimum. Now granted, as I stated earlier, I did watch the 2018 "Black Panther" movie, however, I don't really remember exactly how his origin story played out in that one. I know it's different from this movie, but again, I don't really remember much about it. That said, I'm not sure if there was a moment where in that movie his face transformed into a real panther much like this did. I still found that to be really odd and I'm really curious to know if, say, you don the Black Panther costume, do you automatically gain the powers of Black Panther? I'm guessing so, since T'Challa's able to pull it off with no real explanation as to how it all works. But that is honestly just a minor gripe I had with it, aside from his costume also looking kinda shit, but again, I'm gonna let that slide for now.
Since I'm kinda already talking about it, I may as well get into the characters. And this here is where most of the issues come in with the writing. See, for some reason, a lot of the characters in this movie seem to argue with each other on something. With Steve, he really wants to get revenge on Kleiser, who was also responsible for killing some of his friends during the war. And that's mostly his mindset throughout the entire movie. Even though Fury and Black Widow want him to take time off, he refuses and almost gets his team killed at one point when Kleiser disguised himself as Black Panther by getting an alien on one of their ships. Hank Pym and the Wasp argue with each other the most because Hank is apparently overusing his Giant Man powers and Wasp wants him to control it to where it won't put a strain on his body. Thor, who I liked in the previous movie and is sadly not in this one for very long either, is able to see into the future where all of the Avengers are dead thanks to an alien invasion. And he tries to go warn them, his father, whom was the one that showed him the future, warns his son that he shouldn't get involved and leave the humans to their fate. Which is sort of a dick move because what's to stop the aliens from conquering Asgard once humanity has fallen to the aliens? I should mention that the whole reason for this alien invasion is that they want the vibranium that's hidden underneath Wakanda. Granted, I don't know how strong vibranium would be able to stand up to the Gods of Asgard, but it is something to at least consider.
T'Challa is also arguing with the elders of Wakanda, who have a long standing law where they don't seek help from the outside world. Now what's sorta interesting about this is that T'Challa's father also had issues with the elders because he himself wanted to break tradition from certain laws. So, like father, like son. However, one of the elders is a dick because during the alien invasion on Wakanda, T'Challa is speaking to Nick Fury from a monitor about what's going at the moment with the invasion. And after T'Challa tells Fury why the aliens are attacking Wakanda, the elder destroys communication with a spear and scolds T'Challa for trying to break tradition. Really, dude, *that's* your main concern? Not trying to help stop the aliens, it's just more so your "tradition" that's concerning? Yeah, it's really kinda stupid. What's also sorta stupid is that apparently, the aliens found out about Bruce being contained after the incident of the previous movie and is being given a dose of poison to stop him from becoming the Hulk. One of the aliens just forces a scientist to overdose Banner with poison gas and he ends up dying...well, that's what I thought anyway. Somehow, during the chaos, Banner becomes the Hulk, whom we only see of twice in this movie and is never brought up again, even after everything involving the aliens has calmed down. How Banner was able to do all this, despite the fact that he was shown to be dying, is a simple case of fuck you, that is why.
So yeah, the writing here isn't exactly great, but it's far from awful either. Like I said, it's just sorta teetering on being average. The story itself is fine, though it's obviously nowhere near as strongly written as the first movie was. That said, I will say that the acting here is mostly really good. Just about everyone here reprises their roles from the first movie, which unfortunately includes Marc Worden voicing Tony Stark again. On the off chance you didn't read my reviews for "The Invincible Iron Man" and the first "Ultimate Avengers" movie, his acting is horrible as Tony Stark. The man has no real range as he's mostly acting sarcastic in almost all of his lines. If there's any real positive I can say about his performance here is that he doesn't have very many lines to work with. Which is why I didn't mention him when talking about characters. His voice is very bland and, once more, proves my point that the man cannot act as Tony Stark. And I have no idea who, over at the casting department, thought that Marc Worden would be a good choice to keep around for these movies. He's a horrible voice actor, and I hope that I never run into him again voicing Tony Stark for anything else again.
But, aside from him, everyone else turns in a really good showing for their respective characters. Animation is also pretty good, too. Granted, it's not quite as crisp as the previous movie was, but it's mostly the same kind of animation that was in the previous movie. Color palettes here are also utilized really well, too. There's not much else I can say about the animation aside from it looking pretty good.
Sound-mixing here is mixed fine. And the music here, at least in terms of score, works in some tribal chanting and drums that match the setting for any scene taking place in Wakanda. That stuff is pretty good, though admittedly it's not great. But at least it is something sorta new. The rest of the score is completely forgettable, though. So there's much I can add to it other than that.
So ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Ultimate Avengers 2"? If you liked the first movie enough and you want to check out it's sequel, go right ahead. The movie is still pretty good for the most part. It's not quite as good as the first movie was, but it's still fine for what it is. The movie's also pretty short, too, like I mentioned earlier. So if you have about 73 minutes to spare, then go ahead pick up a copy somewhere, or if it's posted online via YouTube or on any streaming service. It is worth checking out once. But to watch it multiple times over...I don't know. Personally speaking, I don't see myself watching this, or even the first movie ever again anytime soon. They just don't stand out to me as much as they should. I mean, if I wanted to watch anything with Marvel's name on it, I have, what very few mind you, movie's that come from the MCU that are worth holding onto. For example, I think I'm gonna go watch the first "Iron Man" movie again, because I've seen it multiple times and it still stands out to me to this day. So yeah, that's what I'm gonna go do next after I get done typing this review up.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
