Back when I went to SDCC I had the pleasure to see a trailer
of an early version of Avengers Assemble and watching it I was a bit,
underwhelmed. Of course it was just a animation and voice test, to give the
audience there an idea and feel of the show, so it was a little rough, and that
was just the stand in voice cast. Now here we are almost a year or so later and
the show has debuted and it is still a tad rough but for the most part
watchable.
To say Marvel wants to capitalize on the Avengers movie
success is the no brainier statement of the day. And Assemble does little to
nothing to hide from that fact, for the most part the two casts are completely
identical save for the addition of Falcon being added to the team, who Tony
first had suggested to use War Machine suit before Sam ignored it and get the
suit he wanted. That wasn't the only real difference to the whole first two
episodes.
The story takes place sometime after the Avengers disbanded
for some reason that isn't fully explained just yet. But, Tony is keeping tabs
on everyone in the Big Brother fashion when he sees that Red Skull suddenly
killed Captain America. This is the events that leads Tony into bringing the
group back together and go out and Avenge Cap by finding Red Skull and MODOK
and bringing them in. And here is where the show begins to struggle a bit as
that while the group does want to help after hearing the news, it was a lot of
bickering back and forth between the characters on the way to the arctic to find
villains. Once there they end up fighting some unnamed soldiers and more
bickering and in fighting. That is main theme going out through the first two
episodes here where if this was just a stand alone would fall under the more
annoying side, but as the second episode hits we see that getting pushed much further
with some nanobot help. The big free
though is this will be a constant thing as the series progresses and will start
to feel old and forced the more it is used.
The story also has some problems like motivation of Red
Skull who is dying, though never explained why. So he switches brains with the
not so dead Captain America, but when that fails he just steals Tony’s armor.
In hindsight that plan seemed to be the much easier one, heck had he gone that
route there would be a good chance the Avengers wouldn't have reformed. But, in the end they push for the humiliate route
which ends up giving the heroes reason to stay together. But, they aren't the
only ones, the hook at the end of the second episode is Skull asking other
villains to combine their forces as well. That could be interesting in its own
right to keep watching the show.
What hurts the show the most I feel is the voice casting and
animation. While we get some returning voices from EMH we are also getting some
new ones and they don’t sound right. Tony sounds extremely young and Red Skull
is a few accents shy of a bad stereotype.
And the animation can go from wonderful fluid and detailed, but then you
get these static shots were a frame of animation is paused and then slide
across the screen, it is obvious and jarring to see and it is used several
times.
In the end even with all of these negatives, there wasn't
one time that I would call the show bad in anyway. But, I said the same thing
about Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and half way through the first season it hit its
stride and became an excellent show. So here is hoping the same thing will
happen to this one and in a few months’ time we will be all in love with this
new show. Hopefully it being connected to Ultimate Spider-Man scare too many
people away.
OVERALL: 6.0 out of 10
Bryan "BAC" Clendening writes for Broken Infinite and you can follow him on Twitter @BAClend
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