“Avengers Assemble” Review: They Wish They Were Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
The first two episodes of Avengers Assemble premiered this week, the new Disney cartoon that was given life through the sacrifice of the much beloved Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and I was eager to see how it stacked up to its predecessor.
Warning: Contents may not be as badass as they appear in promo art.
For anyone that doesn’t know, EMH was cancelled to make way for Avengers Assemble because Disney wanted the show to reflect almost exactly with the movie, which meant a costume change for Hawkeye, adding Falcon and cutting awesome characters like Black Panther, Vision, etc.
When we first meet the team in Assemble they are broken up but Tony is being a total creeper who constantly monitors how they’re all doing. The action starts off almost immediately, which shouldn’t be a bad thing but I felt a little character and setting introduction wouldn’t have hurt. I was excited by a legitimately shocking and touching moment regarding Cap and Iron Man in the first two minutes but sadly that feeling never replicated itself again over the course of the next hour. The overall plot was very basic and straight forward with about 80% of the story being fight scenes, which I normally wouldn’t complain about except the action sequences were just okay, which is a word I never want to have to use to describe a fight scene in the Marvel universe. There was very little that made me gasp and say “awesome” though there were opportunities for it: for example, if you need to get an exploding reactor off the planet quickly you don’t science up a way for Thor to make a wind tunnel into space with Falcon, you say, “Hey Hulk, could you throw that in the sun for me?” – because that’s awesome, but that didn’t happen.
HULK NOT NEED SHITTY WIND TUNNEL
One of EMH’s strengths was its intricate storytelling combined with fantastic energy, pacing and great character introductions, and while Assemble doesn’t have that yet I’m fair enough not to fault them for it. I remember thinking that EMH was a little slow in its storytelling at first by giving each main character their own intro episode, so just because I grew to desperately love that show, I won’t say definitively that their way was better as I do enjoy seeing the whole team together right off the bat.
In terms of design I like that Thor and Hulk look a little grittier and more defined, and thank god the stupid bangs Tony had in EMH are gone, but I will admit to missing the traditional Hawkeye costume with the forehead “H”.
It’s sad when your hairstyle is worse than Hawkeye’s costume.
The animation itself is fine, but feels oddly choppy at times and I really hope that video game-esque character intro was a one time only thing.
My biggest criticism I guess is that Assemble doesn’t feel like it has any heart. I was worried this version of Avengers was going to be directed at a younger audience and while the plots are less complicated, everything also feels less fun, which surprised me. Things that should work were just falling flat, like the Hawkeye and Hulk banter wasn’t all that different from what we get in EMH, but the jokes and laughs just didn’t hit for some reason, maybe because every time Hulk would push Hawkeye around all I could think of was how that would break every molecule in his body.
Also, Hulk’s kind of a dick.
Even some of Falcon’s dialogue that made me chuckle when I saw it in the trailer wasn’t funny when it came up in context on the show and I don’t even know how that happens! Basically there are two things I want from my superhero cartoons, and that is to gasp and to laugh, and sadly neither of those things happened here.
I really want to like Avengers Assemble, and it actually doesn’t have any huge, insurmountable flaws; it very well could become great with more intricate plots and sharper character banter. If I had never seen Earth’s Mightiest Heroes I would probably even be thinking “hey, this is pretty good”, but it’s going to be hard to love anything that murdered something I cared for, and I take this time now to grieve for the animated versions of Wasp, Ant-Man, Black Panther, Vision and Ms. Marvel who are no longer with us.
To those retconned out of continuity, we salute you.
If you want to judge for yourself you can catch both seasons of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes on Netflix and you can check out the first two episodes of Avengers Assemble on iTunes.
