First of all, I want to discuss the promises put forth by this movie when it was announced, and why I feel that it lived up to practically none of them. Firstly, this movie was, supposedly, designed to exist within the Cinematic Universe, to be an unobtrusive story involving movie Iron Man and movie Hulk, after the events of the Avengers, which would serve to bridge the gap between The Avengers and Iron Man 3. While the character designs were similar enough to the live action counterparts for this to be believable, the story simply didn't lend credence to this statement. Hulk speaks in this movie far more often than he has been shown to in the Cinematic Universe, Iron Man's suite designations are all wrong, Iron Man apparently owns the S.H.I.E.L.D. helecarrier, and all of the equipment aboard, and aparently he and Hulk have battles Hydra before. Yep, you read that right, Hydra, like from Captain America: The First Avenger. Aparently Hydra has been active since WWII, the heroes have fought the modern Hydra before, and they just forgot to mention it in The Avengers when Hydra-style weapons show up in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hands. That's stupid. There was also far too much slapstick in this movie. There was a bit in The Avengers as well, but it was well placed and well timed. Here it just felt awkward, made worse by the mediocre animation style, but we'll get to that later. This movie simply could not take place in the Cinematic Universe, there are just too many differences. It is little more than the most obvious and shameful example of innapropriate brand association, trying to pass this movie off as a sequel to The Avengers just so that it could ride the wave of the much better movie's success.
As I said a little earlier, the animation style didn't help anything. This movie promised a new style of CGI animation which would consist of hand-drawn-style textures applied to CG models. While I applaud the Studio for trying something new, and while I feel that this style should be further explored and refined, it clearly isn't ready for use in any feature length release yet. Using this style the Studio clearly hoped to duplicate the appearance of characters from the movies via CG recreations, but the result is just awkward and cartoony. Previous Marvel Animation Studio styles were much better, and I think the style used in Planet Hulk would have suited this movie better. Textures were either too flat or too detailed, and the moviements of the CG models were too clunky next to the delicate movements of the hand-drawn expressions born by the characters. Some objects were very detailed, such as Hulk and Iron Man, while others were horrifically under-detailed, such as the Helecarrier and the villain Zzzax, who managed to look simultaniously flat and detailed. It's very hard to explain. To really get a feel for the strange style used in this movie, check out the free trailers for the movie on Youtube. I think you'll see what I mean pretty quickly.
There is one promise that this movie made, though, that I feel the movie delivered on quite well, and that is the Hulkbuster Iron Man suite. I love this suite, and while the version in this movie was just a CG'ed comic book Hulkbuster rather than a movie-verse Hulkbuster like I'd hoped, it was sufficiantly badass, and used to great effect it some really clever ways during the climax of the movie, which was the only part of the movie that I honestly felt was any good at all, but we'll talk about that more in a moment, because it's time to move on the category two.
2) The Story:
I mentioned earlier that Marvel Animation Studio often adapts comic book stories rather successfully into animated movies. The way they do this is by taking the bulk of those often-drawn-out serial stories and using the details within to string together a more compact and concise narrative. They are successful in the endeavor partially because each of their movies up to this point has been its own, not relying on anything outside of or beyond itself to tell the story. All of the details are there already, layed out in just as much detail as the narrative requires for the audience to understand what is happening. However, Ironman and Hulk doesn't follow this formula. It clearly draws from the Zzzax origin comics, but it muddles the details from that story with the details pointlessly lumped into the story to create the flimsy and superficial tie back to The Avengers that I really don't think that a really good Zzzax story would have needed to sell. Zzzax is a relativelty well-known villain amongst Marvel fans, who are usually the main demographic for these straight-to-DVD releases. Someone at Marvel clearly tried to reach outside of this demographic by trying to wrap this movie in a nice, neat package made from the success of The Avengers, and it got in the way of this movie being all that it could be.
There is also the issue that this story isn't the kind that we are likely to ever see in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is the story of two random Hydra scientists capturing Hulk and Abomination (who is obviously not the movie Abomination btw) so that they can use the gamma energy emitted by the two big green beasties to power up a generater based on the Stark Reactor. The process to siphon the energy from Hulk and Abomination fails, and somehow Zzzax, a being made of living electicity is born. He immediately causes havoc, gaining control of various machines, including some S.H.I.E.L.D. mandroids, the Helecarrier, and one of Tony's armors. The only way to kill him is to ground him so that he loses his charge and disappears. This is silly comic book science and jargon at its best/worst, and in a comic book, or a movie that follows the formula of one, this kind of science is okay, because the susspension of disbelief is much much greater, but in a movie which is, for all intents and purposes, a spinoff of the much more down-to-earth Cinematic Universe, this is just too much. Viewers coming over from The Avengers who don't know anything about the comic book idea of logic will watch this movie and be left with little impression beyond wondering what the heck they just saw. This movie should have either been a direct adaptation of Zzzax's origin in typical comic/animated movie style, or a serious Cinematic Universe update to the story, and trying to make it into something that was somehow both was nothing more or less than a grievous mistake.
And that's about all that I felt was wrong with the movie, covering the style, the intension, and the story. You might be asking what else there is to talk about. Well the last thing I want to touch on is the other thing, besides the Hulkbuster, which I liked, and that's the performances, or rather three of them. Hulk, voiced by Fred Tatasciore, Iron Man, voiced by Adrian Pasdar, and Jarvis, voiced by David Kaye, were all very well performed. These three talented voice actors play the same characters very well in Avengers: Assemble, and that experience has payed off here. Their good performances really helped me get through this film to the climax, which, as I said before, wasn't brilliant but still managed to be pretty good and exciting. Overall, though, these few good things weren't enough to redeem the film for me, and don't do anything to change how I rate the film. I give Ironman and Hulk: Heroes United a 3 out of 10, not the worst thing ever, but I won't be having any more to do with it again.
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