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A Couple of Marvel Trailers
First up, the debut trailer of Iron Man and Hulk: Heroes United confirms my suspicion that it will be crappy.
Stiff, stilted computer animation looks like it was done by a freshman design student. The dialogue appears to be nothing but cheap one-liners and weak banter. The villains are just a bunch of robots and/or additional Iron Man suits. This is a flimsy, boring work of drivel from a company that produces the best superhero stories and movies in the world. I expect better.
Next up is the latest trailer for Marvel Heroes, the upcoming Marvel-themed Massive Multiplayer Online game. I don’t know why I haven’t written about this game yet, probably due to lack of interest. And I don’t know why I’m not very interested in this game. It looks to be the next evolution of the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games, and those were great.
Marvel Heroes wisely forgoes DC Comics’ attempt at an MMO, and instead lets you play as the actual superheroes. DC went with a City of Heroes-style game, where you design your own superhero and then fight alongside the Justice League. Marvel is going with a Diablo-like game, where you get to play as their superheroes in a dungeon-crawler-like environment. They’ve done a good job with that kind of series in the past, like I said, but something about this game has yet to really grab me. I think it’s the generic-ness that I’ve seen from the previews so far.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 was based heavily on Civil War, the comic series that pit hero against hero. It was full of exciting cameos (Multiple Man! Prodigy!), and got really in depth for a video game. Marvel Heroes, so far, seems to be striving to be as generic as possible, probably to bring in as many players as possible. Plus all of the characters they’ve revealed so far are not among my list of favorites. So there’s nothing to get excited about…yet. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.
What do you guys think of movie and this game? Are you looking forward to both? Hating them both? Share your thoughts in the comments!
At Least DC Animation Has Some Artistic Integrity
Marvel Comics is getting back into the animated DVD movie game. But whereas DC Comics are actually producing adaptations of classic and popular comic book stories, Marvel is just going to slap a few superhero names together and expect the lingering popularity of The Avengers to help coast them into a few bucks.
Next year, we will be treated to Iron Man & Hulk: Heroes United. Because why bother coming up with a clever name when the ‘&’ symbol exists.
Look kids, it’s your two favorite Avengers!
Based on that article in Entertainment Weekly, there doesn’t appear to be any creativity whatsoever in this project. It’s as if Marvel saw that DC’s DVD movies were still selling, so they quickly pooped out the most basic story imaginable, then decided to link to into a vague resemblance of the hugely popular The Avengers movie. DC Comics made an adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns, arguably the greatest Batman story ever told. Marvel is going to just randomly stick Iron Man and the Hulk in a room together.
Remember when Hulk stole the show in The Avengers? We sure do!
And the most hilarious thing is that everyone is quick to point out that this isn’t an official, in-canon sequel to The Avengers. It’s just made to look that way, and the fans are more than welcome to think of it that way, even though it’s not.
To quote Marvel TV head honcho Jeph Loeb:
“We welcome people to interpret any way they like,” says Loeb. “In tone and character, we want to follow our best leader.”
Can you say ‘cash grab’?
The story is going to be about Iron Man and Hulk teaming up to fight the Zzzax, which is a classic Hulk villain that is basically just a living electricity monster. Loeb says that Hulk and Iron Man are going to, at first, think that each other is to blame. So it sounds even more like we’re going to get he most basic superhero story ever: heroes meet, they fight, then they team up to fight the villain.
Wow, really creative there Marvel.
He’s not Robert Downey Jr. this time, but still, Iron Man, right?
DC Comics destroyed Marvel in the animated DVD movie business years ago. Whereas DC was putting out real adaptations of their classic comics, as well as quality solo hero movies, Marvel was flailing in the wind with loose adaptations and original stories that tried desperately to appeal to kids. Like Avengers: Next. But at least that had some modicum of creativity. This new project is as basic and pathetic as you could get.
But that’s just my opinion. Don’t mind my angry rate. I just hate it when one of my favorite entertainment companies in the world revels in creative bankruptcy.
The DVD will come out April 23.
Henchman-4-Hire 