Every few years, the big comic book publishers with big brand name heroes decide that sixty years of American pop culture can't be right, so they revamp the story of one of their characters. I guess it worked for the Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. The lesson that comics publishers have learned is that it's awesome to modernize old comic characters. The lesson they should have learned is that Frank Miller is awesome and they should kneel before him.

At some point they revamped Marvel characters, called this new alternate universe the "Ultimates," and decided that their next cartoon project should be the revamped Avengers.

The Ultimate Avengers cartoon, apparently released direct-to-dvd, offers a "trivia track" among its other special features. Instead of an audio commentary, you turn these on like subtitles, and they show up in little narration boxes like you would see in the corner of a comic book. Besides all the interesting facts about old comics, obscure characters from the Captain America serials, the trivia track offers a lot of typos and errors of logic.

It begs for an unauthorized audio commentary to set things straight, but I just couldn't come up with enough blather to fill an hour. So here are my notes instead. Forgive me if it degenerates into straightforward opinion. Couldn't help myself. The numbers in subheadings below represent hour:minutes:seconds. Text in courier new font are fair use quotes of what the trivia track displayed at that moment.

0:00:40

Could this be propaganda back home? I imagine they were constantly hyping the imminent collapse of enemy forces, just like all propagandists claim about their opponents in all wars. Remember when Iraq's photogenic Information Minister proclaimed, "Their infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad" as US forces surrounded the city? Or Cheney saying the insurgency was in its "last throes" as of May 2005?

To take this statement seriously and straightforwardly, you'd have to believe that the military needed to keep Germany's surrender secret from the troops, but that they trusted spreading the secret to civilians throughout the US. It seems a lot more likely that poor communication on the front lines prevented news of surrender making its way to troops. Perhaps they had more imminent problems to deal with?

Sounds like the author of the Trivia Track is gung ho for the military and government to keep as many secrets as they claim necessary.

Storytelling shortfall

Bunch of aliens introduced in the Nazi lab and dispatched quickly. I expected there to be a major payoff later in the movie, a massive assault by the aliens. Three of their ships attack SHIELD headquarters later, but they were fairly easy to dispense with, compared with fighting the Hulk, who almost defeated the rest of the team single-handed. I'm sure they'll surface in sequels, but in the short term, it's a let-down that the aliens who collaborate with Nazis aren't as scary as, say, the demonic aliens who collaborate with Nazis in Hellboy (the movie).

On second thought, heroes fighting heroes is just good business sense in comics. They could have left out aliens and had the whole show about infighting between Hulk and the others. Come to think of it, they almost did. Maybe they should have weeded out the distractions and just had good guys struggling with other good guys.

0:04:04

"Extra-terrestrials are known by different names in different cultures, but Chitauri is the African."

That's funny: Africa has maybe 1800 languages, but they use this one word across the whole continent? Is there one main African culture with a few regional variations?

A better way to say this might be: "Extra-terrestrials are known by different names in different languages, but Chitauri is a Zulu word*."

If Beavis and Butthead watched this, one of them would comment, "Dude, they said Chitauri! Someone help me, my Shitzu was stolen by a Chitauri!"

0:04:32

"The filmmakers tried to stay as faithful to the source material as possible."

Unfortunately, they chose Ultimate Avengers comics as their source material, which throws out fifty or sixty years of what everyone else has been following for source materials. The filmmakers were faithful to a comic book whose premise was to throw out the real, original stories in favor of postmodern retelling.

0:05:56

As opening credits roll, the trivia track morphs into a public relations track, giving extra props to the companies and creators.

The exec producer wanted not just a good animated movie, but "a great movie—by any standards." Naturally they searched long and hard for creators who could be counted on to make a great movie. When you think of a great movie, you think of the writing and directing team responsible for ... X-Men: Evolution cartoons.

0:08:24

"This massive structure in Manhattan's upper Bay is the Triskelion, SHIELD's headquarters."

What structure? We're looking at a sub and a bunch of icebergs here. I was prepared for a few typos in the trivia track, but apparently this bit of trivia is entirely misplaced in the movie. We don't see that structure for another five or ten minutes at least.

0:08:50

The underwater probe robot has lightsabre sound effects as it cuts through the ice. Later the robot will be frozen, shipped back in time, a long time ago to a galaxy far, far away, then thawed out, given some lungs to cough with, and become General Grievous.

0:15:57

General Fury talks to the three unidentified holographic heads who command him. To save costs on the hologram images, animators recycled footage of other flickering green heads you may remember: Jor-El, Darth Sidious and the Wizard of Oz.

0:17:00

One of the most interesting aspects of the Ultimate Avengers is not that they're organized by the government, in contradiction of the classic series. It's that these superhumans would follow orders from mere humans belonging to some secret government agency far removed from any democratic input. National and global security is too important to wait for the democratic process. We need a few powerful leaders appointed by our elected officials. Maybe those ghostly heads issuing commands to Fury should have been Reagan, Nixon and Rumsfeld?

0:21:17

I know comics fan-boys are legendary for being pedantic*, but this is some kind of high water mark for taking s**t too seriously. The trivia track points out that Iron Man's butler is named Edwin Jarvis, a character created by Stan Lee and Don Heck, his first appearance in Tales of Suspense #59.

0:22:22

"recieveing" -- I haven't seen spelling this bad even in comic books.

0:26:00

I can see how they're trying to avoid the cliché in some old comics of hero teams working together with no major squabbles. Ultimates try to make all characters a little flawed, so they not only argue, they have to fight each other just to have a conversation about whether they'll join the team.

Everybody knows you'll sell more comics with an occasional fight between the Hulk and Cap, compared with any villain they might normally be pitted against. What we end up with is a bunch of disagreeable, macho superheroes trying to beat and blast each other into agreement. They exemplify neo-con diplomacy. Swat Iron Man down to the street and surround him with super-agents pointing blasters at each other, stand around in the world's mightest Mexican stand-off, thinking it will persuade Iron Man to join your team.

"Thor is an outspoken opponent of America's military aggression."

Damn it, then why are we wasting time on this group movie? I want to see the Ultimate Thor movie! Where did they get the impression that the Norse storm god who has battled giants and monsters for countless epochs would become a pacifist? [Judge Deidzoeb ponders this a moment.] I'll allow it.

In the original comics, a normal human finds a magical staff which transforms him into Thor. In the Ultimates postmodern retelling, "Thor was a psychiatric nurse until he suffered a breakdown and spent 18 months institutionalized." Nice way to distract from answering the question, if Thor is an immortal god, does that mean Jehovah was lying about being the one true god?

More importantly, since when does Mjolnir the Uru Hammer have an ax blade on the back of it???

0:38:38

"In the Ultimates comic book, the original idea was for Captain America to appear during the first Gulf War, not World War II. Writer Mark Millar wisely reconsidered and kept Cap's origin as it was. This provided richer story opportunities."

How much richer and wiser would it have been to follow all the original stories and not attempt a postmodern retelling at all?