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Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Lions Gate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Pat Pilon (23rd October 2008). |
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The Film
 So the story goes (in this movie, at least), Ultron defeated and killed the Avengers, but not before they hid their children and sent them away. The movie starts 12 years later, after all the kids are, well, 12 years old or so, and Ultron returns to finish what he started. It's up the to kids to stop Ultron and his band of robots. Now, the robots are not Ultron's, but Tony Stark's, the man taking care of the kids. Why he has a bunch of robots in the form of the deceased Avengers members is never explained, and quite illogical when you think about it, but I suppose it's necessary for the action, so I won't wonder too much about it. Internal logic seems to be a problem, all around, actually. The whole gang eventually gets to Ultron's city, Ultra-City, which is completely built out of metal. The kids eventually get trapped in a confined space by two interlocking blocks in the city. Upon entering one of the blocks, the space inside would make the Death Star look miniscule, whereas the outside of this looks like the size of a 10-story building. On the plus side, the movie moves quickly, and there's plenty of action to keep the youngens happy. There's also some attempt at comedy, which lightens the mood. The whole tone of the movie is very light and the characters are different from each other. They're not explored all that much, but they're fun and hip. As far as technical aspects go, the animation is pretty crude. I honestly believe the early-90s 'X-Men' cartoon to have better animation. The action is well done, but there's no getting away from the pretty low frame rate. It has the same look as the other Marvel movies in the Lionsgate releases, for better or worse. Truth be told, if I were, oh, roughly 12 years old, I'd probably enjoy this movie a lot more. All my remarks are aimed at how I think now, and not how I would react if I were younger. It's a comic book movie and not everything has to make sense. The movie is pretty slick, and pretty quick. If you have kids and want to entertain them for an hour or so, you could do worse than this.
Video
1.85:1 widescreen, using the MPEG4/AVC codec. This being an animated film, it's kind of hard to mess it up. The only real problems come from the shoddy animation work, and not from the transfer. The picture is somewhat soft in some shots, but for the most part, the lines are sharp and colours true. The scenes are all bright and I didn't really see any problems with the transfer. Honestly, though, I also don't really know how much better this could be compared with the standard DVD, as much of the colouring and scenery are pretty flat.
Audio
The main audio is a full English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track. The only other track is a Spanish dub in Dolby Digital EX 5.1. The mix uses up a nice amount of room and the music and action take up most of the speakers. The dialogue is clear and clean and centered. The track doesn't show all that much range, which is a bit of a shame given it's lossless. The action is loud and clear, though, and, as I said, uses up the full 7.1 speakers. The mixing could be a bit better, but overall the feel of the movie is nice. English (HoH) and Spanish subtitles are provided.
Extras
There are a few extras here. The first is Legacy: The Making of 'Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow' featurette (10:49). It has a few of the main crew members talking about making the movie. The information given is pretty basic, but you do learn about the characters, how they came about and how they aged a few of the original Avengers. Next is Kid Power: Next-Gen Marvel (9:41), which is much better. The movie's writers also write for Marvel. They and a few other Marvel writers talk about how they took the Marvel characters and made them younger, and why they did this. They also talk about Franklin Richards (Reed Richards and Sue Richards' son). They also talk about how the younger superheroes relate to today's comic book readers. This is the best thing about this disc, and is fun for people who don't read comics, as much as for people who do. A couple of promo pieces are next. First Look: 'Hulk vs. Wolverine' (3:52) and First Look: 'Hulk vs. Thor' (3:15) are next. As you may guess, these are short teasers about the movies. The creators talk about the stories a bit, the characters a bit and why they made the movies. You see some nice clips from the movies, as well. There are a bunch of Trailers to finish things off. 'Ultimate Avengers 2' (1:40) 'The Invincible Iron Man' (1:25), 'The Forbidden Kingdom' (2:10), 'Doctor Strange' (1:48), 'Hulk vs. Wolverine' (1:27) and 'Hulk vs. Thor' (0:59) are here. These are also start-up trailers.
Overall
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