

I was surprised by the depth of this movie, which immediately immersed me its darker, more realistic tone. Doctor Strange was an interesting premise for me from the get-go because I knew absolutely nothing about Doctor Strange, and I was looking forward to have this movie inform me about who he was and what drove him to become who he is today. Anyway I was supposed to be talking about another movie.

Maybe it was because I can unconsciously relate to an unattractive, bespectacled nerd who just likes to throw down and go Hulk Smash on all the bullies that took his lunch money in high school, or maybe because he was the only character whose flaws were more than informed and whose portrayal left me wanting to see more. The only character I ended up empathizing with was Bruce Banner who, depressed and troubled by the Hulk, is desperate to find a way to control it. This movie is very much made for religious comic book readers and seems to assume awareness of the characters' back stories which in that case you are because you accompanied them through every page of their comic book series, and as such this movie doesn't really need to characterize them and therefore does so only vaguely. These are movies for comic book fans who would like to see their favorite superhero jump out of the comic book panels and kick ass in animation, but some characterization would be nice. I'm sure every one of these superheroes had their own story, with their own issues to work out, but there simply isn't time for all that if at least half of the movie has to consist of rampant action sequences. Not that I expect much depth from a dozen vaguely related comic book franchises blended together into the big pile of paperbacks and money that is Ultimate avengers. The Ultimate Avengers movies of 2006 had a plot thinner than Christian Bale during the shooting of The Machinist, and was for all intents and purposes like a dead Christmas tree covered in glittering action sequences but barren inside. That said, I was put off by the previous 'installments', if you can call these Marvel animations a series.


Animation is one of those mediums I treasure because it grants escape from the trappings of reality, gravity and the laws of physics, enabling it to show you sights that couldn't possibly exist in real life, like the Hulk latching onto the throat of a 60 foot man and choking the life out of him. I've recently begun watching Marvel Comics' line of straight-to-DVD animation films partly because I was bored and had only just discovered them and needed some variation in my uneventful life and partly because I really love animation films.
