Review – Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
The Avengers series has time and time again proven its popularity with the comic book masses and over the years we’ve seen one of the greatest superhero teams evolve, grow, fall apart and be reborn. They have stood against some of the world’s greatest threats, Hydra, Loki, Red Skull and Ultron to name but a few – the first comic was released in 1963 and forty seven years later the original group of heroes – Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Ant Man, Wasp and Iron Man are back and they are animated.
The Avengers is written by Christopher Yost, co-writer of the New X-Men series and X-force as well as the former writer for animated series X-men Evolution. The series follows something akin to the original comics with various arcs inspired by spin offs as well as the Marvel universe. After an unknown force launches a campaign against to SHIELD to release some of the deadliest criminals incarcerated across the world, Iron Man and his fellow heroes find they are at the mercy of the maniacal Graviton.
Waking from a medically induced coma, Graviton, once a scientist working for SHIELD was exposed to lethal levels of graviton particles and what should have killed him turned Franklin Hall into a power hungry evil villain and on escaping his captivity begins to destroy the city of New York. Wasp, Thor, Iron Man, Ant Man and the Hulk band together to take down the overpowered criminal. From that point onwards the Avengers group is formed and a few weeks later while tracking down the Hulk, the group free Captain America from his stasis and the team is complete. However while they are all busy recapturing escaped convicts they are unaware that in the shadows some of their greatest foes are plotting their demise and the eventual conquering of the Earth.
Autumn last year the series was tested with a debut of 20 mini-episodes which proved to be popular. However when the main series kicked off those 20 episodes were chopped up to make half-baked character introduction episodes and they really don’t work very well together – admittedly we were actually kind of confused after watching Episode 1 + 2 where the villains escape to suddenly going back and visiting the origins of each characters timeline and if it confused us then you can be sure that the younger audience weren’t even aware of it.
The animation style is very clean and colourful and perfect for maintaining the attention of the target audience of ten year olds but for any fans of the series. It is however ultimately too simple for
us, shiny colours are nice and everything but it is quick to wear off.
The one redeeming piece in the series is the voice talents and a special mention should also be given to the opening theme song ‘Fight as One’ by Bad City – a killer piece of music that sets your hopes up for a kick ass show only to be let down by childish adventures. (Well at least the song is good!)
This is probably a show you can avoid. We are all for bringing our favourite heroes to the big and little screen and when they are animated we might even get a little bit more excited – we’re huge fans of everything from Teen Titans to X-Men: Evolution etc. and while all of these were aimed at much younger audiences than us (not that we are ancient or anything) they still managed to appeal to a more mature audience and fans of the comics that inspired the animated adventures. Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes unfortunately just isn’t able to reach that level and while we are always happy to see heroes and villains duke it out with amazing powers this isn’t a series that we would return to watch again.
Lets pray for a movie that is nothing like this!
Good Points
Voice Acting / Opening Song
Always happy to see super hero fights!
Bad Points
Simple and bland animation
Childish storyline
Rating: 4/10
