Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow

When stumbling around for a movie to watch last night after being frustrated with myself for still watching Arrow (Seriously, does ANYONE die in that universe?), I came across Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow, and decided to give it a shot. I loved Teen Titans and Young Justice, so how bad could an Avengers kids movie be? Turns out, it was pretty…. meh.

First off, i’ll say most of what irked me about this movie is my hangups and not plot points, so don’t mind me being cranky! (Turns out, i’m a comic story fan who has opinions, Crazy right?!)

The movie starts out with a group of kids clamoring to be told a story – so we get a good reason for the explanation of the origins of the kids (James is the son of Black Widow and Captain America, Torrun is the daughter of Thor and Sif, Henry is the son of Giant Man and Wasp, Azari is the son of Black Panther and Storm, and lastly Francis is the son of Hawkeye and Mockingbird), and within the first 15 minutes of the show, we find out that they are all raised together as a family (minus fransis) by Tony Stark away from any humanity because they are trying to hide from Ultron. I LOVE that the best of intentions is what brings down humanity in a story line (though for some reason in this show Tony Stark takes credit for creating him).

So the kids are the unlikely heroes who have the plan that brings them to the Hulk, they work through their differences, and they save the day and end up tossing the broken body of Ultron into space, high fives all around, and close credits with them taking off to remove all the robots from everwhere since Ultron took over. The end.

I had so many “WHAT?” moments, that I stopped the movie a few times to either look something up or to go in the other room and yell at Charles for what confusing moment this movie made. Seriously, this movie takes a good crack at the Nature Vs. Nurture argument, because for some reason all the kids have the personalities of their parents, and a good liking of their powers and abilities as well! (Torunn being the exception I can understand as she is the daughter of gods) But with all of them being raised by Tony, why aren’t they all snarky little alcoholics? Why not cross train them all so that Henry isn’t the only one who can shrink or grow or is good at science? Why is Torunn slipping in and out Asgardian speech patterns?

What this movie highlighted for me is the story telling differences between the Marvel and DC lines. When it comes to feature length triple A title live action sequences that we all run to see each summer – Marvel has got this on lock down. DC seems to fumble at how to tell a complex story line without loosing the audience because they feel like they need to address EVERY story line – and not just stick to one thread. And yet when it comes to animated series? DC can compress down to 30 / 60 minute segments and tell AMAZING stories! It’s an interesting reversal.

So if you have netflix and 75 minutes to spare, you can watch this movie… or do yourself a favor and jump to DC and watch Justice League instead.