BulletPoints - Avengers Assemble (The Reboot TV Series)

Today on BulletPoints, we’ll be reviewing Avengers Assembled, the lesser successor to the much better show, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

This is the cast of EMH

It seems unfair to be reviewing Avengers Assembled (AA) after having seen and enjoyed Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (EMH) simply because EMH gets the whole “we were here first and were damn good too.” It’s kind of like how nothing will ever be better for me in Spiderman outside of the original 90’s animated series and everything else will just be disappointing by comparison because not only was it one of the first versions of Spiderman I was introduced to, it was also good on its own rights. And EMH was really the first good Avengers-based cartoon we’ve ever had on television. The fact it was canceled to be replaced with AA will always be one of those disappointing facts of life I’ll just have to live with. 

This is the cast of AA

Going forward, I’m aiming to keep the bias out of this as much as possible, but I can’t promise anything. I’ll admit both shows have problems, but where EMH also had a lot more going for it than AA has at this point, and I feel Marvel, Disney, and Jeph Loeb can all learn something in regards to both series from this review.

 For those who aren’t aware, AA is a show designed to be part-reboot and part-sequel to the original EMH. At the beginning of the series, the Avengers have broken up but must reunite to solve problems like saving Captain America’s life or dealing with Red Skull’s newest plot, hinting that adventures happened before this series, trying to point out that this is supposed to succeed EMH. But it screams reboot in a lot of ways. 

The different art-style and voice actors alone scream “reboot” and not an improved reboot at that. The character designs seem less colorful than their original counter-parts, like they’re kind of muted. The animation style seems inconsistent and choppy at times, and just bizarre at other times. Not to mention the choice of camera angles for certain shots don’t make sense with the animations being shown, leaving certain actions to look confusing or disorienting at first. The voice acting, on the whole, is just lower quality. Some of them don’t seem too different, like Captain America. But Iron Man, Thor, Dr. Doom, and a few others have literally gone from having almost perfect voice actors in EMH to shameful replacements who don’t fit the character in the slightest. How so?

Here’s a clip of Dr. Doom from EMH, followed by a clip from AA. Thor's AA is also in the following clip.

Now we'll follow up with a Thor clip from EMH

 Maybe it’s just personal preference, but they are just a couple of the examples of voice actors that, to me, changed for the worst. The booming voice of the thunderer has been lessened and the dark and sinister voice of Dr. Doom has been replaced by what sounds like just a computer nerd wearing a metal mask (which is what he is, but that doesn’t sound intimidating in the slightest).

But barring those aesthetic decisions, what are the thoughts on the plot and characters themselves? 

EMH, and this isn't everyone

Diversity among the cast has been lessened. Where EMH had two African-American characters and about 3-4 female characters, we’ve dropped that to about one a piece. We no longer have Black Panther, Wasp, Ant-Man, or Ms. Marvel (all of which were good or interesting characters throughout EMH). This isn’t a show killer, but the buddy-cop dynamic of Black Panther and Hawkeye is gone. Wasp’s cute riffs with Hulk are gone. Ms. Marvel’s whole new-girl but with powers rivaling Hulk or Thor routine is gone. There’s a lot of fun stuff gone that we aren’t likely to get back in order to keep this show more like the movie, which is discouraging. 

On the villains front… sigh… I’ve always said that a great story (and thus a great TV show, game, movie, or book) isn’t determined by the hero, but by the villain. Without a good villain, the obstacles, challenges, and end goal of a story are not as good. And AA is very much lacking in the villain department. The main antagonists are between MODOK and Red Skull who, on their own, are perfectly fine. But they keep coming back and doing the same basic thing. No new plots, nothing. Just attack with MODOK’s robot and Red Skull’s stolen Iron Man armor. Team Rocket had more variety than that, and they’re idiots. 

They eventually team up with three other villains. Dracula… Yes, Dracula. My problem with that is that I just don’t get why Dracula? I mean, that would make sense if we also included… say Blade or Morbius as heroes, but Dracula in lieu of at least dozens of other, better villains seems like a strange choice. Not necessarily their worst choice (getting to that) but odd. And if you’re looking for an immortal, why not an Asgardian so you have a rival to Thor in the show? 

There’s also a Superman rip-off named Hyperion. I wasn’t familiar with this guy at all, but could clearly see he was a Superman rip-off. So I looked him up, in the comics, he was on a team, Sinister Squadron, which was designed TO BE a rip-off of the Justice League with him as the “acting Superman” so that Avengers could fight DC-like characters. For the most part, it works, but the whole reveal that Hyperion was evil and his entire story arc takes place in a single, rushed episode. There’s no real build up or suspense, thus no tension beyond “can they beat Hyperion?” To which the answer is, yes because they’re the protagonists and if this show has any hope to live, they have to get past this miserable Super-Sod. 

Lastly there’s this other guy called Attuma… I had no idea who he was but the fact he was a fish-monster-man and that he called himself an Atlantean made me suspect he is originally a villain to Sub-Mariner (aka Namor). So this leaves me with two follow up questions. If he’s here, why isn’t Namor? Second, why the fuck did they bother using Attuma as one of the antagonists at all? He, along with the other three members of the Skull/MODOK team “The Cabal” are some of the most boring, two-dimensional characters I’ve seen in any show in recent memory. They have one or two personality traits they exaggerate to a fault and they don’t expand beyond that. And that’d be fine if they were a “villain of the week” kind of thing, but if you’re going to keep using them, give us better characters than this. Where’s Enchantress? Abomination? Crimson Dynamo? Zemo? 

Furthermore, Red Skull is a terrible leader that is unable to keep his allies in line for even an episode without his shit falling apart. Zemo not only formed a team, but reigned them in and kept them in line for almost two seasons before Enchantress decided she’d get revenge on Zemo for betraying her. Not to mentional ALL their character designs were far more interesting than anyone in the Cabal.

 And earlier I said that Hyperion’s story was rushed, and I should elaborate more. Part of the reason for this non-reboot reboot was  to change how they told stories (or at least that’s how I read it). According to Jeph Loeb and other sources, they were under the impression some of the viewership was getting confused with plot concepts or story elements going from episode to episode where you had to keep track of that. A good example would be how Loki was imprisoned at the beginning of EMH, but managed to break out and leave subtle clues to the audience he’d be the big villain at the end of season one. Or how Zemo’s building of a Team was a multiple-episode long event. Or how characters would constantly reference events from earlier episodes. But you know what? THAT’S WHAT THE MOVIES DO! THAT’S WHAT THE COMICS DO! WHY SHOULD THE TV SHOW TRY TO CUT OUT SOMETHING THAT ISN’T THE PROBLEM? 

Having explained characters, plot should be simple enough. Red Skull and MODOK form an evil team throughout the course of a season. Red Skull betrays the team nearing the end having received the Cosmic Cube. He fails in the end, but escapes with the cube to give to Thanos at the end of season one because of course we have to add more elements from the movies into the show for people to be interested. And that doesn’t even make any sense. How does Skull know about Thanos (he even knows the guy’s name!)? Why does he kneel before Thanos when he has always considered himself superior to others? And why doesn’t Thanos just kill him on the spot for fun? 

The highlight of this series is basically any episode with Dr. Doom, a much better and more consistent villain, even if his voice has gone to the shitter in this series. He tries to control an Asgardian monster with a magic weapon he steals, becomes the King of Hell and the master of the Destroyer, and even asks the Avengers to be his body guard in order to steal data from Avenger’s Tower. Unlike Red Skull, Dr. Doom’s antics and actions have a lot more variety and are just more fun to watch because it’s one interesting villain instead of five non-interesting villains. 

But, sadly, Dr. Doom is not the main villain. And even if he was, those antics would get really old, really fast. He was in there just enough for my taste, but the show is still overall lacking in terms of plot, villains, art-direction, and characters overall in comparison to EMH. And this isn’t even bias, this is just simple comparison. EMH offered more variety, consistency, color, fun, and was also brave enough to trust the audience was smart enough to follow along a season of plot points to keep up with what’s going on. The fact that AA doesn’t really have… any of that… is just a sign that whoever made the executive decision to kill EMH and replace it with this trash is the wrong guy for the job.

And it pisses me off to another level when, in one episode, we get a flash back… it’s sepia tone (of course) but looking at it closely, the character designs are based on the EMH designs. Which, of course, is supposed to remind us that this is a sequel to EMH. But, no. No it’s not. It’s a lesser, mutated cousin to EMH that is incapable of keeping me interested long enough to want to see a second season. For those who watched the show, I’d love to hear your opinions. For those who haven’t, just don’t. Save yourself the time… or better yet, go watch Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes on Netflix right now! See ya next time!