One of the more entertaining moments of “Next Avengers” involves the eventual emergence of the Incredible Hulk from the eccentric form of Bruce Banner, now a scientist in hiding. Watching the Hulk smash these cheesy robotic copies of the avengers was quite cathartic, and it’s also refreshing to see the team stick to the mold of Ultron as we know him, a corruptible and despicable technological force who will prove to the be prevalent menace if a series pans out. I also really enjoyed watching the original Thor talk to his daughter Torrum in the climax; it’s a surprisingly touching moment that may sell me on watching this with my nephew.
If you’re a fan of comic books, if you’re a fan of “The Avengers” and if you’re a fan of Marvel canon, then the odds are you won’t enjoy “Next Avengers” much at all. “Next Avengers” is really nothing more than an attempt at a television pilot ranging in at barely eighty minutes with quasi-anime style 2D art and a plot that’s equivalent to junk like “Bakugan” or “Super Monkey Robot Team…” It’s an affront to Marvel fans, an attempted series that takes the molds of Captain America and Iron Man and reworks them in to younger more immature models for us to follow and it’s pretty clear who they’re aiming for. It’s basically “Muppet Babies” a la Marvel super heroes. Not to sound like a fan boy comic geek again (even though it’s a title I wear with pride), but we’re not the target audience here.
The kids who grew up on Yu-Gi-Oh and the inoffensive pseudo-Asian ADD addled Saturday Morning cartoons of the new generation will probably find much to like here, but then again, maybe not. Because “Next Avengers” (an adaptation of the ill conceived “Avengers Next” perhaps?) attempts to take characters who wouldn’t completely translate in today’s youth market, and turns them in to tweeny crime fighters battling against robotic menaces so as to prevent mimicking. This is for them, not for us. “Next Avengers” pits the younger off spring of the original Avengers against the menace known as Ultron.
In this continuity, the Avengers have all died at his hands, and their children were scattered around the world to be hidden by the robot; which ultimately means nothing when we see the children gathered in a group to hear the story. And then later we also see them training together. So… are they still being hidden? And whatever happened to the alluded Baby of Namor? Why does he appear briefly to never be seen again? “Next Avengers” sets up many potential storylines for a series with the children desperate to find out if their parents really died, all the while Tony Stark plays babysitter to the children while searching for the off spring of Hawkeye who just re-emerged mysteriously. Vision also appears but completely out of character, literally playing a version of C3PO to the avenging children throughout the proceedings.
At one point he’s used as a pillow for youngster Pym. “Next Avengers” really does nothing to re-invent the wheel and is there just to bait the audience who hasn’t quite reached that age where they’re old enough to read comics, and I doubt they’ll enjoy this too much. Sometimes there’s just no replacing the classics. Toys, video games, there’s so much potential for Marvel to tap this well for all its worth should a potential series pan out. While I’m all for appealing to a younger newer generation of possible comic book readers, “Next Avengers” is the antithesis of what should be done to grab new demographics. The animation is so so, but the final product is brutally mediocre.