Dr. Strange, Disappointment Supreme?

[BentonGrey]

Okay....well, it's not THAT bad.  It's perhaps slightly better than the Iron Man movie that came out before it, but it's still pretty week.  Marvel really needs to stop giving these guys their animated business, because they always make a mess of things.  We have a good take on Dr. Strange himself, the reason he's so driven and all.  However, just about everything in his mystical world is boiled down to the level of a bad anime.  Instead of being a sorceror who casts spells and is steeped in mystical lore, he is now a spiritual warrior who conjurers a sword out of air and flits around like an angst-y version of the guys from Crouching Tiger.  I don't know......it's just not very entertaining, and the mystical enemies he fights are pretty uninspired.  Has anyone else seen this yet?

[zuludelta]

Haven't seen it and have no plans to. I'd already seen Ultimate Avengers 1 and 2 and the gag-worthy Iron Man. I actually felt that Iron Man insulted my sensibilities, as it was another case of artists/filmmakers lumping Chinese/Japanese/pan-Asian iconography and imagery all together into one mess... it's the equivalent of somebody cherry-picking elements of English, German, and Scandinavian imagery and presenting it as somehow being "Viking" or some such. I mean, I don't expect most people to know distinct aspects of different cultures they aren't immersed in most of the time but I expect professionals to do a bit more research when presenting material. It just reeks of an inattention to detail.

I think the recent direct to DVD releases just show an overall lack of direction and polish, and a bland visual style. With the Ultimate Avengers, especially, they tried to approximate Bryan Hitch's drawing style when it's almost impossible to do it that well given their limited budget and time frame. What they ended up with was a very poor version of Hitch's pencils that moved stiffly and awkwardly because of the difficulty in animating something with that level of detail. They should've done up the characters in a style more suited to a DVD/TV budget feature (JLU/Teen Titans/The Batman are the first to come to mind) or taken their time so that they could more faithfully recreate the comics.     

[Panther_Gunn]

And, yet, is anyone *really* surprised at how much of a miss this one is, given the track record?

but I expect professionals to do a bit more research when presenting material.

ooh, you used the "P" word!  :o  You should *know* better than that when talking about Marvel.  :P

[zuludelta]

And, yet, is anyone *really* surprised at how much of a miss this one is, given the track record?

... You should *know* better than that when talking about Marvel.  :P

I didn't mean to come off like I was slagging Marvel as a whole for their recent direct-to-DVD material. It's just that there are animated series out there that do a better job of recreating the comic book feel while not necessarily sticking to conventional interpretations (like the aforementioned JLU and Teen Titans), and probably for less money. It looks like they might be able to turn the animation ship around with the Spider-Man series they previewed at SDCC, though... it definitely looks more appealing to me (and I'm not even that big of a Spider-Man fan).   

[GogglesPizanno]

I am by no means a huge fan of Dr. Strange, but I'm a sucker for the animated comic films.
And like everyone else has said: Blah

Its like every other Marvel Direct to Video release. I really wish that they would learn a trick or two from Timm and company about pacing. I wouldn't mind the Marvel films as much if they were crappy, but lively and action packed, but these things are like molasses. 45 minutes to establish that the guy is an egocentric jerk? House does that in 30 seconds, and the JLU series would have already saved the world from Darkseid twice in that amount of time.

Whats even worse was the preview of the new "Avengers" -- the one with the Avengers kids?
Ugh....

[herodad1]

being a marvel fan and big fan of all the justice league cartoon series i'd love for them to try their hand with the avengers.the series had great animation and writers.ive never been a big superman fan due to his way over the top superness but i enjoyed him in the cartoons.question...is their going to be a death of superman cartoon?a friend thought he saw a preview i think on the 300 dvd.

[GogglesPizanno]

is their going to be a death of superman cartoon?a friend thought he saw a preview i think on the 300 dvd.

Yep.
I think it comes out at the end of September.

[Glitch Girl]

I think Marvel has mistaken "dull" for "mature" or "realistic".  They've put so much emphasis on establishing that these characters have problems (Iron Man, the Ultimate Avengers) that they forget that people aren't watching it for that overhashed drama, they want to see it for some superheroing, and I think they're trying to do this to distance themselves from Justice League and the DC animated universes by being more "real" but forgetting what they were trying to do in the first place. 

Avengers and Iron Man could have been much cooler, and I had hopes for Doctor Strange.  A real shame there.

[Agent]

Maybe Marvel should take a page from DC's book and get Brian K Vaughn to help adapt his Dr. Strange: The Oath limited series into a movie.  I'd love to see that.

[JeyNyce]

I enjoyed the movie because I saw it as a different take on the Doctor, and not the Dr. Strange I grew up with.  In the back of my mind I was thinking that this was Ultimate Dr. Strange.

[BlueBard]

The Iron Man animated movie could have been pretty decent.  The first half or so wasn't too bad.  But, in the end, their take on the Mandarin ruined it for me.  Why they felt they needed the faux-Oriental mysticism playing so large a part in IM's origin just left me underwhelmed.  I don't think it was based on Ultimate Iron Man, at least not directly, but you can see some of the same kind of continuity scrambling going on.  Rather than re-telling the original continuity in an original way, they basically rewrote it to suit their own tastes and threw in enough scraps of continuity to try to make the bitter pill go down.  So what we wind up with is ultimately  no homage to the character we know.  Stick a bunch of comics and anime in a blender, set it on chop, and you'd basically get the same thing.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they screw up Dr. Strange, too.  No plan to see it.