Iron Man: Surge el Tecnívoro

A follow up on the Marvel Anime series featuring popular Marvel characters. I felt this film as an insult to the anime fandom, because they made this too slow and boring to watch.

Not a very nice one! I kind of got the plot, but not that much!

The animation was good, like most Japanese animes. The voices were OK, without them being neither great nor grating to the ears. I didn't even consider the film having a soundtrack until the time of this review, so if it was, it was completely ignorable. What else is there? Oh, yes, the story. And the story is pretty much crap.

I see a pattern here: somewhere between the releases of big Hollywood productions, some low budget animation features appear, usually straight to video, and usually made by the Japanese. Is it an attempt to squeeze more money out of fans or one to bring more American productions to Asian markets? Probably both.

The problem with this idea is that the difference in quality between the big budget movies and the animated features is huge, and not always in a predictable direction. Look at the Resident Evil animated movies; some of them were way more enjoyable than the live acting ones.

So, what am I to think of Rise of the Technovore when the Stark hero is way off the image that Robert Downey Jr. created (let's face it, he pretty much carries the films by himself), the villain is practically copy-pasted from Japanese animes (bad ones) and, as many reviewers observed, the dialogue is boring and pretentious.

So I have to mark it as a failure. Not a big failure, mind you, we are talking about comic book heroes, so the expectations were low to begin with. However, I was kind of hoping for an interesting story that somehow escaped the censure of the Hollywood politburo. Alas, they had an American write the plot and that sealed its fate.

The Animation is probably the strongest part of this installment of this Iron Man production. The Voice Acting could use some work on the supporting cast though. The story begins as we are placed dead centre in the middle of another technological marvel as Stark is trying to change the world. However bad guys don't take a Vacation. Stark has to fix things before its too late. And that's my problem with this movie. The only sense of urgency seems to come from Stark and its not very convincing because the Antagonist is way too enigmatic. Even when the pseudo-philosophical mechanized angst driven plot unravels you don't really care, assuming you understand what everyone's motives actually are. The Antagonist is dreary, his monologuing is distracting and his intentions in-genuine. However, cameo appearances from a few heroes in Marvel universe make up for this. Overall its a shaky 7/10. It could have been 30 mins shorter and just as sweet.

Marvels animated history has always been spotty, the fact that each one seems to be animated by a different studio and there is no consistency with the writers probably has something to do with it.

Rise Of Technovore is one of the better efforts I've seen lately and tells the story of Tony Stark on the run from Shield after being setup by a new cyber villian.

Also featuring Nick Fury, War Machine, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Agent Hill and surprisingly The Punisher.

Sadly the Punisher's contributions are rather brief and for a host of reasons I didn't like this version of him. Here he is voiced by Walking Dead star Norman Reedus who I'm not sure was the best fit.

The story is solid, the animation is mostly decent and the films execution is more than passable. It's only let down by some shoddy editing and not the best action sequences (Which is pretty unforgivable for a Marvel movie)

Watchable shlock for the fans.

The Good:

Decent story

The Bad:

Tad dark in places

Not keen on this version of The Punisher

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Authorised to use lethal force? Don't think much of Stark do they?

Seeing Ironman getting spanked did nothing for me