Iron Man and Captain America: Heroes United

Without doubt, Marvel is atop of the entire entertainment world now. Their trailblazing critical and commercial success with the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe, the surprisingly high quality of their breakthrough television and Netflix franchises and continued popularity amongst comic-book fans the world over have made them a force to be reckoned with. They can seemingly do no wrong anymore.

Well, unless you count their cartoons and direct-to-video releases, that is.

Yes, sadly for the most part, Marvel seems to really drop the ball when it comes to cartoon adaptations of their work. With the notable exception of the 90's "X-Men" cartoon series, many- if not most- of Marvel's animated television and video releases have been sub-par at best. And the "Heroes United" franchise- including this film "Iron Man and Captain America", is certainly no different. It's a clear and cynical cash-grab made to trade in on the success of the (much better) big-screen MCU releases with minimal effort given and minimal talent on display. Cold and calculated films that were designed to make a few bucks off of parents looking to buy their young children something Marvel-related.

To start, the quality of the writing is exceedingly poor, and the film suffers from haphazard structure, lack of motivation and cringe- worthy dialog. The plot is about as simple as they come- Captain America and Iron Man team up to battle the Red Skull. It's simple, classic, to-the-point superhero material. How can you screw that up? Very badly, evidently. Every single line of dialog is either a clichéd piece of not-so-witty banter, an on-the-nose exposition dump or a confusing and brainless non-sequitur. Characters are completely flat and represent only the most basic of hero and villain archetypes. And the general flow and narrative structure is patchy and flimsy, somehow achieving a contradictory feeling of both being boring and bizarrely jarring at the same time.

The animation is shockingly poor in terms of quality, and it's just criminal that such a major studio gave this the go-ahead for release. Character models are strangely over-stylized and under- detailed, and are rendered at such a level of quality that they very much look like they were pulled out of a late-90's video-game. The actual animation is incredibly basic and lacks variety, giving every character a strangely robotic movement that creates a certain "distance" between the viewer and the film... you just can't get invested in something that looks so lifeless. And the lip- synching... my god. Character faces move in a eerie and unsettling-looking juttered-frame manner that makes the image hard to look at at. It's like they accidentally deleted every-other from the facial animations and just doubled-up on what was left. Just weird.

Add to that tacky voice-over work that sounds like its bordering on self-parody, childish humor that wouldn't make a 12-year-old giggle, contrived references to the live-action movies despite this taking part in its own "universe" and a laundry-list of other faults and problems, and you just get a bad animated movie all around.

Trust me... even if you're genuinely interested, just do yourself a favor and stick with the live action Marvel movies. They're great! But this? A complete disaster! I'm giving it a 3 out of 10. Maybe young children will get a kick out of it... but even then, I kinda doubt it.

Captain America and Iron Man team up in this adventure. After HYDRA troops break into the helicarrier and steals the Stark Repulsor Cannon, a prototype weapon powered by its own arc reactor, the two heroes fight, However, the heist is nothing more than a diversion, as Taskmaster has been hired by Red Skull to capture Cap for his blood, the last ingredient he needs for his plan to replicate the Super Soldier Serum and make a new army.

Basically, the story is okay, but it suffers from the two heroes having a sort of rivalry and bickering (excusing some things as being "part of the plan") and the animation is a bit iffy (mainly when it comes to mouth movements, as they look robotic and devoid of showing any emotion, making this look like it was made in the late 1990's for a TV show than the 2010's).

Now Marvel has been making successful films on the big screen with The Avengers, Captain America and Iron-Man.

So you think they would make a great movie with Captain America and Iron-Man joining forces.

Well I'm afraid I've got some bad news this does not even give you anything redeeming about this direct to video animated movie. If Animated is what you call it.

Iron Man & Captain America: Heroes United has too many problems to even considering making it watchable.

I don't know where to begin but what I can tell you is that it is not worth owning in your collection.

The plot for the film is clearly design to be a cash in on the success of the two Avengers. Even with Red Skull as the main antagonist with Taskmaster at his side don't help the film at all.

The Animation and graphics in the film are simple awful it's hard to even call it computer animated when it feels like some kind of anime with boring artwork. I have seen video games with better designs than this one.

Also the voice acting is very boring it feels like the actors are being forced to give a performance and that puts into no effort what so ever so.

Perhaps the best thing about this film is that is not apart of the Marvel story line so passing on it will not limit your enjoyment of the other films from Marvel.

Iron Man & Captain America is a failed attempt to team up these two Marvel Legends.

If you want to see them work together watch The Avengers or the Avengers TV series.

I give Iron Man & Captain America: Heroes United an 3 out of 10

Truly just a repetition of the previous movie. The constant action & such basic plot isn't the best!

Iron Man & Captain America: Heroes United (2014) is a movie that I recently rewatched for the first time in a long time on Disney+. The storyline follows Captain America and Iron Man debating whose style and approach is better. Red Skull and Taskmaster join forces to steal weapons from Iron Man to help their new Hydra army conquer the world. Captain America and Iron Man will need to put their differences aside if they're going to save the human race.

This picture is directed by Leo Riley (Iron Man & Hulk: Heroes United) and contains the voices of Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption), Fred Tatasciore (Team America), Roger Craig Smith(Suzume), Adrian Pasdar (Carlito's Way) and Liam O'Brien (JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time).

The animation for this is unique and some of it worked better for me than others. I could say the same about the voices that were selected to play the characters. This actually looked like video games at the time it was released. I did enjoy the animation during the opening credits and how the villains were voiced and portrayed. I also loved Hulk in this. However, Captain American and Iron Man's look and voices were better at times than others...and definitely a huge step down from Chris Evans and Downey Jr. The action scenes were pretty good and the final fight was entertaining. The storyline was worth following too.

Overall, this isn't as good as the DC animated pictures from this era, but it is still entertaining and worth a viewing. I would score this a 6/10 and recommend seeing it once.