Riding on the popularity of Robert Downey Jr's live action IRON MAN movies and this year's CAPTAIN America: THE WINTER SOLDIER, HEROES UNITED 2 sees Iron Man and Captain America caught up in H.Y.D.R.A's latest plot to steal advanced technology and learn the secrets of the super soldier serum coursing through Captain America's veins. Mind control, bickering heroes, secret antarctic bases and other clichés riddle the already boring story and flat characters. All this is set to the worst computer animation to ever soil a screen in the last 15 years.
In repeating the mistakes of its predecessor, HEROES UNITED 2 plays out like a 5 year old enacting a captain America story with his action figures. And just because he is so popular, Marvel goes and shoves Iron Man into the mix and allow him to steal the spotlight. But who cares? The characters are nothing like their live action counterparts or their comic book incarnations. They are uninteresting and borderline unlikable.
Tony Stark sounds like a pretentious teenager, more like Spiderman with all his wise cracking. His nasal voice and attempts at mimicking the more witty humour of his live action counterpart just fails. Captain America is that one dimensional boy scout with "generic hero voice" and a chest designed by Rob Liefeld; a huge disproportional chest that seems to change size throughout the movie.
That is least of the visuals' problems however. The cel shaded CGI is inconsistent and at times looks worse than 2003's Spiderman CGI series. Animation is jerky, stiff, looking like it was made in the late 90s right along side Reboot and Jimmy Neutron. There is little sense of weight to the CGI models, surfaces do not seem to connect (e.g. between a metal strap restraining captain America and the hero's chest or between laser shots and unfortunate victims), and many fight scenes look like they were done with stop motion puppets. Don't even get started on the embarrassingly bad human facial animations.
The whole show in a sentence: Two kids playing with their action figures on a boring Sunday morning. This is proof that Marvel's direct-to-video department is dead in the water. Zero effort at being even marginally entertaining, pit bottom production values, groan inducing dialogue. This here is a sequel to a dismal excuse for a CGI Direct to video movie that manages to one-up its predecessor in how horrible it is. IRON MAN AND CAPTAIN America: HEROES UNITED is 2014's scrap from the bottom of the barrel. Look up youtube and one will easily find Computer animation done by students with their off-the-shelf software that looks way better than this drivel from a so called "Multi Million dollar production company".
