Marvel Media Mania: Avengers: United They Stand

Avengers: United They Stand is a 1999 animated television series that lasted one season on Fox.

What's with the giant-sized Ant-Man? Is he the star of the show or something?

 It's easy to see how this show received its poor reputation. While the animation in general is capable enough (despite some kooky special effects such as cut-and-paste explosions), the series fails on almost every level from general concepts to season-long storylines.

The roster consists of Ant-Man, Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Wonderman, Tigra, Falcon, and Hawkeye. 8 characters is a big roster to carry (plus throwing in occasional guest star) and none of the characters really get a chance to shine in the season. The costumes are almost complete revisions with Vision remaining the closest to his roots. I did like how costumes changed throughout the season. However, none of the designs were great except perhaps for Wonder Man's simple black shirt and large red "W."

Most of the Avengers wear some kind of armor and have two versions of their costumes - their regular outfit they wear every day and there "armored up" version. The transformation sequence is a time-honored cartoon tradition but it just doesn't work in this case since there's not reason for it or explanation as to where the armor comes from.

The voice acting is subpar at best. Hawkeye sounds like he should be Wolverine. The villains all sound the same. Tigra's cat growls are awkwardly placed (like right before she says something nice) and clearly just big-cat sounds. Even the introduction fails as it whispers the word "Avengers" over and over again.

The plots are generally all the same. There are some storylines that go over the entire season (such as what Ultron did to Wonder Man) but the individual stories all fall flat. They even use some major villains such as Kang and the Masters of Evil but they never get beyond the level of comic book cheese.

I can see what they were trying to do with this show - make the Avengers more like the Power Rangers. But they missed just about everything that makes the Avengers great.

1LR Review - 7 out of 20 - It's a Failure!