Ultimate Avengers

Released in 2006, Marvel began its own series of animated feature films with Ultimate Avengers. Based mainly on the Ultimate Universe of Marvel Comics, the first film was based around the formation of one of its most iconic teams.

A sequel was later made, involving Black Panther.

For the comic book later known as Ultimate Comics: Avengers (or Ultimate Avengers for short), see The Ultimates.

---

Tropes used in Ultimate Avengers include:

• Adaptational Heroism: Almost everyone is made much more like their mainstream counterpart, as opposed to their Ultimate versions, since those guys were a bunch of assholes. In fact, the only thing they share with their Ultimate versions are their designs.
  • Black Widow in The Ultimates was a backstabbing traitor and a major-league Manipulative Bitch. Here, Natasha Romanoff is a straight-up hero who's as kind as her mainstream counterpart.
  • This version of Captain America is essentially his mainstream version with the costume of his Ultimate self, The Cape who believes in America's ideals and is an all-around Nice Guy. Ultimate Captain America, in stark contrast, was abrasively rude and a gigantic racist (he was from the 1940s, after all).
  • Giant Man goes from being a workaholic scientist who pretty much spent all his free-time horrifically abusing his wife to a Jerkass Woobie who's super-protective of Wasp.
  • Nick Fury has always been an anti-hero, but his Ultimate version was an outright Manipulative Jerkass, and even a Designated Hero at times. Here, he's more in-line with his mainstream version.
  • Iron Man isn't an alcoholic here, as he's only seen downing a single glass of wine when he gets kicked off the team. Other than that, he's pretty much his mainstream counterpart, aside from the part about still supplying weapons. Ultimate Iron Man was so much of an alcoholic that, for a few years, you literally could not see him out of armour and not drinking. Even his robotic duplicate in The Ultimates 3 talked about drinking, basically making him the Ultimates equivalent of Bender Bending Rodriguez.
  • Although still a rampaging monster, The Hulk is drastically tuned down from his Ultimate incarnation, who was literally a psychopathic manifestation of Bruce Banner's Id without any restraints - and let's not even start on him being a man-eater...
• The Adjectival Superhero: Albeit in this case, it's because they just decided to call the movie Ultimate Avengers rather than The Ultimates.
• Armor Is Useless: Made somewhat ridiculous in the end fight against The Hulk in the first film, as Iron Man appears to be the most useless member of the team when fighting him, despite the fact that his armor would seem like one of the only things actually useful against Hulk. Even more ridiculous when you consider how many direct hits Captain America takes (although Ultimate Cap is explicitly superhuman, maybe this Cap is too). Then again, Iron Man's suit was more or less fully functional after his brief beatdown, and after about 30 seconds he's back in the fight; it's implied Tony Stark himself was stunned, rather than the suit.
• Asshole Victim: Dr. Oiler took advantage of an imprisoned Banner and tried to kill him to save his own neck. Needless to say, it didn't end well for him.
• Badass Normal: Black Widow and Nick Fury. Betty Ross has shades of this as well.
• Bittersweet Ending: The second movie. Herr Kleiser is finally defeated, the day is saved and Cap can finally move on with his life. But Giant Man, along with undoubtedly thousands of innocent people, died during the battle. In addition, most of the world's cities were heavily damaged and Bruce Banner is an international fugitive, unable to be with his love, Betty, and ready to turn into the Hulk again at any time.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Thor, in the first movie.
• Comforting the Widow: Like in this comics, this happens to Cap's girlfriend Gail by his best friend Bucky when it was assumed he died during the war. Brought together by mutual grief, their relationship eventually turned into love and they were married before Cap returned, causing much embarrassment when Cap returned to the point where Gail couldn't bear to see him out of shame. However, Cap was simply happy that both were cared for and did not mind the relationship, only saddened that all his friends and chance for a relationship had long since passed.
• Composite Character:
  • Black Panther is seen turning into a humanoid cat, recalling the character Coal Tiger. However, as the movie was made before The Ultimates 3, there's no Ultimate!Black Panther to draw from.
  • Herr Kleiser becomes a Composite Character with someone else - Ulysses Klaw, since he is responsible for T'Chaka's death.
  • Initially, Nick Fury wants to recruit Iron Man, but he refuses many times, pointing out that he works alone, and only helps the team as Achilles in His Tent. In the original story, this role was from Thor.
• Defcon Five: Fury raises the threat level to DEFCON 5 when he gets word of an impending Chitauri attack on New York.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: A mortally-wounded T'Chaka taking down Herr Kleiser. Especially how it happens:

Kleiser: (approaching T'Challa) "The Wakandan royal family ends here!" T'Chaka: "YOU WILL NOT HURT MY SON!" (Goes into Panther Mode and attacks Kleiser, sending him over a cliff)

• Fatal Family Photo: Cap takes a quick look at Gail's photo before jumping from the plane.
• Hands Go Down:

Bruce Banner: "Any questions?" (students' hands go up) "Any questions not about the Hulk?"

• Heroes Want Redheads: Tony Stark tries this on Black Widow, but she's not really into him (the fact that they were introduced by her seducing him to be interrogated by Fury probably doesn't help the fact they most likely invoked this trope). Later, she becomes romantically involved with Captain America after bonding due to mutual experiences as soldiers.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Giant Man. Iron Man later seems like he's going to follow suit, but Thor revives him.
• Hot Scientist: Betty Ross.
• I Work Alone: Iron Man.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The Chitauri are usually incredibly lousy at hitting a main character. In some cases, the character in question is even basically standing still and the shots just keep missing, unless it's one of the particularly resistant Avengers.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: In quite a few scenes, Black Widow is only seen firing a few rounds at her opponents, which then seem to have multiplied by the dozens in the reactionary shots of them getting hit. And she doesn't miss either.
• Jerkass: Giant Man, though he's just merely arrogant and and insecure, unlike his outright abusive incarnation in The Ultimates, whom he's visually based on.
  • The scientist who keeps torturing Bruce for his rash decision to become the Hulk.
  • The Wakandan Council for their unflinching belief in them not needing assistance.
• Like Cannot Cut Like: Inverted. It's explicitly stated (and subsequently demonstrated) that the ONLY thing that can cut Vibranium is more Vibranium.
• Made of Iron: In the first film, Captain America gets punched about by The Hulk, a lot. He is still conscious at the end of the fight and suffers little in the way of any real injuries. In the second film, he's shown jumping from tall buildings and landing without a scratch as well as withstanding gun fire while still being able to fight without too much slowing him down.
• Mighty Whitey: In the sequel, Wakanda needs the Avengers to save it.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Subverted with Black Panther. He wants Wakanda to move away from its isolationist stance, but his people, especially the elders, were not happy with their king's decision, especially when he brought the Avengers along. They had him de-throned, but the elders were proven wrong, Black Panther re-took the throne and the Avengers defeated the aliens.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Bruce Banner. He thought he could control the Hulk, but he was wrong.
• Nigh Invulnerability: Herr Kleiser, through a combination of a powerful Healing Factor and just being plain Made of Iron, is able to shrug off attacks that would kill any other character ten times over. Such feats include (going by chronological order in-story and including the flashbacks): getting almost the entire upper half of his head sliced off by a metal shield, being right underneath a bunch of explosives that destroy the train car he's on and collapsing the tunnel it goes through, getting a metal shield lodged in his chest, falling off a soaring nuclear missile and getting caught in the exhaust, falling off a cliff, getting all his limbs sliced off before being torn in half at the torso, and finally being Buried Alive in a vat of liquid vibranium that hardens around him - and it's implied even that didn't kill him and just made him a Sealed Evil in a Can. No wonder Nick Fury calls him the "Chitauri Super Soldier".
• Nightmare Face: After Herr Kleiser gets sliced in half by Black Panther, his face is (thankfully briefly) like that of some kind of nightmarish zombie.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Partially averted with Captain America. While they did have the formula on file, inept record keepers didn't properly document it.
• One-Winged Angel: Herr Kleiser's final form resembles some kind of Eldritch Abomination.
• Pieta Plagiarism: This is the pose in which Iron Man carries Giant Man's corpse near the end of the second film.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Given that pretty much all the heroes in the Ultimates comic book Took a Level In Jerkass, they're considerably Lighter and Softer here. Mark Millar's controversial, less heroic re-imaginations of the characters were replaced with more traditional ones. Hank Pym is still the group Jerkass, but that was a step up from the mentally-unstable wife beater he was in the comic. Thor and Captain America's political views are far less extreme (in fact, they barely come up at all except for Thor's rampant involvement in environmental protests as a "hippy"). In a nutshell, it takes the contemporary setting and origins from the Ultimates, but uses the character personalities of Earth-616.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Black Widow and Captain America become a couple in this continuity.
• Reality Ensues: No, Giant Man, just because you can grow bigger than everyone else doesn't automatically give you a significant advantage over The Hulk. Your knee and throat, evidently, learn this the hard way.
• Redemption Equals Death: Giant Man's death seems to play with this trope. He didn't really do anything evil beforehand, but he had been a major Jerkass, especially to Wasp - and it seems his sacrifice was in part to show her that he could be the man she wanted him to be.
• Rock Beats Laser: In the second one, Iron Man's missile launcher is destroyed by a Wakanda warrior's spear and his armor is wrecked by a swinging log. For the record, Wakandan warriors wield vibranium weapons - and vibranium beats non-vibranium every time.

Iron Man: "Well, that's embarrassing."

• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Captain America shows signs of it.
• Shooting Superman/I Will Fight Some More Forever: The alien warships are armoured with vibranium, which can only be damaged with vibranium weapons (or nuclear bombs, which the heroes don't have). Regardless, SHIELD's navy and air force are perfectly content with wasting all of their ammunition on the aliens, even getting frustrated when their weapons continue to fail.
• Takes One to Kill One: A technological example - vibranium armor can only be penetrated by vibranium weapons.
  • Nuclear warheads and The Hulk also work, but those tend to be more trouble than they're worth.
• Team Title
• What the Hell, Hero?: Nick Fury chews out the Avengers after their in-fighting allows a Chitauri spy to escape with some SHIELD technology.