Avengers Assemble, Ghost of a Chance, Review
Disney XD's newest Avengers cartoon kind of sputters a bit with this one. But seeing Silver Age Avengers villains the Space Phantoms in animated form does make up for a number of minor crimes...
Uh-oh. I have very few strict rules that I follow in my life, but one of them is to never judge a TV series by its earliest episodes. But sometimes, even early on, the alarm bells go off, and it becomes clear that some problems might just continue to haunt a show. I enjoyed the premiere two-parter of Disney XD’s newest animated superhero offering, Avengers Assemble (you can read the full review right here) and expected that with the preliminaries out of the way, the show might start to calm down a bit and get into some actual storytelling. Unfortunately, if “Ghost of a Chance” is any indication, that may not happen for awhile. If ever.In short, this second (third if you want to get technical, since the premiere was a two-parter) Avengers adventure deals with dark-matter space phantoms who replace the Avengers with evil copies that are generally rude and scowly. And while there’s a certain amount of cool geek symmetry in the fact that the villains of the second episode of this series were also the villains in Avengers #2 (all the way the heck back in 1963!), this plot kind of fell flat. Why? Because we’ve already seen the Avengers being rude to each other and violent thanks to outside influence in the first episode. Add to this a couple of recycled jokes about bad breath and “Ghost of a Chance” felt awfully formulaic.Speaking of formulaic, “Ghost of a Chance” at least gets the “new guy saves the whole team/earns his place” story out of the way, and we get to see the Falcon shine. It’s cool to see a great character like Sam Wilson really get the spotlight in animated form, but I’m not too sure about his “young guy geeking out to be in the Avengers” characterization. In fact, the personalities of all of the Avengers don’t feel quite right on Avengers Assemble just yet. When every character on the show is spouting a quip-a-minute, it kinda blunts the humor’s edge. To be fair, the bit where Falcon accidentally wanders into the Hulk’s quarters and discovers his unique hobby was pretty darn funny, though, as was a throwaway gag centered around a Doctor Doom reaction shot. All in all, “Ghost of a Chance” was disappointing, if not downright irritating. However, it’s still early enough in the show’s run that they might just be making sure that viewers get each character’s vibe. Still, too much time is spent on trivial matters like the team arguing over cookies (yes…you read that right) to even excuse that. C’mon, Avengers Assemble. Don’t let us down. Take a deep breath, slow the pace a little, and tell us some stories with these characters, and then maybe this other stuff won’t seem so out of place.Den of Geek Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!
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Mike Cecchini is a man with a deep and abiding love of comics published before he was born, low-budget sci-fi, lo-fi garage rock, giant monster movies,…