In the months gone by, I have had the chance to watch several of these motion comics on DVD as Shout! has released them. It seems like just a few months ago that I reviewed the X-Men: Torn one, and a long time ago I review Gifted, but Unstoppable and Dangerous were new to me. Having all four story arcs together in this set gave me a chance to quickly re-watch some of the ones I had seen previously, and experience the two new ones for the first time.
My general takeaway from all four of these movies is positive. The characters are established and entertaining, and the stories put them in some unique and even memorable positions. The material is entertaining, although the ten minute episode design makes it feel like you’re seeing the credits and hearing the theme too often.
Rather than re-review the movies I have already seen, I am going to take a shortcut by offering links to the reviews of Gifted and Torn. Dangerous was pretty cool, and reminded me of Star Trek in a way. In Dangerous, the X-Men Danger Room, the computer simulation room used to train the X-Men, becomes sentient and actually kills one of the mutants at the academy. The battle is taken both on the physical and mental fronts as the X-Men try to pull the plug on this AI gone bad. Unstoppable picks up about where Torn left off. It is said that Colossus will somehow be the catalyst that causes the destruction of a planet known as Breakworld. Not willing to lose Colossus and also not wanting to endanger Breakworld or its inhabitants, the X-Men try to find a way to save both of them, but not everything works out as intended.
Both discs use the same style menu which only offers Play, Episodes, and Bonus options. Disc 1 contains Gifted and Dangerous, and you can choose which of the six episodes within each movie to skip to. No subtitles or audio options are included, but there are two extra features: “A Conversation with Joe Quesada and Neal Adams,” which runs about seventeen minutes and is shown in HD. In the interview, a lot of emphasis is placed on how motion comics are a new medium, different yet similar to traditional animation. A music video to the tune of “Rise Up” is here too, running just over two and a half minutes. While the song plays, scenes from Gifted are shown. There is also a two minute HD trailer for Gifted.
Disc two has Torn and Unstoppable, with the same mention options as disc one. I suppose it’s worth pointing out that Unstoppable has seven episodes instead of six, too. The extra features on disc two are a cool five minute, twelve second behind the scenes look at Marvel Knights Animation. It’s a brief feature, but you get to see some of the computer animation techs that bring the 3D and motion to the movies to life. Joe Quesada and Neal Adams also chime in about the process, which is quite interesting. There are a bunch of trailers for other Marvel Knights Animations as well, including Spider-Woman, Black Panther, Iron Man: Extremis and Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers.
Presentation-wise, all four movies have very vibrant colors and crisp lines delineating the different objects within the scene. Motion comics aren’t as perfectly smooth as animation, as evident by some motions, but it is an interesting art style nonetheless. Nothing about the image or sound quality detracted from the movies in any significant way, and overall I was impressed.
With that, let’s get to the summary…