Okay…for those ambitious folks like myself who know how to track certain “things” down…. :shifty:

Hulk Vs. Wolverine has been “in the wild” for about a week now, for people who can’t wait for the inevitable DVD release.  Honestly, I could have waited, but I was bored earlier this week, so I gave it a quick download to check it out.  Didn’t have time yet to catch the Thor half, but I did watch the Wolverine portion of it, and it was pretty damn good.  Not perfect, but really good.

I’m mostly a “glass half full” guy, so I’ll get the bad stuff out of the way first.

The Negatives

• Short, short, SHORT.  This thing was barely 40 minutes long.  Probably not even.  Seemed really short, even though the story itself didn’t seem crammed or anything.  I could have just used a bit more of it.
• The ending.  I’m sure everyone has wondered who would win in this Wolverine/Hulk battle?  Do we find out?  Well, I’ll leave the spoilers out, but suffice it to say, I didn’t find the ending especially satisfying.  In some ways it was, in other ways…eh, I’m not so sure.

The Positives

• BRUTAL.  Wolverine has been a tough character to write in animated form, simply because he’s a guy with claws who loves to carve people up.  How the heck do you write an all ages cartoon based on that premise?  Well Hulk Vs. Wolverine is not an all-ages cartoon and doesn’t pretend to be.  Wolverine unleashes with his claws.  I especially loved the Deadpool “arm scene”.  :shifty:
• Great cast of characters.  Wolverine and the Hulk are joined by Sabretooth, Omega Red, Deathstrike, and Deadpool and every character, even though they only make spotty appearances in a 40 minute cartoon, are written to near perfection.  Anyone who has ever had any issues with the way any of these characters have been written in the past will lose those issues here, because the characterizations are spot on.  Loved it, and it was part of the reason why I was bummed it was so short.  I wanted more!
• Good story.  Even though this obviously focuses on the Hulk/Wolverine battle, they manage to pretty flawlessly intertwine a little of Wolverine’s background, some Weapon X stuff, and they incorporate the 4 villains very nicely.
• The Animation.  I’m not sure if they stepped it up a notch for this installment, or if there’s just a different studio working on it, but the animation for Hulk Vs. Wolverine was about 8 steps above what we got for stuff like Ultimate Avengers.  Very crisp, very clean, very fluid movement, and great character designs.  There was really nothing I didn’t like about how the animated figures moved on the screen.

The end result is that there is a lot more to love about this than there is to hate, and I found the most disappointment I had was when it ended.  A good, captivating story, some great over-the-top action, with a sprinkle of bloody brutality, and you have a very entertaining (albeit short) animated feature for comic fans.  Even though I’ve seen half of it already, I’m definitely picking it up next week and recommend everyone else do the same.