For as long as I care to remember, I have been fervently against Marvel Comics' “Ultimate” imprint, and not as someone who had never read them. My first run-in with The Ultimates, was way back in whatever year they were birthed; I was hanging around my local comic shop (oh, how plentiful those used to be) and was given the first issue of Ultimate Spider-Man as what I assume was some sort of a promotional offer. I gave it a quick read-through, and was rather underwhelmed. It was a tiresome story hidden behind flashy, new artwork, and a “hip” style presumably designed to attract readers in what was at the time my age-range. By the end of the issue, I was also given the impression that Peter Parker's powers (try saying that five times fast) were toxic to him, and he would eventually die from his spider bite. Wow. That's amazing writing. I'm simply blown away. (hopefully, you're catching my sarcasm.)
After that initial brush with Marvel's shiny, new Ultimate imprint, I decided that it wasn't for me, and I'd stick with the good ole' regular, 616 Marvel continuity. My desire to avoid the Ultimate Universe was turned up to eleven, so to speak, when I saw Wolverine (one of my top five favorite Marvel characters, and the guy I was named after) on the cover of an issue of Ultimate Somethingorother (I'd always assumed it was X-Men, but I could be wrong.) and he looked like what could only be described as the world's biggest douchebag. That was all she wrote, I was not, and never would be okay with the Ultimate Universe, or would I?
Several years had passed since my last attempt at reading an Ultimate story, and I had all but wiped them from my memory, and just by happenstance, we met again. I was working on some preliminary notes for a Deadpool script when I began to think about how Cable could fit into the whole thing without being too far-fetched (with regards to the story's internal logic) and I began to research him. My first step was to go through any comic I thought might have even a glimpse of Cable; my second step was to hit up the Marvel Wiki, which is where I learned some shocking news--Ultimate Cable was Wolverine (and best of all, he no longer looked like a douchebag.) I then decided that I would give the Ultimate Universe one more chance, because although I still don't entirely know how I feel about this major character change, I think it was a pretty ballsy move, and a well-written move, nonetheless. I respected their guts.
Of course, I'm not one to spend a lot of money, so my “second chance” consisted of me looking up nearly every character in the Ultimate Universe and reading about them. Some things I hated, some things I loved, but most of all, I found that I was indifferent, which is actually, all that could be asked of me as such a diehard fan of the normal universe, because it meant that though I didn't think their writing was brilliant, I also didn't think their stories were terrible enough to actually gather an opinion on. As far as the thinks I DID have “extreme” reactions to, I was not a fan of the fact that (aside from the oddball random origin every now-and-again,) everybody was either a mutant or a super-soldier, or sometimes both. That just seemed a little lazy to me, but not that big a deal. I also disliked how it seemed that they tried to make everyone so “realistic” (or maybe “plausible” is a better word) but then they just threw something in from left-field, like Doctor Doom, complete with more realistic name (Van Damme) gets turned into a metallic satyr. Woo Hoo. I also didn't understand the writers' fixation with cannibalism. You have no idea how many times I came across an entry that ended with “[s]he was found half-eaten by [insert character name].”
But on the flip-side, as I mentioned briefly, there were several things I liked, and wouldn't mind seeing in a film based mostly on the 616 universe; things like Thor's godhood being in doubt and people believing him to be some sort of insane mutant, Captain America hanging out with eighty-year-olds, and his knack for either speaking like he is from the Forties (which he is), or copying phrases from bad daytime television (which I learned from the first Ultimate comic I picked up in ages just the other day)
Over all, I feel that though they aren't the characters I grew up with, and I am most definitely still a Normal Continuity guy, the Ultimate Universe does deserve far more merit than I was originally willing to give. Now, however, I present you all with a rather unfortunate realization I came to during my “study” of these characters--They are interpretations of the 616 Marvel characters, and they are (in some cases) very different from their 616 counterparts; and what does Hollywood like to do best? Re-imagine a tried-and-true idea, so what we are left with is that instead of “interpreting” the normal Marvel characters, they will now interpret interpretations of these characters, making the end result even more disjointed from their original counterparts. It's like translating Spanish into English by way of Japanese, there will most definitely be something lost in translation between Spanish and English, but if you add in another step, there is no telling how wrong the end result will be.
As a final statement, my problem is not with the Ultimates, my problem is with Hollywood, and with the fact that they, for the most part, have never given us what we want, and the Ultimates are just another excuse for them not to.
Let the chaos begin. Excelsior!
-Contrast.