Animator Gary Hartle isn’t really in the business to reinvent the
wheel. That doesn't mean he and longtime friend Frank Paur won't throw
you a curve or three.
“There was a fan who wrote something that Frank told me about,” Hartle recalled. “What it said was that the fan wanted exactly
what he’d seen before. If we got an exact remake of a movie, we would
all be yawning. What we have to do is give them something they didn’t know
they wanted. That way they walk away with an ‘Oh My God!’ factor. By
that they would say, ‘Oh my god! I didn’t know that.’ The surprise
thing. I try to do that in every film I work on.”
One could say Hartle did just that with Marvel’s latest direct-to-DVD project Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow coming out on DVD next Tuesday, September 2nd. (Click here for a review of the screening at Comic-Con)
For those not familiar with Hartle, he’s been a top gun-for-hire in the animation industry for the last two decades.
“That’s it,” he admits. “I’ve directed and produced a lot of things at
Warner Bros, Film Roman. Then again, the way the business is, you don’t
turn away any work. It’s either feast or famine, and I like feasting.”
Among the TV shows he’s either storyboarded, directed and/or produced are Animaniacs, Johnny Bravo and the 2003 version of He-Man & The Masters of the Universe. When his longtime colleague Frank Paur (Gargoyles, Batman: TAS to Invincible Iron Man and Doctor Strange) moved to Marvel, Hartle soon joined up.
“I’ve known Frank all the way back when he was working on Batman: The Animated Series. I was working on Tazmania,” said Hartle. “I did the Hulk fight in Ultimate Avengers 1
and Marvel really liked that. When they had another space for a
director, Frank Paur told them that I should be the guy. Plus, Craig
Kyle told me I had him when I did the Hulk fight. So that’s how all
that came together.”
And when Hartle got his director’s chair, the first project they handed him was Next Avengers. Mind you, he admits he was already familiar with such comic book titles like Young Avengers, but that impulse to provide his own OMG moment stepped in.
“What was interesting is when I got the script, I immediately thought of Young Avengers,” said Hartle. “I also initially thought it would be a Marvel version of Teen Titans.
Then I read it and saw the story was very dark and really thrilling. So
I started thinking that this could be a case where we took children and
started watching them grow in front of us. You would see them under the
protection of a family figure, then watch them start to question the
parents and then start to make decisions on their own. Of course, a lot
of drama starts to happen along the way. In other words, no matter
what, they are real kids. They just happen to have super powers. They
are not mini-adults. I really liked that.”
As many fans now know, the Next Avengers are the children of the
originals. When their world, and more importantly their parents, were
destroyed by Ultron, Tony Stark was given the mission of hiding them
from the runaway super-android. The children are James Rogers, the son
of Captain America and Black Widow; Pym, the son of Giant/Ant Man and
Wasp; Torunn, the daughter of Thor, and Azari, the son of Black Panther
and “his queen.” Why they leave Storm’s name out of the mix is anyone’s
guess. All Hartle will say is he’s not allowed to disclose her
identity.
Stark has taken them to what appears to be a tropical paradise, where
he dreams of them developing their powers and taking the world back
from his monstrous creation. What none know is one other child of an
Avenger is out there, and has taken his father’s handle, Hawkeye, as he
leads a resistance group against Ultron. There are two other former
Avengers out there, too. One will unintentionally lead Ultron to
Stark’s secret base. The other is hiding out in the desert because no
one likes him when he gets angry.
Even though there are some truly dark elements in this D2D, one thing
Hartle made sure to do was not forget who he was targeting kids. One
could even say his past experience with kids programming was one of the
reasons he got the job.
“I did aim it for kids without talking down to them. That’s what I
really like,” says Hartle. “Because I have that background, and have
done my share of action-adventure, I felt that I really could do this.
Actually, the way I approached it was more action-adventure in the
sense of, given the situation, how would you feel at that moment? When
their whole world breaks apart, what I made sure of was these kids
don’t feel up to the task. Still, they have to play up to the task,
even though it feels all wrong to them. I also made sure to play that
to the audience, too.”
At the same time, there are scenes, that ring true to classic Avengers.
One is when Stark and the new Hawkeye (don’t call him Francis) have a
heart-to-heart. There’s a point where Stark tells his new charge that
his father would have punched him in the face and then gone along with
the strategy.
“So you did know my dad!” exclaimed young master Barton.
“What was interesting is when we were at Comic-Con, I got to sit back
and watch the audience,” Hartle said. “There is a scene where we
introduce Hawkeye. It has Torunn being beat up by the Iron Avengers
until he shows up and saves her. I swear I heard women swoon,
especially as he has kind of that swash buckling, ready to go attitude.
From that moment on I knew he won the fans’ hearts.
“What most fans have to realize is while the other kids have been
living in Antarctica and not even knowing it, Hawkeye’s been living in
the real world all that time. He’s a little more mature than the rest
of them. It’s more than him being a little older than them, too. He had
a really hard look at the world. I did scale him slightly larger, so he
is about a year or two older anyway. At the same time, he can also see
the value of James. He knows when to sit back and let things happen.”
As the conversation moves on, one soon understands Hartle has a solid grasp of all these new Avengers.
“Since Cap always played it by the book, so does James,” he commented.
“Then again, I gave James red hair on purpose. Like his mother, the
Black Widow, he can think out of the box. That also gives him a little
more edge. He will do things that Cap would never do to himself.
“For me, Torunn’s story is one of faith. When she was put down on
Earth, she didn’t really know anything about her father or Asgard. One
thing we had to cut out early was a scene where she had a shrine to
Asgard, with everything looking like it was Viking, but still have a
can of Swiss Miss in it. I mean anything that has even a remote thing
to do with that era, she puts in. She doesn’t really see anything that
would truly mean she’s Asgardian until the end. It’s only in the end
where her faith is finally justified.”
This leaves Pym and Azari. To be honest, Pym is sort of comic relief,
but it works in the group dynamic. Hartle openly admits there’s a lot
more to Azari. Unfortunately it was left on the cutting room floor.
“We have a story arc for Azari which we had to cut out because of
time,” says Hartle. “Obviously, Azari is T’Challa’s son. He also has
the mutant thing that I’m not allowed to say. In the arc, T’Challa is a
man putting on a cat costume. We want to switch it with Azari. He
actually is a cat putting on the guise of a man.
“What we want to do, if we go forward with this, is Azari trying to
suppress his cat part of himself. That is why he’s a little more
uptight than the rest of them. He’s trying to hold back the animal in
him. What we are thinking of doing is showing how the other characters
are maturing and growing up, he’s going to deteriorate. In fact, we
have it where eating meat is what’s starting to change him. It’s
something he will have to deal with.”
But this comment leads to a new line of questions, and that is will there be more Next Avengers in the future?
“It’s my hope,” Hartle admits. “It’s what I’m carrying a flag for. I
think there’s a lot for them to tell. At Comic-Con, as soon as the
story ended, people started asking us when we could expect the next
story featuring these kids. The hard part is when we started, we were
just creating the characters. If we had started with the original
Avengers, everyone would know who they are. We have to sell new
characters. At least Comic Con gave us the feeling we won the fans
over. I love that.
“If this does go forward, one thing I might set up is the original
battle with Ultron as the ultimate event in this universe. Throughout
the series there would be flashbacks to various scenes of Ultron wiping
out all the other heroes of the past. One thing for sure, is we’ll
never say when Ultron really did it.
“Another project I would eventually like to do is how Ultron ultimately
came about,” he adds. “From there, I would ask what did S.H.I.E.L.D.
do? What did other people do to bring about this event? I would like to
show that Ultron was definitely the fault of the predecessors.”
This could lead to some interesting problems for Hartle though. Some of
the voices he hired were actual kids. The problem of using kids for
your voices hit home when the whole project moved into post-production.
“When it was time to pick-ups, Noah Crawford’s (James) voice actually
cracked in between some sessions,” Hartle laughed. “What we’re now
thinking is being we’ve started with kids, we will actually have the
characters change to match the way the kids change.”
That isn’t all Hartle is planning. To top it, he admits Paur is helping him on this end.
“One thing I will say is that to some degree Frank (Paur) and I have
been dropping Easter Eggs in our projects. There might come a time
where we might tie them all together. Whether my universe is going to
be connected to Frank’s, like tying my Thor into his in Hulk Vs.,
that’s yet to be done. Let’s say if things go right, and people get to
see all of it, there will hopefully be an arc that runs through all of
them.”
Until then, we’ll just have to wait and see how Hartle and Paur
reinvent the wheel. Sounds like there’ll be a few more “OMG!” moments
along the way.
GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME LANDING IN NYC
The New York International Children’s Film Festival announced it will host the English version of Hosada’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time the weekend of September 12-13.
Mamoru Hosada set the anime world on fire when he created the series Neon Genesis Evangelion.
His latest effort apparently mixes solid elements of shoujo and sci-fi
for a very original looking film. For the record, the NYICFF did the
dubbed version of the film back in 2007, too much critical acclaim.
For more information, as always check out the website: www.gkids.tv.
Next Column: We sit down with Avengers voice artists Adrian Petriw, Tom Kane and Fred Tatasciore.
