FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by Maelstrom »

:shame *sigh*

Well, it's official; on RottenTomatoes.com, Fantastic Four has a 21% approval rating. That's pretty damn damning. Apparently, they got this sucker so wrong that critics and bloggers are thumbing their noses en-masse. (And given all the behind the scenes crap that's been going on with X3, I shouldn't have been surprised that this kind of thing happened to yet another superhero franchise.)

When I started reading the reviews for this, several things not only stuck OUT, but they also stuck IN my head like railroad spikes, forcing me to pound my head against a hard, unyielding surface to either dislodge said spikes or smash them all the way through (ending my misery either way). I'll use spoiler tags for this, although you'll find out about them just by reading the reviews (which is all I've done anyway).

[spoiler]
1) Victor Von Doom is completely fucked up, and not in the way we would hapilly expect. First, he's a millionare capitalist, not a power-mad inventor. Second, the only rivalry he has with Reed is with Sue, who is apparently Vic's girlfriend and Reed's ex. (And that little twist has set my head to twitching.) Third, he goes WITH Reed et al. Fourth, the cosmic rays that zap our fantastic foursome also hit him and start turning him into metal. With the ability to control energy somehow. There are no gadgets involved with this at all. And finally... I'll just quote from the blog of Eric Snider: "Later, when his face starts to become too metallic to be pretty anymore, Victor puts on a steel mask that was given to him by the people of Latveria as a thank-you present for something." A thankyou gift of a scary-ass faceplate? Oh for the luvvapete, HOW FAR AWAY FROM THE COMIC CAN YOU GET? I wondered why his "Doom armor" seemed awful sleek in the previews, not at all like true armor... almost like it was skin tight. Well, there ya go. I hadn't expected I had a warped version of precognition still lurking in my genes....

2) Johnny Storm is apparently Victor's pilot, which is why he goes along with Reed et al, even though Ben is the REAL pilot. Look, I accept that they'll have to change things around a bit, because otherwise Johnny has no sensible explanation for just tagging along there (yes, I admit the FF's creation was a bit silly). But casting him as Victor's pilot? Yeesh! Make Johnny a backup for Grimm if need be, but why the hell tie him in with Victor??

3) Does anyone remember that Ben Grimm was married before? Oh, no one does? I think that's because Ben was a frikkin' bachelor. Here, he's married, and of course his wife tosses his ring back in his face when she sees what he's become. And she does it in public, in front of the cameras. Answer me truthfully, ladies: how many of us don't secretly DREAM of something like that happening just so we could nurture the hell out of our beloved, showing him how much we care when the world doesn't? How many gazillion fanfics have been written on this very conundrum? Jesus, if ten year old kids can write fanfics on this, exactly how original is it?

This entire trite, clumsy, and canonically incorrect backstory is shoehorned in there so we could set up the pathos for when the blind Alicia comes in and "sees his inner beauty". I am now pounding my head into the counter again. *bonk bonk bonk*[/spoiler]

I can see one silver lining in this: A DIRE WARNING. Marvel, you have TWO... count them, TWO... exactly TWO good superhero franchises. Spiderman and X-men. Daredevil, Punisher, Electra, Hulk, Captain America, Blade: Trinity, and now the Fantastic Four have failed abysmally. Spiderman and X-men were directed by gifted men who loved the genre, and their scripts were carefully crafted to include A REAL STORY. The rest, put bluntly, weren't. See a pattern forming here?

If we're ludicrously fortunate, maybe the people at Fox will see the massive brickbats flying at FF and rethink their ideas about X3. It's too late to get some of the actors back, but it isn't too late to turn the script into something good, and put a tight leash on any errant directors they've dredged up.

LEARN AND REPENT!
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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by Crocodile Hunter »

In my opinion it wasnt hard to expect that the movie would be crappy.
So far ive seen allmost all movies made from comics and ive only liked Hellboy, X-men 1 & X-men 2.

When i saw the first trailer from FF i thought "great another flop". And thats probably true. Ill probably just [spoiler] download the movie dvd screener when it comes. [/spoiler]
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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by idsunki »

To preface: I am not a huge fan of the Fantastic Four comics. I enjoy them, but am certainly not fanatical about them.

To continue: I saw the movie last night. I enjoyed it. There were discrepencies with the comics that I could notice, but that didn't stop it from being a fun movie. Why is the concept of "The movie is different from the comics!" too hard to understand for some people? Think of this as an AU - we do plenty of those in fanfic. As for Grimm, I didn't get the impression he was married, but that he was engaged. Also, just because some of us have fantasies about our loved ones being hurt or changed like that so we can take care of them doesn't mean that everyone would. There are shallow people in the world, there are people that are fair-weather friends (or fiances), and there are people who would be scared of something like that. Heh, someTHING. See what I did there?

To conclude: the movie was fun. Go see it. If you're worried about it not being good, find a matinee showing and get a few bucks off. The most annoying thing is Jessica Alba cast as Sue Storm. Stupidest thing ever. I like Jessica Alba. She is quite attractive. However, a good Sue Storm she does not make. The rest of the casting was pretty good, with the possible exception of Doom.

On a scale of recent comic movies, it's Batman Begins > Fantastic Four > Hulk, Daredevil, Elektra, etc.

-idsunki, extra-ordinary movie reviewer.

[edit]Northstar's Love just put this a lot more succinctly than I did. Congratulations! I will, however, leave my post here for posterity.[/edit]
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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by Northstars Love »

I haven't seen the movie yet which is the reason why I refuse to look at any spoilers at this point in time. I will being seeing the FF movie this Monday and I will tell you then what I thought of it.

This may sound strange but I will be going into the theater not with my mind made up that this movie sucks but with a layman attitude. Why? Because these movies are made for just them. The layman. We shouldn't have the attitude that every comic based movie is made just for the fans and no one else. Hell, there is not enough of us to keep that movie afloat. :LOL Most of those seeing it I'm sure have heard of the FF at one point in their lives. Last thing I'd want to do is read some comics just to get the jist of what the FF are all about. That's if I didn't read comics btw. The X-Men movies were based on the Marvel characters but you have to remember the movies in no way reflected the comics as a whole. Singer said that.

Btw, Buzzscope gave this movie an A http://www.buzzscope.com/reviews.php?id=4591 But I'm not planning on seeing this movie because of their A, I'm seeing this movie because I desire to see, finally, the FF get their due screen time which has been long overdue.

If you go into this movie with the attitude that the movie will suck, it will and you will not have a good time. Sorry, I plan to have a good time and keep my judgements until after I have seen the movie.

Happy popcorn munching! ;)
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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by Bamfette »

I think that's a good attitude Ken and Idsunki... i never really understood the whole 'it's DIFFERENT than in the comics/book/tv show therefore it SUCKS' attitude... some tings just do not translate well to screen, and in the case of comics and tv shows being made into movies, there's jsut simply too much content to cram into a movie without massaging things to make it all fit a cohesive story....

I haven't seen FF. I've seen the new Batman, and it will have a real tough time topping that, but I think i will go in being optimistic. I do agree that Jessica Alba is a downright weird choice for Sue Storm, but other than that what i have seen looks interesting.... I know i've disagreed with the general public and reviewers on many occasions, and what's important is not how much they like it, but how much i like it...
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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by Crocodile Hunter »

"'it's DIFFERENT than in the comics/book/tv show therefore it SUCKS' attitude" well actaully if you put the word game in to the "comics/book/tv" part, i have that attidute for movies made from games ;P
allmost all the movies made from games have sucked because their plots have had nothing to do with the games etc. (i dunno if you see my point).
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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by Diablo »

On the plus side : X-Men and X2, Hulk, the two Spideys, Hellboy, Sin City, and recently the excellent Batman Begins. :)

On the minus side : Daredevil, Elektra, Punisher. :X

I have to wait one week and a half to finally discover FF.
(the movie isn't released in France before July, 20th)
But I'm rather optimistic.

Jessica Alba I dig, and I'm very exciting to finally see Victor Von Doom on the big creen !
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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by Crocodile Hunter »

Originally posted by Diablo
On the plus side : X-Men and X2, Hulk, the two Spideys, Hellboy, Sin City, and recently the excellent Batman Begins. :)

You lucky bastard. :P

Batman Begins comes here in 5.8 :(
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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by B A M F ! »

Ya havent seen BATMAN BEGINS yet KEICHI? I'm excited for ya then because you are in for a real treat my friend!

In regards to FANTASTIC FOUR...

Image

In light of all of the negative reviews and Hardcore F.F. heads brutally slamming the movie I was genuinely surprised....
by how much I actually enjoyed it! The funny thing is that after seeing it, and enjoying it, I kind of agree with a LOT of the gripes being leveled at the flick. (Legendary HULK and X-FACTOR scribe PETER DAVID wrote a review of the movie that I felt was pretty accurate.)
I watched it though, with a completely open mind. It reminded me of how JUST before MARVEL launched the now UBER-successful ULTIMATE line a lot of fans were screaming bloody murder. (Myself included :P) Many of said fans changed their tune after the line launched though. (Myself included :P) I stopped focusing on the 'heresy' of the Ultimate line tinkering with my beloved characters for the sake of 'Modernizing' them. Instead I resigned myself to being open to experiencing the different approach that suprisingly captured the essence of what i'd liked about those characters in the 1st place.

That's how it was with me and the FANTASTIC FOUR movie. Could it have been handled a lot better? YES. Did I feel as if they'd missed a HUGE opportunity in regards to how incredible and classic a screen villain DR. DOOM could have been? Of COURSE. But overall I found myself enjoying the film....

[spoiler] I didnt go in expecting wall-to-wall theater-shaking action. I went in expecting them to show me HOW these people eventually come together to be the dysfunctional (and coincidentally superpowered) family that i've been following in the comics for years. For me the movie accomplished that. The basic setting for the majority of the film ....which was pretty much them being cooped up together while trying to understand, cope with, and (in the THING's case) hopefully reverse their conditions.... provided the perfect opportunity for that.[/spoiler]

Whatever gripes I had about GRUFFOLD and ALBA's performances were outwieghed by the incredible job CHIKLIS and EVANS did as the THING and TORCH respectively. Absolutely enjoyed every second of screen time with those two whether by themselves or interacting with each other. GRUFFOLD's Mr FANTASTIC was O.K. Also, for me, ALBA's INVISIBLE WOMAN wasnt as gosh-awful bad as everyone was making it out to be. It was funny how the 1st time that JESSICA appeared on screen in her skin-tight blue jump suit there was a collective 'gasp' (mixed in with a few "Daaaaaaammn...!"s and "Whoa...!"s) from the male members of the audience. Say what ya will about her acting ..... she looked incredible :love (Trying to stay positive here :P)

All of that said though i'm expecting MARVEL and FOX (well maybe not FOX in light of all of the crap going on with X3) to definitely kick it up a notch for the inevitable sequel.
Although I enjoyed F.F. it's fairly obvious that there is a LOT of room for improvement. I'm hoping that they'll learn from their missteps on this film and hit us next time with something that critics, hardcore fans AND the average movie goer will enjoy.



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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by Diablo »

Sorry Keichi ! :D

And BAMF, it seems you're a regular visitor to www.peterdavid.net , nein ?

PAD's work is brilliant ! :)

It's good to read positive reviews of the FF movie. I so want to like it...
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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by HoodedMan »

Also, one must realise that regardless of somewhat dismaying reviews, FF is #1 in the US box office with $65 million dollars grossed from Friday to Sunday, something Fox definitely did not expect. One could still say it's a success, even if it's a bit off from the comic book series.

Edit: Otherwise known as $56 million dollars. I swear I'm dyslexic. ;)

It's like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sometimes movies need to be considered independent of the books/comics, upon which they become a rather entertaining movie.
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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by B A M F ! »

Originally posted by Diablo
And BAMF, it seems you're a regular visitor to www.peterdavid.net , nein ?
Guilty as charged! I've always really enjoyed his work! :)


I was surprised to see it do so well considering how it's been getting ripped by the critics! It actually beat the critically acclaimed BATMAN BEGINS' opening weekend numbers :eek!
The true test will be next weeks Box office take though. Curious to see if F.F. has 'legs' or if there'll be a 2nd week drop off of 'HULKish' proportions.... :?

P.S. I really believe that repeat viewings by the much younger kids are what's going to push this movie. From what i've been hearing on the web (and to hear my nephew and niece tell it) the kiddos really liked FANTASTIC FOUR!


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FF is turning out to be less than fantastic....

Post by kladyelf »

I just saw the Fantastic Four (yes things do take a while to get here) and i have to admit i enjoyed it - not everything makes the transition from one media to another without being changed, so i took it in stride. I found it amusing - particularly Ben Grimm's and Johnny Storm's pranking and adjustments to their altered states - i have noticed that there is a slightly sexist vein to its portrayal of women, but that unfortunately can be par for the course in not only comics but other media *sigh*:shakeno

but on the whole it was a fun movie
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