I sat down and watched Fantastic Four last night, because sometimes I'm a masochist. That is a goddamn terrible movie. Not even terrible because the person who wrote the script has never read the source material -- although it is also that -- just terrible in the way that movies are terrible when they are made by people who do not know how movies work.
This movie is bad, and the people responsible should feel bad. They should never be allowed near a screenplay again.
Victor von Doom is a petty twit. I do not recall him ever coming up with a plan that involved killing only four people. I last saw the actor on Charmed and he had the acting talent of a wooden plank then, too. He is properly and bizarrely obsessed with the scar on his face and with making sure Reed Richards fails life on an ongoing basis, but frankly I don't think Reed needs any help with that here. I don't remember him ever caring about Sue's existence at all, aside from an awareness that killing her would make Reed cry.
Even his assistant is awful. He appears like twice only to ask questions that no competent employee of someone like von Doom would ever ask their boss, and he does it badly.
They mention Latveria like once, and the line delivery makes it sound like wossname thinks von Doom is making the entire country up. This is an insult to the Latverians, a proud and majestic people, with tens of years of history that the editors can even sometimes keep straight! I still use Latverian as the stand-in example of a European language that I don't technically speak, but given the proper motivation and maybe a few beers, I could probably decipher the road signs.
Reed Richards is not a particularly wonderful husband or father in the comics, but at least there when he ignores his family in favor of his science he actually does the goddamn science. Reed was the inventor of the unstable molecule uniforms they wear, and he did it on purpose. It was his mission to something something plot device. He's a hyper-competent superscientist, he's just also kind of a self-centered dick. I have no idea who this guy is, but he's kind of terrible. He reminds me, for some reason, of a cut-rate Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum would have made the movie way better.
Susan is fucking useless, but that's a flaw in the source material. Jessica Alba is actually not horrible. She says all of her lines like they're her own thoughts, they're just stupid thoughts that don't make any sense. None of her conversations make any sense. She listens to Reed tell her he's happy for her and immediately jumps to digging into him for something something relationship? What does this have to do with anything? I don't blame Alba for anything worse than signing onto this travesty, and that was probably a mere error in judgement.
I've seen Michael Chiklis on TV, and he's a competent actor. In a movie that wasn't terrible in every conceivable way, he might have done pretty well at this.
My God, the soundtrack to this thing is awful.
Their characterization of Johnny Storm is all over the damn place. He hates everyone, he's very concerned for Ben, they make a very big deal about the nurse he drags out onto the ski slopes and then she's never heard from again. They're so bad at it that they accidentally stumble into accurate bits from time to time, although they haul ass right back out again. Johnny is a hothead, he does think his superpowers are pretty sweet, and he would absolutely go 'bored out of my mind, imma go crash the demolition derby, brb', but he's a goddamn teenager, not a sociopath, and he does understand why other people would maybe not like their mutations so much. Evans is not great at playing an asshole, although the trouble here may be specifically that his character motivation for being an asshole appears to be 'haha, bite me'. He is way more convincing as the asshole pretending to not be an asshole for a bit, which is just mind-boggling.
I've no problem with their casting for Alicia, although that's not what she looks like in the comics. Someone needs to tell the writer that "blind" doesn't count as a personality trait, though.
The SFX are A+ work for a student-made fan film. For a major movie studio, they blow. Even the photos in the album Sue finds are poorly 'shopped. This is why we can't have nice things, Fox.
The "science" is awful, even by comic book standards. They aren't even pretending. The sun is closer to 5000-6000K than 4000K. And that wouldn't have set fire to the atmosphere. Lightning strikes are up in the tens of thousands Kelvin, and we're all still here. None of this has anything to do with supernovas. Fabric doesn't have DNA, and can't mutate.
The rescue scene where they demonstrate their new powers for all of New York to see was pointless. It was an accident. An accident that one of them caused. It had nothing to do with von Doom at all; he was, I don't know, getting a checkup or something? Poking at his scar. Playing pinochle. Swimming in his money bin, Who knows. The final battle is even worse.
I can forgive the existence of this movie, on a karmic level, solely because it taught the world that if you put Chris Evans in a wetsuit, he will automatically look like a superhero no matter what dumbass things you have written into your script for him to say. I refuse to watch the second one and am trying to purge my brain of the knowledge that the thing even exists.
This movie is bad, and the people responsible should feel bad. They should never be allowed near a screenplay again.
Victor von Doom is a petty twit. I do not recall him ever coming up with a plan that involved killing only four people. I last saw the actor on Charmed and he had the acting talent of a wooden plank then, too. He is properly and bizarrely obsessed with the scar on his face and with making sure Reed Richards fails life on an ongoing basis, but frankly I don't think Reed needs any help with that here. I don't remember him ever caring about Sue's existence at all, aside from an awareness that killing her would make Reed cry.
Even his assistant is awful. He appears like twice only to ask questions that no competent employee of someone like von Doom would ever ask their boss, and he does it badly.
They mention Latveria like once, and the line delivery makes it sound like wossname thinks von Doom is making the entire country up. This is an insult to the Latverians, a proud and majestic people, with tens of years of history that the editors can even sometimes keep straight! I still use Latverian as the stand-in example of a European language that I don't technically speak, but given the proper motivation and maybe a few beers, I could probably decipher the road signs.
Reed Richards is not a particularly wonderful husband or father in the comics, but at least there when he ignores his family in favor of his science he actually does the goddamn science. Reed was the inventor of the unstable molecule uniforms they wear, and he did it on purpose. It was his mission to something something plot device. He's a hyper-competent superscientist, he's just also kind of a self-centered dick. I have no idea who this guy is, but he's kind of terrible. He reminds me, for some reason, of a cut-rate Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum would have made the movie way better.
Susan is fucking useless, but that's a flaw in the source material. Jessica Alba is actually not horrible. She says all of her lines like they're her own thoughts, they're just stupid thoughts that don't make any sense. None of her conversations make any sense. She listens to Reed tell her he's happy for her and immediately jumps to digging into him for something something relationship? What does this have to do with anything? I don't blame Alba for anything worse than signing onto this travesty, and that was probably a mere error in judgement.
I've seen Michael Chiklis on TV, and he's a competent actor. In a movie that wasn't terrible in every conceivable way, he might have done pretty well at this.
My God, the soundtrack to this thing is awful.
Their characterization of Johnny Storm is all over the damn place. He hates everyone, he's very concerned for Ben, they make a very big deal about the nurse he drags out onto the ski slopes and then she's never heard from again. They're so bad at it that they accidentally stumble into accurate bits from time to time, although they haul ass right back out again. Johnny is a hothead, he does think his superpowers are pretty sweet, and he would absolutely go 'bored out of my mind, imma go crash the demolition derby, brb', but he's a goddamn teenager, not a sociopath, and he does understand why other people would maybe not like their mutations so much. Evans is not great at playing an asshole, although the trouble here may be specifically that his character motivation for being an asshole appears to be 'haha, bite me'. He is way more convincing as the asshole pretending to not be an asshole for a bit, which is just mind-boggling.
I've no problem with their casting for Alicia, although that's not what she looks like in the comics. Someone needs to tell the writer that "blind" doesn't count as a personality trait, though.
The SFX are A+ work for a student-made fan film. For a major movie studio, they blow. Even the photos in the album Sue finds are poorly 'shopped. This is why we can't have nice things, Fox.
The "science" is awful, even by comic book standards. They aren't even pretending. The sun is closer to 5000-6000K than 4000K. And that wouldn't have set fire to the atmosphere. Lightning strikes are up in the tens of thousands Kelvin, and we're all still here. None of this has anything to do with supernovas. Fabric doesn't have DNA, and can't mutate.
The rescue scene where they demonstrate their new powers for all of New York to see was pointless. It was an accident. An accident that one of them caused. It had nothing to do with von Doom at all; he was, I don't know, getting a checkup or something? Poking at his scar. Playing pinochle. Swimming in his money bin, Who knows. The final battle is even worse.
I can forgive the existence of this movie, on a karmic level, solely because it taught the world that if you put Chris Evans in a wetsuit, he will automatically look like a superhero no matter what dumbass things you have written into your script for him to say. I refuse to watch the second one and am trying to purge my brain of the knowledge that the thing even exists.
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