# Fantastic 4 Cast News -- Chiklis=Ben Grimm **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 9, 2004, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277 "2004-07-09T13:09:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Papermache\_Prince](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f05b48/32.png) [@Papermache\_Prince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Papermache_Prince)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2004, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/1 "2004-07-09T13:09:14Z")
According to Hannibal Tabu’s column, [The Comic Reel](http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=3881) at [Comic Book Resources](http://www.comicbookresources.com), citing _Variety_ as his source, the cast for the Fantastic Four movie is Michael Chiklis (_The Shield_) as Ben Grimm, Ioan Griffid (_King Arthur_) as Reed Richards, and Chris Evans (_Not Another Teen Movie_) as Johnny Storm. Sue Storm has not been cast yet. Rachel MacAdams (_Mean Girls_), Elissa Cuthbert (_24_), and Jessica Alb (_Dark Angel_) are reportedly being considered. ---
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2004, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/2 "2004-07-09T15:23:03Z")
> [@Papermache Prince](#): > > Sue Storm has not been cast yet. Rachel MacAdams (_Mean Girls_), Elissa Cuthbert (_24_), and Jessica Alb (_Dark Angel_) are reportedly being considered. I have just three problems with Jessica Alba as Sue Storm. 1. She cannot act. 2. She’s not blond. 3. She’s not hot, she’s freaky-looking. Aside from that, she’s a perfect choice. Not. Seriously, why is she being considered? So she’s acted in a super-esque TV show and in a (horribly bad) superhero movie. So what? She doesn’t look like Sue Storm at all. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2004, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/3 "2004-07-09T15:53:19Z")
> [@Brainiac4](#): > > I have just three problems with Jessica Alba as Sue Storm. > > 1. She cannot act. She’s freakin’ Susan Sarandon next to Cuthbert > [@](#): > > 1. She’s not blond. Agreed. I don’t think she’d even pass as blonde believably. > [@](#): > > 1. She’s not hot, she’s freaky-looking. Survey says… **XXX**. She is [totally hot](http://home.zonnet.nl/jessica-alba/176-200/WPsexy%20jessica%20alba.jpg). Still, I would hope they’d find someone else. Chiklis is an inspired choice, especially since it’s a showcase role amongst the four (though I imagine he’ll be CGI’d for all post-transformation scenes). ---
**Author:** ![Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hey_It_s_That_Guy)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2004, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/4 "2004-07-09T15:56:31Z")
Sue Storm has to be a sexy “soccer mom” type who can still hold her own in a fight if she has to, but casting one of these young post-Buffy “girl power!” babes would be all wrong. Plus, Sue is a blonde WASP, and dark, sultry Jessica Alba looks nothing like her. My best choice would be Gretchen Mol, from Rounders and The 13th Floor. I think Chiklis would be a great Thing (although he seems a bit old for pre-transformation Ben Grimm), and I have no idea who the guys playing Reed and Johnny are. They really need to cast a good Dr. Doom to hold it all together! ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2004, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/5 "2004-07-09T16:45:49Z")
Depends on which version of the FF they’re making the movie about. The normal practice of a movie is to tell the origin of the superhero, and from hints on the web, I gather than this movie will do that as well. In the very beginning, Sue was in her early 20s, much younger than Reed. At 28, Rachel McAdams is really too old, but tell that to the producers of Mean Girls. Johnny was still in high school, a contemporary of Peter Parker. By Hollywood rules, therefore, Chris Evans is still young enough to play him. Reed and Ben were about 40, so Michael Chiklis is right but 31-year-old Ioan Gruffudd is a ridiculously bad choice for Reed. Reed is a father-figure to Sue, who was always attracted to men much older than she was. Bad, bad news. ---
**Author:** ![Beauty\_Personified](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e480ec/32.png) [@Beauty\_Personified](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beauty_Personified)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/6 "2004-07-12T18:40:58Z")
**Voodoo Lou** - [Ioan Gruffudd](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0344435/) (pronounced YO-an GRIFF-ith; sometimes credited as Ioio Gruffoid :eek: ) can be currently seen in _[King Arthur](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349683/)_ playing Lancelot. He also played Horatio Hornblower in the recent A&E television movies. That said, I do agree that the age difference between Gruffudd and [Michael Chiklis](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004821/) is a little off compared to the comics. I’m thinking that Ben Grimm will be more of a big brother/mentor to Reed Richards than just a peer. That said (again), as long as it’s well-written, directed and acted, and the effects are decent, it could be a good film. But, that’s a lot of “ifs”. Here’s hoping we get another _Spider-Man/X-Men_ film, rather than a _Daredevil/Punisher_. Anyhoo… ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/7 "2004-07-12T19:09:05Z")
> [@Brainiac4](#): > > I have just three problems with Jessica Alba as Sue Storm. > > 1. She cannot act. > 2. She’s not blond. > 3. She’s not hot, she’s freaky-looking. > > Aside from that, she’s a perfect choice. Not. > > Seriously, why is she being considered? So she’s acted in a super-esque TV show and in a (horribly bad) superhero movie. So what? She doesn’t look like Sue Storm at all. I have no comment on her acting (or lack of blondeness), but holy moly she’s hot. Hot hot hot. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/8 "2004-07-12T20:51:51Z")
I say they should go with Cuthbert, who’d be my first choice (as Mrs. Munch…). She’s vastly hotter than Alba, has a fantastic rack (the Fantastic Two?), and is fantastically hot. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/9 "2004-07-12T20:56:42Z")
And let’s look at the comparison (using the Ultimate Fantastic Four, since that has Reed and Sue much closer in age): [Ultimate FF #1](http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=32754&item=2255303027&rd=1) [Ultimate FF #5 (at the bottom)](http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=32754&item=2255303557&rd=1) [IMDB listing for Cuthbert](http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0193846/) ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/10 "2004-07-12T21:11:52Z")
> [@](#): > > She’s not hot, she’s freaky-looking [Say](http://www.laurenkayecohen.com/portfolio_pages/images/jessica_alba.jpg) [what](http://w1.877.telia.com/~u87727183/alba52.jpg)?? How can there exist a human on planet Earth that believes Jessica Alba is anything other than drenched in dripping hot sex? ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/11 "2004-07-12T21:57:25Z")
Jessica Alba is indeed a fox but she’s not right at all for Sue Storm. I was also hoping that William H. Macy would play Mr. Fantastic but oh well, who would’ve thought Tobey MacGuire would be a great Spider-Man? ---
**Author:** ![RogueRacer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7ab992/32.png) [@RogueRacer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RogueRacer)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/12 "2004-07-13T15:19:04Z")
Jessica Alba is indeed very hot. She’s wrong for Sue though. Having just seen Ioan Gruffudd in King Arthur, I would have to say that he is way **wrong** for Reed Richards. _(He was wrong for Lancelot too)_ I would picture someone more like Tim Robbins myself. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/13 "2004-07-13T15:25:04Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > And let’s look at the comparison (using the Ultimate Fantastic Four, since that has Reed and Sue much closer in age): > > [Ultimate FF #1](http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=32754&item=2255303027&rd=1) > [Ultimate FF #5 (at the bottom)](http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=32754&item=2255303557&rd=1) Looks a lot like Jewel Staite… ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/14 "2004-07-13T15:35:19Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > Looks a lot like Jewel Staite… She’d be good too. Though, I think she’d make a better Kitty Pryde (who is coincidentally being written right now in Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon). ---
**Author:** ![Kaspar\_Hauser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b3f665/32.png) [@Kaspar\_Hauser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaspar_Hauser)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/15 "2004-07-13T15:46:50Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > Reed and Ben were about 40, so Michael Chiklis is right but 31-year-old Ioan Gruffudd is a ridiculously bad choice for Reed. Reed is a father-figure to Sue, who was always attracted to men much older than she was. > > Bad, bad news. Reed turned forty in an issue of Byrne’s run in the eighties, twenty-plus years after he first appeared. I’d say that makes a good case that he was probably in his mid-thirties when he got his powers, and a thirty-one-year-old playing a thirty-five-year-old isn’t much of a stretch (ha!). ---
**Author:** ![Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hey_It_s_That_Guy)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/16 "2004-07-13T15:59:14Z")
It looks like Australian actress Sarah Wynter (Kate Warner from the second season of 24) has been cast as Sue Storm! She’s attractive, she looks like Sue, and she’s not some early-20s Buffy-wannabe either. Good choice, I say. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/17 "2004-07-13T17:12:55Z")
I have no idea what retconned nonsense has been done to the FF these days, but back in the beginning Reed was a college graduate before going off to World War II to be an OSS agent. He and Sue’s father were about the same age. And as far as I can tell, anything that John Byrne said about any character has been repudiated by clearer-thinking heads since. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/18 "2004-07-13T17:43:37Z")
> [@Big Bad Voodoo Lou](#): > > Sarah Wynter…She’s attractive, she looks like Sue, and she’s not some early-20s Buffy-wannabe either. Good choice, I say. [I disagree](http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/2150/Events/2150/SarahWinte_Grani_1534272_400.jpg?path=pgallery&path_key=Wynter,%20Sarah%20(I)) ---
**Author:** ![Kaspar\_Hauser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b3f665/32.png) [@Kaspar\_Hauser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaspar_Hauser)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/19 "2004-07-13T17:48:59Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > I have no idea what retconned nonsense has been done to the FF these days Neither do I. This was twenty years ago. > [@](#): > > And as far as I can tell, anything that John Byrne said about any character has been repudiated by clearer-thinking heads since. And as far as I can tell, his FF run is uncontroversial (and generally acclaimed as the second-best behind Lee-Kirby). ---
**Author:** ![Kaitlyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/73ab20/32.png) [@Kaitlyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaitlyn)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277/20 "2004-07-13T23:49:13Z")
In the core universe, Reed is in his mid-forties and is about 15-20 years older than Sue, who is in her mid-to-late 20’s. The recent Marvel Knights “4” has Sue turning 30, but Mark Waid, who writes the core book, has chosen to ignore anything happening in that book, so I personally consider it to be out of continuity. Ben is roughly the same age as Reed, and Johnny is in his early 20’s. During the Lee-Kirby era, Marvel characters actually grew older and changed (in Spider-Man, Peter aged in roughly real time for the first 5-6 years), but they’ve been frozen in time for about the last 30 years. At the time of the experiment that made them the Fantastic Four, Reed and Ben would have been in their mid-30’s, Sue about 20, and Johnny was 16. The more recent Ultimate Fantastic Four has Reed and Sue about the same age, which is undefined, but has them working essentially as graduate students, so something like 25 is probably reasonable. Ben is a few years older; he was in high school when Reed was in Jr. High. Johnny is a teenager. The Spider-Man movies have been closer to Ultimate than traditional in their approach to the origin. I wouldn’t be surprised to see FF do the same. And I’m with Cisco on the Byrne run in Fantastic Four. The concensus seems to be that it’s one of the high points of the series. If you want an FF era best forgotten, try the Chris Claremont run, in which he transplants the FF into his plots from Uncanny X-Men and Excalibur. > [@](#): > > Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase > I have no idea what retconned nonsense has been done to the FF these days The Fantastic Four since Waid/Weiringo took over a few years ago is the best it’s been since Byrne left. It’s easily among the best mainstream superhero titles on the market. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-4-cast-news-chiklis-ben-grimm/254277.md?page=2)