The Thing was incredible. The rendering was perfect. His face emoted. He made subtle rock-on-rock sound when he moved. I really didn’t think he would be realizable like that. The voice actor did a great job. Thoroughly impressed.
Sue Storm was well done. I know she experienced alot of power creep over the years like many old superheroes do in comic books but she seemed a tad to godlike.
Johnny Storm was good but not great. I think they did a good job not portraying him as a womanizing jock for the most part. I don’t understand how he was able to flame on and off with the spacesuit on and not destroying it but movies.
Silver Surfer was incredible. She looked and moved great. The surfing moves didn’t feel forced. I think the female SS played better than a male just because SS has always been kind of androgenous looking, like David Bowie-ish.
Mole Man was fun.
Last but not least… Reed. I think he was acted well enough but I think Pedro was miscast. I think he’s a fine actor but there are 100 better choices to fill that role so it feels like they cast him to catch the Pedro spark. He was too old, not tall enough and should have dropped the mustache. Reed Richards is as clean cut as they come, no stache.
I thought the Doom scene was a let down. Partly because we already knew he was the new big bad before this movie came out and partly because I hated the mask they showed. It looked like something off of the Masked Singer show.
The answer is always “unstable molecules”. Reed had already made Johnny’s costume fireproof and his own super stretchy. Reed was just too busy to create a Torch spacesuit untl a space mission was on the schedule.
Saw it, the goody 1960s aesthetic was amusing up to a point, but I dozed off a few times during the overly talky parts, likely my fault for eating a big meal beforehand.
I mentally drifted in and out a bit until Johnny said “How do we get Galactus to Times Square?” and I instinctively muttered “Practice.”
I saw it today, and enjoyed it enough. I was amused by the retro-futuristic New York. Very advanced technologies (like faster than light travel) while other technologies were ridiculously obsolete (like the machine cutting a vinyl record to record audio, or the magnetic tape cartridges used in H.E.R.B.I.E.). And, by the way, given Galactus’s interest in eating planets, why didn’t he just stick with unpopulated ones?
Franklin has “psionic powers” which is basically anything the writers find useful. In most cases it comes down to the ability to alter reality. In the comic books, his future self (Psi-Lord) often journeys to the present Marvel universe as an adult. The “real time” Franklin is about 13 and has his powers (unreliably) held in check by various blocks created by his father.
Often with the limitation that his conscious control ain’t great, which lets the writers (a) have his subconscious do whatever needs doing, even while they’re (b) off the hook for explaining why he doesn’t solve various problems at will…
He’s 13? That’s hilarious. I remember reading Franklin storylines when I was 13, 40+ years ago.
And to add, on at least 2 occasions Reed has been forced to lobotomize Franklin to keep his uncontrolled powers from destroying the world/solar system/universe.
Makes me think of that moment where Galactus pulls up the clump of dirt and trees and take pleasure from smelling it. Johnny even reacts like “what. the. hell?” He likes a meal with some “umph” to it.
Saw it yesterday. I really liked it. Much like the new Superman, it felt like a lived in comic book world without any embarassment. I was a little surprised they didn’t easter egg other heroes but did plenty of villains.
Natasha Lyonne showing up was fun. Can’t wait to see the Red Ghost scenes that were cut.
I honestly surprised by the story because I really thought they were adapting a different comic story in preparation for Doomsday.
Spoiler speculation and comic book story:
I thought the way to get them to the MCU was to actually have them fail to save their earth and escape to the movie 616 dimension–something that was kind of done during the Battleworld story which supposedly is a major inspiration for A: Doomsday
I finally got around to seeing it today. One minor detail I noticed was that during the meeting of representatives from nations around the world the seat for Latveria was unoccupied. Wouldn’t it have been in Doom’s interest to help save earth? He would have been devoured a long with everyone else. I also enjoyed Galactus stretching Reed like a rubber band; I though he might flip him over to New Jersey (or Queens, depending on which way he was facing). Another detail that only a librarian would be likely to catch is that The Very Hungry Caterpillar would not have been out yet 4 years after the events in the movie took place.
He would have been busy trying to beat Reed to the punch. No way is Latveria going to cooperate with a plan dreamed up by Reed Richards. No doubt, when he next faces off against the FF he will be fueled by resentment for them saving the world and not him.
I just watched this, as it is now streaming on Disney+. I thought it was perfectly charming, and competently and entertainingly made, in a way that a few Marvel movies have failed to be (I’m looking at you, Ant Man 3). But if fell a fair bit below genuinely being good. Some complaints:
(1) the central moral quandary is a genuinely difficult one. And it was just papered over with “oh, we love our family”. Yeah, but so does everyone else. It’s not hideously evil to at least discuss making a horrible horrible choice. And there are possible options like “maybe we offer that we’ll all go with galactus, and raise the baby together with him or something”. I’m not saying that those are good options or that that’s actually where i would want a movie to go. But “no one ever makes a tough call, because if we all stick together we’ll always win” is a breezily overoptimistic and uninteresting place for a story to go (it was dumber in the Last Jedi, but still dumb here)
(2) As is often the case in movies like this, everything happens way too fast. How fast did they build and deploy the largest worldwide engineering project in history? like, 18 hours? There’s a certain amount of stretching of that kind of thing I don’t mind, and obviously it’s not really the point, but this was just distractingly silly.
(3) Could have used some more clarity about why galactus eats only occupied planets, where this hunger comes from, etc. Thanos’s motivation is really dumb (obviously could just snap fingers and double resources) but at least we know what it is.
The fact that Galactus wanted the kid explicitly as a replacement, and not in a “his life for your planet” way makes it less of a moral quandary imo. It’s not solving the problem, just replacing Galactus with a baby, who would probably grow up with a vendetta against the people who abandoned him to endless torment.
Four actors from the unreleased The Fantastic Four (1994) movie have cameos: Alex Hyde-White (Reed Richards), Jay Underwood (Johnny Storm), Rebecca Staab (Susan Storm) and Michael Bailey Smith (Ben Grimm). Hyde-White and Staab provide voice-overs as newscasters, while Underwood and Bailey Smith portray construction workers look up at the Human Torch during the opening montage (with Underwood saluting his 2025 counterpart). All four of them also make a brief appearance standing together in period outfits saying “Thank you, Fantastic Four!” later during the same montage.