Naaahhhhhh!
The Big Bang crowd works better as The Watchmen
Leonard – Night Owl
Penny – Silk Spectre
Sheldon – Dr. Manhattan
Although I admit that I can’t see Howard or Raj as Ozymandias, The Comedian, or Rorschach. They’re more like Dollar Bill and Mothman
Stewart can be Moloch
Wil Wheaton, though, I could see as Ozymandias
Amy could be Silhouettte
Bernadette could be the original Silk Spectre.
… and there’s already seven more in the pipeline for 2017 and at least 5 for 2018. So the answer to the “overdose”-question is yes, inevitably.
That’s really it- Johnny and Sue Storm were virtual non-entities in the comics who seemed to be added as vehicles for their superpowers. Only Ben Grimm (The Thing) and Reed Richards had anything resembling personalities. And even then, only Grimm had an interesting personality.
Another thing- there’s not really any conflict among the characters, so that tends to limit the character development to “Gee, I have superpowers, how will I ever adjust?” and then whatever bits and pieces come into play while fighting Dr. Doom.
I suspect that a Fantastic Four movie that doesn’t have BIG external conflict early on, or where it’s only third act big conflict that’s easily solved would do better than one that centers around big conflict and special effects. That way, they could explore the characters and flesh them out more and hopefully the audience would be interested in them and want them to win.
Not true. Johnny had a definite personality, and the horseplay between him and Ben was so good that they spun off a separate series of Torch + Thing in Strange Tales. In fact, even before that The Human Torch had his own series all to himself in ST
Sue, however, was admittedly pretty bland, except for the conflicts to be noted below. I put this down to Stan (and Jack) not knowing how to write female characters. Later FF scripters gave Sue beefier roles.
In the comics, there was a LOT of internal conflict – it really defined the magazines. Sue loved Reed, but she also loved Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Ben and Johnny played pranks on each other. Sue had endless family probl;ems. She and Reed got engaged, then married, all the time wondering if they should.
The FF also had plenty of conflict with The Outside World, not only in the form of supervillains trying to kill them, but from the Neighborhood Association complaining about the noise and dangers, and people claiming damages against the FF (even when not due to supervillain actions), and mobbing them for autographs and the like.
Heck, he’s the hothead who quits the group in Issue #3.
Seems that’s what they tried to do with this version. Either they did it poorly or it wasn’t what critics went expecting. Either way, it doesn’t seem to have connected.
Johnny’s personality was stereotypical Rebel Without a Cause stuff, totally outdated shortly after the comic book was created. The interplay between Johnny and the Thing was pretty good and could be used in a movie. Reed was also an outdated concept, a 40s or 50s style egghead instead of a modern nerd. No need to add anything more about Invisible Barbie.
Cal, your comments about the scale and Kirby Dots are spot on. They are the *Fantastic *Four, they need fantastic imagery to convey that. If there’s a FF story worth putting on film it needs to be in outer space.
I agree… I may not have been clear that I meant that in the movies, it’s almost always a lot of origin-story, then quickly to fighting the bad guys, without a lot of time for there to be anything else.
And maybe non-entities is a bit harsh; more like they don’t have personalities that are interesting to a 21st century person, even one who grew up reading comics in the 70s and 80s.
(FTR, the Venture Bros. take on the Fantastic Four cracks me right up every time they’re in the show.)
What really made the FF in the 1960s were the villains. Most of the Marvel Universe originated in the first 50 FF issues.
The Mole Man
Skrulls
The Miracle Man
Sub-mariner
Dr. Doom
Puppet-Master
Impossible Man
Red Ghost (and his great apes)
Mad Thinker
Rama-Tut (Kang the Conquerer)
Molecule Man
Hate-Monger
Infant Terrible
the Watcher
Diablo (and Dragon Man)
Invincible Man
Attuma
the Frightful Four
the Inhumans
Galactus
Silver Surfer
A few misses but mostly that’s the basis for ten million future issues in every title. And Stan brought in every other hero for guest-starring roles - Hulk, Avengers, X-Men, Daredevil - creating the tied-together, everybody lives in the same real-world city that killed DC’s fake America. And as a footnote, issue #52 introduced the Black Panther.
That’s the most productive run of comics ever, and you can argue that it’s the best because something new and industry-shaking happened every issue for five years. As a kid I dropped DC instantly; that was all the Fantastic Four. The other titles were extras. They may have been superseded, like most pioneers, but to me it’s like arguing about the place of The Beatles in rock.
The character got new life in the pages of FF, but he first appeared in print in 1939. As for guest shots from other characters, it’s also worth noting that the Four prominently feature in (and are on the cover of) The Amazing Spider-Man #1.
I know next to nothing about this new FF movie, except that it has the (apparently) requisite long drawn out origin story. I doubt anyone really cares. When I was reading superhero comics as a kid, it didn’t bother me the least to not know the specifics of the character’s back story. It even added a bit of mystery.
And so did the Human Torch. What difference did that make for the actual readers of comics in 1963?
Predictable. Dark, gritty, characters made way too young juts to appeal to the youth audience, and as one reviewer said “the near-absence of humor”.
Reviews don’t look good so far:
The Ultimate version is a teenager, and the movie is clearly drawing very heavily from those books - the scene in the new trailer of Reed showing Ben his garage-built teleporter with the toy car is straight out of that book.
Reed was portrayed as a young college student in a flashback in Fantastic Four Annual #2, in a scene at the University where he and Victor Von Doom were students (Reed advised him not to go on with the experiment that ultimately destroyed Dr. Doom’s face, saying there were errors in his calculations (which von Doom caught him looking over). Of course, this just encouraged him to push on).
I believe the young Reed lacked the gray. But in the Q&A in the early issues, Marvel claimed that the graying hair at his temples didn’t prove that Reed was old – it was supposedly the result of his experiences in military service (much as president seem to age and gray while in office – look at GWB or Obama at the beginnings of their terms and only a few years later)
This might need a new thread:
What can’t filmmakers get Dr Doom right? I always like the Fantastic Four and really the only thing wrong with the first 2 modern films was the horrible way they screwed up Dr. Doom and Galactus. Why?! Why not stay true to the source material? Did they think Galactus was too over-the-top or something? He’s supposed to be.
I thought with the reboot they might get it right, but now Dr. Doom is some inter-dimensional being or something?!
Why?
Even from the beginning, in 1961, Reed and Ben were both explicitly stated to be World War II veterans. That would put them at least into their thirties at the time of the space flight, maybe even close to forty, depending on exactly when they’d enlisted and how old they were at the time. That’s not “old,” exactly, but it is a bit more mature than we often think of superheroes as being. Reed did seem to develop the gray pretty early on in the book’s history. There was always a pretty significant age gap between Reed and Sue, which I thought was kind of interesting for a comic book romance.
[QUOTE=Fenris]
*and none of this interdimensional portal crap. It was a rocket because it’s cooler.
[/QUOTE]
I suspect that one reason screenwriters can’t help tinkering with the FF’s origin story is that their origin is hard to take seriously today. Not only is it very strongly tied to Cold War concerns–beating “the Reds” into space is their primary goal–but it requires us to believe that Reed Richards, otherwise portrayed as the most brilliant man on the planet, was so reckless as to blast into space accompanied by his completely untrained girlfriend and her even more untrained teenage brother, in a rocket that he knew did not have adequate radiation shielding. And we can be sure he did know this, because his pilot (the only qualified member of the crew, by the way) told him so in those very words.
It’s a badly dated origin story, a throwback to the pulp days when the hero cobbled together a spaceship in his backyard and loaded his pals aboard to go on an adventure, and very out of character for the level-headed genius that Reed would soon become.
I don’t even think Doctor Doom is over the top. He’s Iron Man with some Doctor Strange thrown in with aspirations to rule the world. The biggest misstep the movies have borrowed from the Ultimate comics is marrying Doom’s origin to that of the FF. Part of the beauty of the FF/Doom relationship is that while the FF is about cooperative optimistic futurism for the betterment of mankind (think Star Trek), Doom’s story is that of a solitary egomaniac misanthrope who uses technology alongside magic to attain some kind of old-world medieval monarchy with him as supreme rule.
I firmly believe the best way to bring these characters to life in film would be:
[ul]
[li]Movie 1: FF origin in which pre-accident Doom has no more than a 15 minute cameo with the foursome. FF repel invasion by the Skrulls in general, Super-Skull (an alien that duplicates their powers) in particular.[/li][li]Movie 2: Doom origin documenting his underclass Romani origins, his self-made ascent, his different perspective on the FF cameo crossover, his accident and acquisition of the armor and subsequent overthrow of Latveria. FF appear only in cameo.[/li][li]Movie 3: FF vs Doom. Doom is vanquished but not dead.[/li][li]**Movie 4: Silver Surfer origin: **Norrin Radd saves his planet from the world-devourer Galactus, only to send him on the path to Earth. FF don’t appear except maybe as a post-credits stinger.[/li][li]**Movie 5: **FF vs Galactus, Doom steals the Surfer’s power, FF and Surfer vs. Cosmic Doom.[/li][/ul]
Bam! Instant diverse multi-film franchise.
Also, do you want to see how kickass a realistic Doctor Doom could be? Check this out.
The Red Scare component is dated (although you could argue that Americans are getting increasingly tense with Putin’s Russia) but the Red Scare was even more pronounced in Iron Mac comics yet the filmmakers found a way to update the convention rather than discarding it. Moreover, space exploration is as cutting edge today as it ever was. (Yes, you’re essentially seeing the FF’s Pogo Plane).
