I didn’t think the FF as characters were handled all that badly; they seem to have gotten the Johnny-Ben dramatic right, at least, and while Reed-Sue wasn’t perfect (especially due to the insertion of Doom as a romantic rival) they at least had some sense of why Reed could be a frustrating boyfriend/spouse. Doom was completely wrong.
The second movie was just a mess. I don’t think it would have even been green-lit, except that the studio wanted to keep the rights to the Silver Surfer (or something like that).
I do not concur. As above, *The Incredibles *took a fundamentally similar concept and was an amazing success. Studios like Pixar/Disney and Dreamworks have demonstrated that they understand how to make films that are not trite or silly, and really do hold as much appeal for adults as children. Saying that children were the target audience is no excuse for sloppy film-making.
I also disagree with this. Check out the “Ultimate Alliance” video game. They demonstrated a CG version of Galactus that manages to be true to the comics, realistic, and menacing all at the same time. I didn’t think it was possible, but somehow they pulled it off. There is no reason the film could not have done the same.
Agreed. When I read the comic Doom, I hear James Earl Jone’s voice. Doom should be regal, powerful, majestic, and magnanimous. The movie version was none of these things. They completely failed to capture the villain who is arguably the most important character in the FF pantheon.
Yeah, although they were panned by critics & fanboys alike the fact that both FF films turned a decent profit is the main answer. I had always thought that the first one bombed (judging by what I saw of it) and that’s why there was such a big gap for the sequel (and I thought Silver Surfer maybe was direct to video or something!). I also thought Green Lantern suffered from the same flaws, extremely silly & juvenile, and it tanked accordingly. And yet FF succeeded (twice!)
I’ve only seen the first X-Men (and the *Wolverine *prequel) but both of those were pretty damn good, and not just for comic book movies. They went in with the idea that I feel all superhero films should: Take it more than moderately seriously, otherwise it’s a dork running around in underoos!
Jessica Alba is a given as mere eye candy, and I have no idea who played flame guy, but both Ioan Gruffudd and Michael Chiklis are genuinely great actors who have done a lot of quality material. I really expected, if not Christian Bale, at least Robert Downey Jr from them! They should be ashamed of themselves (I know, all the way to the bank…)
Oh, I completely agree with you. In fact, I hate it when criticism of a bad kids movie is met with “Geez, it’s a kids movie, whaddaya want from it?”
Just to clarify, when I started my post with “Couldn’t it just be” I was not merely using a rhetorical device. I haven’t actually seen these movies so I really was just asking to be informed. Mine was just the third reply, before the discussion of how these movies were actually bad. My question was prompted by the OP’s assertion that the movies were:
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incredibly juvenile, as though the studio made a conscious decision that the target audience was going to be boys 12 and under.
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I was aware that the films were financially successful, so I was just wondering if they were just never interested in drawing from the Iron Man, Dark Knight, and X-Men audiences. I figured a significant reason why the film so offends fans of the more adult-oriented comic book movies might simply be that this one really was intentionally targeting “boys 12 and under”.
The replies so far don’t seem to be “I wasn’t the target audience”.
The replies seem more to be “I was the target audience, but the movies were bad” which, having not seen the movies, I am perfectly ready to accept as being the case.
I’ve said it a billion times… Reese m-f-ing Witherspoon was born to play Sue Richards.
They aren’t bad movies, they just aren’t good either. The Thing/Torch stuff was pretty solid–if you didn’t like that, you’re just not going to like half of the entire core concept of the FF.
The 2nd was an improvement and tried to smooth over some of the crappy Doom stuff from the first.
While I agree Alba wasn’t right for the role, she wasn’t enough to take down the entire films, as the rest of the team was solid. The scripts just plain sucked. The FF were always more SF adventurers than super-heroes, anyway - they should have embraced that aspect.
He’s a full quarter of the team. He’s the driving force behind the entire story. He’s the leader of the group, and the brains.
And he stretches.
I don’t think it’s possible to make stretching look anything other than goofy- at least, not in the “real” world. Even if you can get the CGI right, you’re still going to run into the obvious issues with the ability- clothing, balance, that sort of thing. CGI is still in the Uncanny Valley, so how do you CGI someone into what is quite literally a caricature of the human body without it looking even worse?
And if a character that won’t work is such a central character, how do you make the rest of the movie anything other than silly?
It must be hard to come up with situations where stretchiness, invisibility, fire, and rock monsters all have an equal amount to contribute. And frankly, if I was an evil villain I’d make sure to come up with very specific situations where none of those would be useful at all.
It’s such a weird and disparate collection of super powers.
Superman is…well..Superman
Batman is a brooding billionaire in a cape
Iron Man is a brooding billionaire in an armored power suit
The other Avengers are a Hulk, a Norse thunder god, a jingoistic super soldier and a couple of assassins.
Wolverine is an angry, indestructable badass with claws (and his movie still sucked).
Stretchy genius, invisibility, rock monster and “flame on!” seem pretty lame by comparison.
They’re not in the same FILM universe. As has been explained upthread, Fox owns the Fantastic Four rights and Disney/Marvel retained the Avengers rights and those of their component characters. (And Sony owns the film rights to Spider-Man.)
For the duration that those separate studios own those particular characters’ film rights, you will never see Captain America and the Human Torch in the same film, so there’s no confusion.
That was the most glaringly stupid product placement that has ever been in a movie. I mean it doesn’t even make sense. Reed built the Fantasticar. Why would he put a Dodge logo on it? They didn’t build it. And how could it have a Hemi? Its a jet car. Hemis are internal combustion engines named because of the hemispherical shape of the combustion chamber of each cylinder. You can’t have a hemi jet engine. Makes my teeth itch everytime I’ve seen it.
Indeed, lots of the early Fantastic Four comics are bit silly for that reason (among others).
Invisible Girl was particularly silly, since her early personality seemed to revolve around wanting to go shopping or get her hair done at the beauty parlor, plus her superpower was basically super-fleeing-from-bad-guys.