The Fantastic Four movie didn't suck [open spoilage]

Cafe Society
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Saw it today, and I’m surprised there isn’t a thread already. I searched and found a thread asking about Mr. Fantastic’s powers, a thread asking for FF backstory, a thread about the trailer, and a thread hoping the movie wouldn’t suck. If a mod feels this thread should be merged or closed or something well, I won’t cry myself to sleep.

Anyway, it didn’t suck. But, the casting could have been better.

Julian McMahon as Victor Von Doom: Didn’t convince me he’s the evil Dr. Doom I know. The actor also never convinced me he was an evil demon on Charmed. He does an okay job of a self-absorbed playboy plastic surgeon on Nip Tuck, and that’s pretty much the character of Dr. Doom. Either he didn’t know how to play Von Doom, or he didn’t care. Or he can’t act that great.

Jessica Alba as Sue Storm: So the new Sue Storm is also a brilliant scientist & MIT grad. I can buy that. Just not as played by Jessica Alba. She’s nice to look at though, and otherwise did a pretty good job of the future Mrs. Richards. She sure can get out of her clothes pretty fast when she wants to go invisible. There she is, being chased down the street by a mob of reporters & admirers, she rounds the corner and whoosh, she’s out of her clothes in like, two seconds! No wonder all the guys are fighting over her. I can’t help wondering though, what’d she do with her wallet & keys? :eek:

Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards: Hmm. Didn’t seem quite old or professorish enough to me, but otherwise okay. He might actually have done a better job as Von Doom. I think it’s his eyes. They seem a bit malevolent at times. They did a pretty good job of his stretching powers, and I liked it when Johnny, upon seeing it the first time said, “that’s gross.” I felt better about it, like the writers knew he was going to have the weirdest, silliest looking powers.

Chris Evans as Johnny Storm: Man, that boy’s got a body on him. Saying he’s got a “nice body” is sorta like saying Bill Gates is financially “well off.” He was well cast. All the girls want him, all the boys want to be him (and possibly want him), he’s cocky, hot-tempered, a thrill seeking daredevil, a prankster. Yep, I liked his portrayal. They did a good job with his & Ben Grimm’s picking on each other. “Where are you ears?” Great job with his flame powers. I loved the scene where he jumped off the building, gambling that he would actually be able to fly, then blasted away (flame on!) with that heat seeking missile right on his tail. Question, what’s this “never go nova” thing? It vaguely rings a bell, but I can’t remember for sure if that was something from the original comics? Was there really a danger he’d set the earth’s atmosphere on fire if he ever went nova?

Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm: I really like Michael Chiklis, so I’m biased. But what the hey, I think he did a pretty good job of Ben Grimm. His Thing costume could have been a little better. Was it a costume, or was it CGI? It looked a bit too much like it was made of clay, rather than rock. I suppose the tragedy of his character is that he is really ugly, and he can’t turn if off like the others can. In the comics he eventually evolved into a more “cute” Thing, which made it hard to believe when people were supposed to react with fear & horror upon seeing him.

Kerry Washington as Alicia Masters: Huh? Our shy, sensitive sculptor Alicia is now all street-wise and hangs out in bars?

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Now, that’s great movie criticism.

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I enjoyed it. They spent too much time on the back story and not enough on a real plot, but it was well done. The special effects were pretty good.

Yes, Jessica Alba was not how I had pictured Sue Storm, but she is smokin’ hot, so I forgive her.

I agree, Johny Storm was well cast.

Over all, I thought it was an OK prequel, but they need to have a real adventure.

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Now, Walloon, you need a little perspective. Here’s the thing: everyone expected that it would suck, and suck big time. So, when it turns out to be watchable, mildly enjoyable, not overly stupid (the way most comic book movies are), then “didn’t suck” is a way of saying “exceeded expectations.”

No one is going to say it’s a great movie, very few will watch it more than once or buy the DVD, it’s not going to make Oscar lists or 10-best lists (probably not even 20-best lists)… but when you go in expecting it to be laughably bad, and it turns out to be moderately OK, then “didn’t suck” is actually quite a compliment.

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I guess I’m bemoaning that fact that modern vocabulary has shrunken to something either “sucks” or “doesn’t suck.” (Back in the stone age, say, before 1990, you couldn’t even say something “sucks” on broadcast television, it was considered that vulgar.)

Just commenting.

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That attitude is double-plus ungood.

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That’s nothing. In 1957 you couldn’t say “pants” on TV.
Thought there were numerous way it could be improved, the FF movie was okay; not as good as either X-Men or Spider-Man movie, but comparable to the Hulk film and miles above the Dolph Lungdren Punisher flick.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, to be sure, but it was fun to see Stan again.

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It was better than I thought it would be, but not as good as it easily could have been.

I hope a sequel gets it right.

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The Bolshoi’s doing The Nutcracker in my pants!

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1957 Audience: gasp!

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Hey! Watch your language!

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I originally posted this in my LJ:

FF was not a bad movie, but it will bomb at the box office.

And I blame George Lucas.

See, a little over 30 years ago, if you looked at the history of exciting movies, you had westerns, and you had horror movies, and you had James Bond movies, and science fiction, and thrillers, and they all had their adventurous moments and they all had stretches of time, say, five to ten minutes at a time, where people were acting and developing their characters and advancing the plot and nothing was actually exploding or dying or having special effects exerted upon it, and we were all okay with that. These were terrific movies.

Then George made that stoopid Star Wars movie. And his basic movie-making theory was, “Let’s take a 3 hour movie and cut it down to 2 hours by taking out absolutely every scrap of movie that does not either (a) advance the plot or (b) blow something up.” He cut the movie faster, and faster, and faster, until it got so incomprehensively fast that people couldn’t make any sense at all of what was going on, then backed off a little bit, and released the movie. That’s his gift to cinema.

Fast-forward 30 years. FF4 has some really good actors in it. There’s actually some decent writing for a comic book movie. The sets are, well, fantastic. Every single second with Johnny Storm on screen is solid gold, especially the scenes where he interacts with his sister, Sue. The special effects were reasonably great, given that they went for the rubber-suit Thing rather than the CGI thing, which is probably a good idea, because we all saw The Hulk, didn’t we? It’s got a plot. It’s got some really pretty people on screen. And you know what?

There are chunks of the movie, 5-10 minutes long, where nothing is blowing up or having special effects inflicted upon it, and, after 30 years of George Lucas’s movies, it seems boring in comparison. If this movie had been released in 1976, just before Star Wars came out, even with 1976-level technology, it would have been an absolute smash hit, summer blockbuster movie, and people would still be talking about it. Today? Nope.

Thanks, George.

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Ethilrist, I think it’s done pretty well at the box office. From what I can tell, it’s been in the top 10 the whole time it’s been out, at one point it was number one, and it’s spent most of its time ahead of War of the Worlds. Depending on where you check, as of today it’s either still at number 10, or it’s just dropped to number 11.

That’s a pretty good showing, I think. I’m looking forward to an even better sequel, now that we have the origin stuff out of the way.

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I don’t have the numbers on how much money it’s made–it doesn’t matter so much how it ranks, after all…

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I thought both Susan and Victor were written and cast wrong, but Johnny and Ben were damn near perfect.

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The movie has made much more money than the studio thought it would… I think it was a projected 30 million opening weekend… but it made 60 which shocked everyone because the buzz was so bad.
Yes Sue was cast incredibly wrong… I have said it before, if ever there was a genre role that Resse Witherspoon was born to play… Sue Storm was it.

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I checked on Yahoo and FF has grossed almost $149 million over six weeks. Is that good?

I honestly don’t know anymore, the numbers get so big these days.

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That number is pretty good. Because of the way box office receipts are paid out to the studios, the big movie production houses want more money up front, rather than later. However, the bottom line is always covered by toys, meal/soft drink promotions, tie-in deals of some sort that it becomes really hard to lose money, at least nowadays.

FTR, I wasn’t impressed by the movie. Barely anything happened. It’s like they took a 30 mins HBO episode and expanded it for the big screen. What was the total course of the movie, in days? Like 6? I agree that Alba was wrong for Sue, but at least I thought that Johnny Storm was good. Chiklis caught The Thing’s emotions pretty well.

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I can agree with that. She’s adorable, kinda valley girl bimbo-ish, and yet I can accept the fact she’s probably smarter than I am, yet she’s soooo adorable you just wanna marry her or something. I think she could totally scrunch up her face and do the “can’t… hold them… back…” nosebleed thing.

I’m not sure how well she’d pull off being Johnny’s older, more mature sister though. Maybe the right writer/director could do it. After all, Johnny is basically a himbo, he could have inherited it from big sis’, and now she’s trying to set it right.

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There’s all sorts details on box-office recepits here. Box Office Mojo is a pretty reliable site.

In a nutshell, it’s made about $285 Million since it was released, worldwide. At this point in it’s run, the studios will likely still be collecting the majority of that, say about 65-70%. So they’ve definitely recouped their (approximately) $100 Million budget. Kudos to them.

I saw the movie last night, basically because my brother wanted to go. Thanks to lowered expectations, I enjoyed it. But in a summer with serious action pieces like ‘War Of The Worlds’, and high-quality comic book fare like ‘Batman Begins’, the thin plot and sub-standard acting of FF really shows up.

Johnny was a caricature, Reed was devoid of any personality, Sue Storm was a plot point, not a character. The only interesting character was Ben Grimm, and Chiklis was the only person who bothered to act.

But hey, Alba looks great in the suit, The Torch was EXTREME!! andthings blew up a lot. Hooray, I guess.

To me the most disappointing thing was Julian McMahon as Doom. I really enjoy his work on Nip/Tuck, and he seemed to just phone this one in. There was no humour in his arrogance and ego, no sparkle of mania in his eye during his descent into madness, in short no sense of the fun of playing a comic-book villain. For pete’s sake, you’re character is named Victor Von Doom. Surely you could have camped it up a little?

thwartme