Fantastic Four Movie A Fantastic Flop
This movie continues the sad Hollywood trend of comic book rehashing — among the list are Superman, Supergirl, Batman, Daredevil, The Hulk, Spiderman, and now the lesser known Fantastic Four.
What makes this movie the worst of the worst in the copycat genre is that the movie version does little to improve upon all the basic comic book storytelling building blocks.
- Radiation exposure to get superpowers — The Hulk and Spiderman knows what that feels like.
- The Evil’s rise to power driven by a misguided slight attributed to our hero — hey, come join the club Lex Luther, The Goblin, The Goblin Jr, Magneto.
- The love interest / romantic tension. Hmm…MJ for Spiderman, Lois Lane for Superman, Batgirl for Batman, Tom for Jerry…
So in this trite version of the equally trite comic we spend the first third of the movie leading up to the inevitable radiation exposure that turns our hapless crew into The Thing, The Human Torch, Invisible Girl, and the pornographic sounding Mr. Fantastic. Oh, and Dr. Doom gets zapped in there as well.
And how come we don’t get to at least see Jessica Alba nekkid? Man, toss the comic book nerds a bone, willya?
I saw this movie with my brother who is a mild comic book expert. In his youth he collected hundreds — maybe thousands — of the early DC and Marvel series and sealed them carefully in plastic preservation bags. They now all sit in cardboard boxes slowly disintegrating in the crawlspace above my garage.
Sitting over ventis at Starbucks we discussed the various nuances of superpower utterances.
Me: Does that fireguy have to say “Flame On” in order to fly?
Bro: Nah, he just says it. It’s his catch phrase like The Thing always says “It’s clobberin’ time.”
Me: What about the stretch guy? Does he say anything?
Bro: Nah.
Me: What if he said something like “It’s rubba time?” Like MC Hammer. Doo-doo-doo-doo. Can’t touch dat. It’s rubba tahm!
Bro: Nah. Hmm…how about “It’s…time…to…streeeeeeeeeetch.”
Me: Yeah. I think it would be cool if he said this to the bad guys: “Just get to snappin.” Like a rubber band, huh? He could just snap his rubbery fingers at the villains and sort of wag his head from side to side saying “You betta go girl! Just get to snappin’.”
Bro: Nah.
Me: And what about the invisible girl? Did she say anything in the comic?
Bro: Nah. Nuthin. She was a blond though in the comic.
Me: Jessica Alba had kinda blond hair in the movie.
Bro: Nah. It wasn’t really blond. Like in the comic.
Me: Man, whaddya expect? She can’t have really blond hair. She’s Hispanic. You want her to have like white hair? Like Halle Berry in the X-men? That was weird looking.
My brother then went on to tell me that in the comic Dr. Doom really had magic powers that he got in the Old Country rather than getting powers from radiation like he did in the movie.
Me: So you’re saying the movie wasn’t like the comic? It wasn’t very realistic?
Bro: Nah. Not like the comic.
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And that’s what was so wrong about The Fantastic Four. It wasn’t real enough.
At least not as real as the comic.