Sunday, July 24, 2005
So, on a scale of Daredevil (ugh, some vast new realm of suck) to X-Men 2 (yay!) Fantastic Four rates below Incredible Hulk when it comes to Marvel adaptations. It's flaws are fairly obvious, the main one being the cast, all of whom lack any kind of charisma as either heroes or villains, though in their defense the script does not give any of them chance or reason to shine. Ioan Gruffudd is just appalling as Reed Richards and only seems to have got a handle on the character by the final scene, playing someone with the pliability of plastic he acts with the stiffness of an alpine forest. I never watched Dark Angel so I don't know whether Jessica Alba, who plays Sue Storm, makes a career of underwhelming, it's a shame that when she first turns invisible she doesn't stay that way for the rest of the film. Chris Evans seems to be playing a Johnny Storm that was either modeled on or written for Sam Rockwell, and just comes over as a charmless, over-privileged, moron. Michael Chiklis is the best of the bunch as Ben Grimm/moving rockpile The Thing, but with a script that requires him to continually be reminded how he's an inhuman freak he doesn't get much to show much of the humour of the character in the comics. And Julian McMahon as Victor Von Doom, maybe if the script wasn't such a load of arse he might have had a good stab at a memorable baddy, as it is he comes along as strictly third-rate in the pantheon of Marvel movie badies, compared to McKellan, Cox, Nolte, Dafoe and Molina he's extremely poor.
The biggest problem is the script. The biggest problem is the story is an origin story. Now, this was the same difficulty that I think messed up Hulk, perhaps unsurprising as they share a writer. Part of it is the glacial pace of the story, the only fight between the heroes and the nominal baddy of the piece, Doctor Victor 'not a real doctor' Von Doom, doesn't start until about an hour and a quarter in, and this film is only ninety minutes long. Most of Doctor Doom's villainous activity is to skulk around his penthouse and sulk that the inexplicable object of his attention, Sue Storm, doesn't care for him. The Fantastic Four's powers don't properly kick in until nearly halfway through the film and the immediate reaction of Sue and Reed is to hide away trying to find a cure for them, while Ben is shunned by society as a monster, except for Kerry Washington as blind Alicia Masters who sees through the visage to the monster within, yadda yadda. Kerry is onscreen for no more than a cumulative ten minutes at most and acts better than everyone else. With Johnny's aforementioned arrogance we lack a human anchor for the story.
If the whole story of the Four going into space, getting zapped by cosmic rays and getting strange powers could have been condensed into the first half an hour, so the rest of the story was about Doctor Doom's various machinations then it wouldn't have seemed so bad. If the script-writers had thought to give some amusing lines to the cast it would have helped. We have only two action scenes, neither very big, when the Four save some firefighters put in danger by the Thing going out in public and the final fight with Doctor 'not certified by the BMA' Doom.
Fantastic Four, Hulk and, to a degree, Spiderman, all seemed as though their were hamstrung by having to present an origin story for their character. Batman Begins didn't seem to feel this, though perhaps, as with Superman and Smallville, the willingness to pare a story down to the bare essentials and then spin off in something which does not match what is considered 'official continuity' is perhaps something that's an advantage. Bruce Wayne did go 'to the East' to learn the skills he put into practice as Batman, Batman Begins manages to integrate the 'history' with the new story of Ra's Al Ghul to a certain degree of success. But all the Marvel characters have backstories that defy being so easily broken down, Spiderman has to be a jerk so his uncle dies so he learns 'with great power comes great responsibility' but does Johnny Storm really have to take eighty minutes to learn how to fly, does Ben Grimm really have to wait eighty-five to shout "it's clobbering time!"?
The film ends with an immobilised Doctor Doom being shipped to Latveria, the made-up Western Russian homeland of the character, in a shipping container. This film also needs to be locked away and perhaps dumped at sea to protect us all from it's toxicity.
The biggest problem is the script. The biggest problem is the story is an origin story. Now, this was the same difficulty that I think messed up Hulk, perhaps unsurprising as they share a writer. Part of it is the glacial pace of the story, the only fight between the heroes and the nominal baddy of the piece, Doctor Victor 'not a real doctor' Von Doom, doesn't start until about an hour and a quarter in, and this film is only ninety minutes long. Most of Doctor Doom's villainous activity is to skulk around his penthouse and sulk that the inexplicable object of his attention, Sue Storm, doesn't care for him. The Fantastic Four's powers don't properly kick in until nearly halfway through the film and the immediate reaction of Sue and Reed is to hide away trying to find a cure for them, while Ben is shunned by society as a monster, except for Kerry Washington as blind Alicia Masters who sees through the visage to the monster within, yadda yadda. Kerry is onscreen for no more than a cumulative ten minutes at most and acts better than everyone else. With Johnny's aforementioned arrogance we lack a human anchor for the story.
If the whole story of the Four going into space, getting zapped by cosmic rays and getting strange powers could have been condensed into the first half an hour, so the rest of the story was about Doctor Doom's various machinations then it wouldn't have seemed so bad. If the script-writers had thought to give some amusing lines to the cast it would have helped. We have only two action scenes, neither very big, when the Four save some firefighters put in danger by the Thing going out in public and the final fight with Doctor 'not certified by the BMA' Doom.
Fantastic Four, Hulk and, to a degree, Spiderman, all seemed as though their were hamstrung by having to present an origin story for their character. Batman Begins didn't seem to feel this, though perhaps, as with Superman and Smallville, the willingness to pare a story down to the bare essentials and then spin off in something which does not match what is considered 'official continuity' is perhaps something that's an advantage. Bruce Wayne did go 'to the East' to learn the skills he put into practice as Batman, Batman Begins manages to integrate the 'history' with the new story of Ra's Al Ghul to a certain degree of success. But all the Marvel characters have backstories that defy being so easily broken down, Spiderman has to be a jerk so his uncle dies so he learns 'with great power comes great responsibility' but does Johnny Storm really have to take eighty minutes to learn how to fly, does Ben Grimm really have to wait eighty-five to shout "it's clobbering time!"?
The film ends with an immobilised Doctor Doom being shipped to Latveria, the made-up Western Russian homeland of the character, in a shipping container. This film also needs to be locked away and perhaps dumped at sea to protect us all from it's toxicity.
