The Fantastic Four movie...
Jul. 31st, 2005 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmerWell, I've seen the reviews, and some weren't all that positive. I haven't heard any un-positive reviews from people I know, but today I went and saw it, and wow!
How can I describe it? Maybe like this: I imagine I was hired to write a screenplay, and I was told "keep the essential spirit of the comic book; make it so every fan notices a ton of interesting bits that were obviously taken from the history. Make a few changes to make it marketable in today's world, and if you piss off the *really* die-hard fans with a few alterations in history, it's okay, so long as it makes the story flow into a nice, two hour movie."
Okay, if I was told that, I, personally, could not imagine pulling off a better job than they did with this movie. I can't imagine *anyone* doing better. I mean, I can accept that someone *could* have... but I can't imagine, for the life of me, how.
Possible spoilers follow:
Okay. Sue Storm never had a big romance with Doctor Doom. Big whoop, it made the Reed-Sue romance rocky for a reason. Dr. Doom doesn't have super-powers in the comic book, he's a super-technology guy and has some magical abilities when the plot calls for it. In the movie he's got powers (and from the FF's accident - definite break in history), but you know, introducing him without doing it this way would have been a pain.
I loved the way they did Ben Grimm; it was perfect all the way through. At first, I thought the machine Reed built to cure him was going to make him worse, and make him more-exactly match the Thing in the comic books, but halfway through the transformation, I knew exactly what was going to happen, and why.
(Sorry, I'm not saying, but it's really pretty obvious from a plot standpoint.)
A few nitpicks... I think they should have established Sue's force-fields *somehow*... of course, I don't remember how (or if) they ever did in the comic book, either. I mean, they must have; the original Invisible Girl could just turn invisible, nothing else. But even a line about "It seems like you can solidify the same energy that bends light around you..." would have been nice.
I don't know why everyone was so amazed and congratulatory at the end of the movie; Dr. Doom never had a chance to *do* anything that would make people that amazingly grateful that he was stopped.
I don't know how it fits in to the mass market, but for the "I love the comic book, and accept that Hollywood will make some changes" crowd, it might be the best comic book adaptation ever. Except maybe the X-men. Or Spider-man. Or... okay. I guess the adaptations have been getting better over the years :-).
How can I describe it? Maybe like this: I imagine I was hired to write a screenplay, and I was told "keep the essential spirit of the comic book; make it so every fan notices a ton of interesting bits that were obviously taken from the history. Make a few changes to make it marketable in today's world, and if you piss off the *really* die-hard fans with a few alterations in history, it's okay, so long as it makes the story flow into a nice, two hour movie."
Okay, if I was told that, I, personally, could not imagine pulling off a better job than they did with this movie. I can't imagine *anyone* doing better. I mean, I can accept that someone *could* have... but I can't imagine, for the life of me, how.
Possible spoilers follow:
Okay. Sue Storm never had a big romance with Doctor Doom. Big whoop, it made the Reed-Sue romance rocky for a reason. Dr. Doom doesn't have super-powers in the comic book, he's a super-technology guy and has some magical abilities when the plot calls for it. In the movie he's got powers (and from the FF's accident - definite break in history), but you know, introducing him without doing it this way would have been a pain.
I loved the way they did Ben Grimm; it was perfect all the way through. At first, I thought the machine Reed built to cure him was going to make him worse, and make him more-exactly match the Thing in the comic books, but halfway through the transformation, I knew exactly what was going to happen, and why.
(Sorry, I'm not saying, but it's really pretty obvious from a plot standpoint.)
A few nitpicks... I think they should have established Sue's force-fields *somehow*... of course, I don't remember how (or if) they ever did in the comic book, either. I mean, they must have; the original Invisible Girl could just turn invisible, nothing else. But even a line about "It seems like you can solidify the same energy that bends light around you..." would have been nice.
I don't know why everyone was so amazed and congratulatory at the end of the movie; Dr. Doom never had a chance to *do* anything that would make people that amazingly grateful that he was stopped.
I don't know how it fits in to the mass market, but for the "I love the comic book, and accept that Hollywood will make some changes" crowd, it might be the best comic book adaptation ever. Except maybe the X-men. Or Spider-man. Or... okay. I guess the adaptations have been getting better over the years :-).
