Post by hector on Jul 11, 2005 23:01:55 GMT
As legend has it, National Comics (now known as DC Comics) publisher Jack Liebowitz was having a nice golf game with fellow friend/competitor Martin Goodman, the publisher of Atlas/Timely (which we now know as Marvel Comics). Jack was ecstatic by the success of his new property, a highly successful new comic book titled ‘Justice League of America’, a group featuring all of National’s most popular heroes. Timely were moderately successful, publishing monster-based comics at the time, but Goodman wanted more. When the game ended, Goodman got in touch with his wife’s nephew, one Stanley Martin Lieber, who was his art director back then and gave him a new assignment: create a superhero team.
Stanley (to whom we will refer from now on only as Stan) was considering quitting writing comics, he no longer found them particularly challenging things to write and was deadly bored of his job. But this new assignment, and a quite significant advice from his wife Joan about writing comics he would like to read, pumped new excitement for his job. He also had an ace up his sleeve, a veteran artist who would soon be arguably the most influential artist in American comic books and who was destined to become no less than The King.
So, with a cover date of November 1961, Fantastic Four #1, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby premiered on the stands. And the world of comics would never be the same. Yes, there have been superheroes before, even groups of superheroes, but this was different. Other superheroes didn’t had much of a personality before (OK, they had zero personality before. In the aforementioned Justice League of America, you literally couldn’t pick apart Superman or Aquaman except for how they looked), one of the star was a literal monster, the kind other superheroes would fight, they didn’t lived in a fictional city, but right there in the heart of Manhattan, and most of all, they didn’t even liked each other that much!
Over the course of little more than 100 issues, Stan and Jack laid the foundations of what we know as the Marvel Universe. Foundations so strong, so powerful, that not even years of the most wrong-headed business and artistical decisions have been able to topple. The Fantastic Four more than honored their name; their adventures were, literally, fantastic, grandiose, and monumental. They were explorers, adventures, and beneath it all, they were also a family.
It has been said that the sense of wonder Stan and Jack gave to the FF has never been fully recaptured ever since.
And Tim Story’s Fantastic Four summer Hollywood production sure didn’t.
Why? Because it was lacking. It lacked director, it lacked script and it lacked budget.
Superheroes doesn’t exist, to make a successful adaptation of one of them you need to approach the subject with vision. Richard Donner knew that very well with his iconic chronicling of the youth and early exploits of the Man of Steel in the first Superman, Christopher Nolan knew it well when he decided to explore Bruce Wayne’s psyche in Batman Begins. A degree of style is also needed; a careful balance between the reality and the fantasy, just as Sam Raimi did in Spider-Man or Brian Singer did in X-Men.
Or you could approach the material with neither vision nor style. Just like Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil), Johnatan Heinsleigh (Punisher) or Rob Bowman (Elektra) did. Like Tim Story did.
No, Fantastic Four is not like Daredevil, and certainly not like Elektra, but not because Tim Story is a better director than Johnson or Bowman, but because of the source material who is simply too powerful, too creative. There are those bits and pieces of true ingenuity that makes Fantastic Four at least an entertaining film.
The story, I believe, is well known. Four individuals, a scientist, a pilot, the scientist’s fiancée and her kid brother, travel to the space in an effort to ‘beat the communist’ in the race to the stars and are bombarded by elusive and mysterious ‘cosmic rays’ and are granted incredible powers. Yep, parts of it don’t make sense (why were the fiancée and his brother there??) and some are just too dated, so the origin must definitely needed an update. The movie does a passable job doing it, yet, it isn’t able to capture the same sense of excitement the original had. In the film, scientist Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and pilot friend Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) ask the billionaire industrialist Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) a grant to research cosmic rays in a space station, and are joined by the now-incredibly smart Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), her hotshot pilot brother Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) and Victor Von Doom himself.
Victor Von Doom is, of course, the evil genius/dictator/world conqueror wannabe Dr. Doom of the comic book. One of the most memorable and interesting villains ever created. And the movie’s greatest fail.
Now, in the comics, Doom hatred and enmity towards Reed goes back years before the accident that turned the four into Fantastic, and Doom was never part of the accident itself. But when adapting a comic book into a two-hour movie, sometimes it’s a good idea to tie the origin of the hero and the villain (as it has been done with Batman, twice) because it’s a good time saving measure and an effective way to contrast the moral differences between the antagonists by juxtaposing their conflicts, but in order for the conflict to be interesting, the characters has to be interesting themselves, something that is sorely lacking in the film version.
Comic Book Doom is an extremely vain and incredibly intelligent individual, who have been jealous towards Reed for the perceived slight that led to his disfigurement. Part of those elements are still present in the movie, but watered down; and movie Doom is little more that a love-sick puppy on a quest for revenge because Reed’s miscalculations led to his body turning into metal and the loss of his company. Julian McMahon is a fine and charismatic actor, and he does a very good job as the morally corrupt plastic surgeon in Nip/Tuck, but he’s completely unable to lend any kind of that charisma, ,gravitas or an imposing presence to Victor Von Doom. Movie makers have the prerogative to change the source material at will, sometimes it’s necessary, sometimes it’s because they want and they can, but the change is not bad in itself, but in how it’s executed, and it is there that the movie version of Dr. Doom fails miserably.
Surprisingly, the best part of the movie is the much-maligned casting, well, except for Guffudd, who is just kind of there. Jessica Alba did a fine job as the levelheaded Invisible Woman, even though she isn’t quite able to convince that she’s a rocket scientist, the role as mediator in the group is filled acceptably. Chiklis is very convincing as the angst-ridden monster with a noble heart and shines in every scene he’s in. But who definitely steals the movie is Chris Evans as the reckless, womanizing and thrill-seeker Human Torch. If anything, the only thing Tim Story was really able to bring properly to the screen was the interaction between them, even if it was only superficially.
That, and a few extremely good moments right out of the comic books are what almost save this movie, and a few years ago, it would have been more than enough to make the movie memorable. But X² spoiled me, Batman Begins spoiled me, so did Spider-Man 2, heck, even The Incredibles spoiled me. Ultimately, Fantastic Four can’t overcome a regular director with limited talent, a script patched from several rewrites that barely makes sense and a Sci-Fi channel movie of the week budget and SFX.
And it should have. The Fantastic Four deserved better.
Stanley (to whom we will refer from now on only as Stan) was considering quitting writing comics, he no longer found them particularly challenging things to write and was deadly bored of his job. But this new assignment, and a quite significant advice from his wife Joan about writing comics he would like to read, pumped new excitement for his job. He also had an ace up his sleeve, a veteran artist who would soon be arguably the most influential artist in American comic books and who was destined to become no less than The King.
So, with a cover date of November 1961, Fantastic Four #1, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby premiered on the stands. And the world of comics would never be the same. Yes, there have been superheroes before, even groups of superheroes, but this was different. Other superheroes didn’t had much of a personality before (OK, they had zero personality before. In the aforementioned Justice League of America, you literally couldn’t pick apart Superman or Aquaman except for how they looked), one of the star was a literal monster, the kind other superheroes would fight, they didn’t lived in a fictional city, but right there in the heart of Manhattan, and most of all, they didn’t even liked each other that much!
Over the course of little more than 100 issues, Stan and Jack laid the foundations of what we know as the Marvel Universe. Foundations so strong, so powerful, that not even years of the most wrong-headed business and artistical decisions have been able to topple. The Fantastic Four more than honored their name; their adventures were, literally, fantastic, grandiose, and monumental. They were explorers, adventures, and beneath it all, they were also a family.
It has been said that the sense of wonder Stan and Jack gave to the FF has never been fully recaptured ever since.
And Tim Story’s Fantastic Four summer Hollywood production sure didn’t.
Why? Because it was lacking. It lacked director, it lacked script and it lacked budget.
Superheroes doesn’t exist, to make a successful adaptation of one of them you need to approach the subject with vision. Richard Donner knew that very well with his iconic chronicling of the youth and early exploits of the Man of Steel in the first Superman, Christopher Nolan knew it well when he decided to explore Bruce Wayne’s psyche in Batman Begins. A degree of style is also needed; a careful balance between the reality and the fantasy, just as Sam Raimi did in Spider-Man or Brian Singer did in X-Men.
Or you could approach the material with neither vision nor style. Just like Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil), Johnatan Heinsleigh (Punisher) or Rob Bowman (Elektra) did. Like Tim Story did.
No, Fantastic Four is not like Daredevil, and certainly not like Elektra, but not because Tim Story is a better director than Johnson or Bowman, but because of the source material who is simply too powerful, too creative. There are those bits and pieces of true ingenuity that makes Fantastic Four at least an entertaining film.
The story, I believe, is well known. Four individuals, a scientist, a pilot, the scientist’s fiancée and her kid brother, travel to the space in an effort to ‘beat the communist’ in the race to the stars and are bombarded by elusive and mysterious ‘cosmic rays’ and are granted incredible powers. Yep, parts of it don’t make sense (why were the fiancée and his brother there??) and some are just too dated, so the origin must definitely needed an update. The movie does a passable job doing it, yet, it isn’t able to capture the same sense of excitement the original had. In the film, scientist Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and pilot friend Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) ask the billionaire industrialist Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) a grant to research cosmic rays in a space station, and are joined by the now-incredibly smart Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), her hotshot pilot brother Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) and Victor Von Doom himself.
Victor Von Doom is, of course, the evil genius/dictator/world conqueror wannabe Dr. Doom of the comic book. One of the most memorable and interesting villains ever created. And the movie’s greatest fail.
Now, in the comics, Doom hatred and enmity towards Reed goes back years before the accident that turned the four into Fantastic, and Doom was never part of the accident itself. But when adapting a comic book into a two-hour movie, sometimes it’s a good idea to tie the origin of the hero and the villain (as it has been done with Batman, twice) because it’s a good time saving measure and an effective way to contrast the moral differences between the antagonists by juxtaposing their conflicts, but in order for the conflict to be interesting, the characters has to be interesting themselves, something that is sorely lacking in the film version.
Comic Book Doom is an extremely vain and incredibly intelligent individual, who have been jealous towards Reed for the perceived slight that led to his disfigurement. Part of those elements are still present in the movie, but watered down; and movie Doom is little more that a love-sick puppy on a quest for revenge because Reed’s miscalculations led to his body turning into metal and the loss of his company. Julian McMahon is a fine and charismatic actor, and he does a very good job as the morally corrupt plastic surgeon in Nip/Tuck, but he’s completely unable to lend any kind of that charisma, ,gravitas or an imposing presence to Victor Von Doom. Movie makers have the prerogative to change the source material at will, sometimes it’s necessary, sometimes it’s because they want and they can, but the change is not bad in itself, but in how it’s executed, and it is there that the movie version of Dr. Doom fails miserably.
Surprisingly, the best part of the movie is the much-maligned casting, well, except for Guffudd, who is just kind of there. Jessica Alba did a fine job as the levelheaded Invisible Woman, even though she isn’t quite able to convince that she’s a rocket scientist, the role as mediator in the group is filled acceptably. Chiklis is very convincing as the angst-ridden monster with a noble heart and shines in every scene he’s in. But who definitely steals the movie is Chris Evans as the reckless, womanizing and thrill-seeker Human Torch. If anything, the only thing Tim Story was really able to bring properly to the screen was the interaction between them, even if it was only superficially.
That, and a few extremely good moments right out of the comic books are what almost save this movie, and a few years ago, it would have been more than enough to make the movie memorable. But X² spoiled me, Batman Begins spoiled me, so did Spider-Man 2, heck, even The Incredibles spoiled me. Ultimately, Fantastic Four can’t overcome a regular director with limited talent, a script patched from several rewrites that barely makes sense and a Sci-Fi channel movie of the week budget and SFX.
And it should have. The Fantastic Four deserved better.
