Monday, May 28, 2007

Comic book extravaganza: #9: Fantastic Four

2005
Staring: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans, Julian McMahon
Director: Tim Story


Okay, many people don’t think this is a very good comic book film. The film takes itself as seriously as the comic book did, which is to say that it wasn’t that serious of a film. I suspect after the very serious X-men films that people just couldn’t handle it, which makes me sometimes wonder how many can stomach the heavy “camp” humor that the Spider-Man films dabble in.

The biggest problem with this film, as with many other comic book films, is that it is an origin film. For once it would be nice to have a comic book film that doesn’t start “at the start.” I’d love to have a film more like Batman – while it still is near the start of the “mythology” it would save a lot of buildup. This was the major problem with the film – it was too boring for the first hour or so of the film and never really picks up till the climax.

Personally the casting was near perfect. Sure Jessica Alba wasn’t the best actress out there that could have been cast (few young actresses can actually play a believable scientist – Just watch the dire “World is Not Enough” or “Alone in the Dark” for two of the “best” examples of terrible “scientists”).

Funny fact: This was not the first Fantastic Four film. Roger Corman produced an unreleased 1994 film. I remember all the way back whenever I was up at 7:00am on Saturdays watching the 1994 cartoon version in the morning.

Frankly, I have more high hopes that the sequel, Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer will be vastly superior and surpass it on every level.

Verdict: *** ½ /*****

1 comment:

Matt Ramone said...

They ruined Dr. Doom, who might be the greatest comic book villain ever (other than Thanos, but that's for another debate...)

They reduced what could have been a sypathetic, layered character into "rarrr! i are made of metal and shoot electricity!"

That said, the previews make the new one look like it'll be a feast of thrills, if not a substantive story.