Fanboy Vs. Zombie: Fantastic Four

I’ve finally seen the Fantastic Four movie. So here at last is my review.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD. I don’t think there’s going to be much spoilage, but Bill doesn’t like to know anything about a movie before he sees it, an he still hasn’t seen it.

Any movie adaptation can be viewed two ways.

1)As a work of art on its own completely separate from it’s source material.
2)As an adaptation.

It’s a little hard for me to evaluate the FF movie on it’s own. Someone who’s never read a Fantastic Four comic would be in a better position to do so, but I’ll try. I guess I’d have to say it was just ok. I wasn’t bored, but I wasn’t excited either. It held my attention just enough to keep me from turning it off, but not enough to make me really care about anybody. The effects and action bits are competently done, but are lacking something. I know it’s hard to come up with a good action sequence when it all seems like it’s been done before. It’s even harder now with computer effects to create something that makes the audience go “WOW!” It’s just too easy now to fling cars about and tear down buildings, so we’ve seen it all already. Sadly, FF failed to find a way to make all the smashing and breaking interesting.

The only exception to the competent effects was Mr. Fantastic. I’m not going to blame the filmmakers for this. I think it just might not be possible to do the stretching thing in a live action movie and not have it look silly. Oh, and the Thing looked like a ninja turtle.

Now, on to how good of an adaptation it is. Some things were good and some not so much. Lets start with the origin. I’m sure a lot of FF fans are pissed about it. Changing the origin was almost unavoidable. The decision to set the movie in 2005 and not 1961 was the first change. This most basic decision means that the rest of the origin needs to be changed or at least adjusted. Sneaking onto a government base to launch an experimental rocket before the “commies” beat us too it, just doesn’t make sense in 2005. However, today we have things like the X-Prize, so maybe the writers could have come up with something that still involved an experimental rocket, instead of the space station they decided to go with. Tying Doom’s origin into the 4’s may have saved time, but was, I think, a mistake.

What they did get right was the personalities of the 4. That is to say Reed and Sue didn’t have much personality while Ben and Johnny were a couple of childish assholes, just like in the comics. Bill thinks Jessica Alba is wrong for Sue. I say the Invisible Female is 1) female and 2) blonde. Jessica was female and blonde (and occasionally invisible.) Anyone who thinks there is more to the character than that has read some issues that I haven’t, which is quite likely since I’m not really a big FF fan. Jessica seemed to be trying to give Sue some kind of personality, but I think all she really succeeded in doing was burying her own personality, which is probably what was called for.

Now let’s talk about Doom. What they did to Dr. Victor Von Doom was just inexcusable. They turned him into a capitalist, for Bob’s sake. Not that capitalists aren’t evil, ‘cause they are. But that’s just not who Doom is. They gave him powers that didn’t make much sense. And he becomes a super villain because the bank shut him down, or the board voted him out, or some lame ass capitalist thing. Or maybe it was because Sue didn’t love him. Whatever it was, it all just seemed petty and small. This Doom was no world conqueror, just a sad schmuck who lost his job and his girl at the same time. And what’s with his mask? In the movie it’s some kind of presentation gift from the grateful people of Latveria. It seems that in Latveria when people want to honor you they give you a metal full head mask instead of a plaque or the key to the city. Then you can keep it around the office incase you get disfiguring powers and go nuts and suddenly find yourself in need of a full head mask.

As I said before, I’m not a big FF fan, but I acknowledge their importance to the history of comics. They deserved a better movie than this. Maybe the Roger Corman version wasn’t so bad after all. I can only give the Fantastic Four 3 out of 5 Fanboy Fans.