In the wake of the Fantastic Four teaser trailer I find myself rather whelmed by the whole thing. It seemed to suggest a darker, depressing type of superhero movie with a tone more suited to Batman than the usually brightly coloured and flamboyant Fantastic Four and their pandimensional adventures.
I ask the question of you, the CBM community, why make a ‘Fantasic Four’ movie that isn’t about them at all?
Let’s begin by looking at what seems to have been changed from the comicbook franchise:
For starters it appears that the characters are no longer related. I have written a previous article with my feelings surrounding the changing of a character’s race as a focus so I won’t go into that here. The long and short of it is however that Sue and Johnny
Storm cannot be biological brother and sister. The idea of a family dynamic in the Fantastic Four has always been the main USP of the series, aside from the brilliant villain of Doom it was what really set Marvel’s First Family apart. Through time reed and Sue have married and had children with powers of their own, FF was a unique vehicle for writers to explore what happens to the family unit when it is exposed to ordinary and extraordinary pressures- the death of a loved one (Johnny), the birth of a child, depression (Thing), the breaking of the nuclear family (Civil War). Can a film without a strong family emphasis really be true to the comic?
The origin of the FF has also been drastically altered. It appears Trank is loosely adapting the Ultimate origin story in which an accident in Reed and Doom’s teleportation experiment (Doom’s error) gives all five characters their elemental powers. In the film’s version though we see the FF enter, what I presume to be, teleportation pods; this implies that Richards is experimenting on himself and his friends... If you ask me they all deserve whatever freaky transformations take place if they volunteered to be zapped! What right has the thing to complain now?.. except that someone has stolen his pants....
Also we have the costumes; sure this is only a teaser but I didn’t see a ‘4’ anywhere on eth suits and they are most definitely not a- bright blue b- White c- red and black. If Superman didn’t have a cape or Spidey had no webs I would be furious. Yes there are less fans of FF, hence the comic’s recent cancellation, but surely there will be a little outcry over this?
Throw in that Johnny appears to be a mechanic, Sue looks twice as hot.. I mean old, twice as OLD as Reed (Who looks 12) and the overall serious dark tone of what appears to be an entirely Earth based movie and I have to ask, “Why is this a Fantastic Four movie?”
Yes we can point out that a studio must make films within certain time periods to avoid rights to the properties reverting to, in this case, Marvel. OK. Yeah. Great....
But let’s look with an uncharacteristically positive eye at what we have here:
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A plot that doesn’t seem to follow a specific comic story line. Could we almost call it original?
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Characters that aren’t taken directly from a comic book. If we changed their powers they’d be unrecognisable.
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A unique concept, but one that isn’t taken from source material.
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The director of possibly the most original and one of the best CBMs in recent years (Chronicle).
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A talented, good looking, young cast.
Why isn’t this just a new, original superhero franchise? Imagine that trailer if we had never seen Johnny Flame On or the Thing at the end. I think that it would be a pretty darn awesome trailer for a potentially awesome superhero film. A film that explores the dynamic of a group of people accidentally given powers through an urge to explore and advance. A film that explores the idea of post-humanism- at what stage do we push to far into
improving and adapting God’s original design? It could have really played on that idea we have loved since Mary Shelley- the idea of pushing the boundaries of science to defy nature and improve life but in doing so creating monsters.
Really I suppose this article is not what I thought it would be when I began writing, nor I imagine what you thought it would be when you began reading; It is not merely my criticism of a trailer for a film I have little faith or love for, but rather an article bemoaning the way studios refuse to take risks or push boundaries. The way that creativity if stifled through a fear of the new and of losing out in some battle of rights with a properties spiritual owners.
Ultimately I mourn the death of what could have been a great original Superhero drama, and despair the birth of what will probably be another forgettable attempt to revive a fallen franchise.