Alright...I know you guys are getting tired of all this FANTASTIC FOUR nonsense that has dominated CBM for the last few days. Well TOO BAD, it's my turn, damnit!
For those of you that know me, you know I'm a big fan of Fox Studios and what they've done with the X-Men franchise. Other than a couple notable exceptions, Brian Singer, Matthew Vaughan, Simon Kinberg, Zak Penn, and others have crafted 4 or 5 great CBMs. Two of which are in my top 5 all-time CBMs. But we're not here to talk about the X-Men, are we?
No, so let's put that beautiful baby to bed right now. We're here to talk FANTASTIC FOUR. Who else remembers the first movies? And no, I'm not talking about whatever the hell that was in the 90's, I've never seen it...and it looks just awful. The first F4 movies were...divisive...visually appealing...and kinda terrible. Not to say that they weren't enjoyable, they just weren't what ANYONE was hoping for. The casting worked for the most part (except Jessica Alba, but damn, that girl could fill out a skin-tight suit)
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Sorry, had to type with one hand for a minute (almost a minute and a half!) after the thought of Alba.
Back to business.
The originals we relatively faithful to the source on a visual level. The costumes weren't bad, the actors for the most part resembled the characters they were prtraying, and even the characterization was pretty good. But I digress...moving on to the new movie.
As evidenced by the trailer we all saw the other day, Trank's reboot is straying as far as humanly possible from Tim Story's version of the FANTASTIC FOUR. And in all honesty, that's a very good thing. It does mean that the tone isn't really a Fantastical (shut up, it's a word) tone, but Story kinda wrecked that for future endeavours. ...bastard...
The teaser trailer didn't give much away. We saw shots of the N-Zone teleporter, glimpses of Johnny's flames, Sue's forcefields, we saw the Thing (without any really good looks), and a shot of Reed beginning to stretch. We caught two small glimpses of Doom, and what I expect is the N-Zone. That's about it. We also got a decent monologue from Reg E. Cathey, and a quick exchange of words between Reed and Victor.
That's not a lot to go on. But, for me, was more than enough to get me excited.
Some of the things we can take away from the trailer and from the various reports we've had, interviews, official synopsis... is that this reboot is very much an Ultimate Fantastic Four movie. The origin is almost ripped right off the page, although with a few small changes. It seems that instead of sending an apple to the N-Zone, Reed and co. are sending themselves. We can assume that Doom will play a role in the malfunction of the teleporter, just like the comics.
After that though...we have no idea what's going to happen. With the revelation that 6 people entered the transporter, we can only speculate who that 6th person is. My assumption is that it's Harvey Edler (Tim Blake Nelson), and his Mole Man origin will be linked to the N-Zone as well.
The overall tone of the trailer is pretty somber. And it's obvious that they are taking a hard sci-fi stance on the film. This, for me, is a good thing. I'm no huge fan of sci-fi in general, but I feel that it works very well for this iteration of the FANTASTIC FOUR. They seem to be treating Reed an co. as scientists and explorers, which is the right way to go. According to Josh Trank and Simon Kinberg, the main theme of the film is family. I don't think there's any word more important to the FANTASTIC FOUR than family. Throughout their stories, throughout the decades, they've been a lot of things. They fight, they leave, they yell, the scream, but they are always a family.
Now, the cast.
Miles Teller...yeah, he's got a pretty punchable face. But the guy has some serious talent. Whiplash was a great example of that. Some folks have said he doesn't seem like the type to be a real leader...I can see where they're coming from. But that actually works for this film. In the Ultimate F4, Reed wasn't really a leader. That role went more so to Franklin Richards, and even Sue in certain ways. I think Teller was a great choice to play Reed, and I think he'll surprise the naysayers.
Kate Mara...well, she's definitely hot enough to play Sue. And I think she has the skills to play an Ultimate version. In the Ultimate F4, Sue is a genius, she has 3(?) Ph.D's in Bio-Science. It'll be interesting to see how well Kate brings across this more intelligent, less damsel-in-distress character.
Jamie Bell...He's a great actor. He's played many supporting roles, and is pretty "solid" in all of them. He's obviously much smaller than the comics version of Ben, and that's a little jarring. I don't think that'll come in to play much, as I'm assuming the teleporter accident will happen very early on in the movie. I'm interested to see if Trank has characterized Ben close to the Ultimate F4 iteration, where he's really not very smart.
Michael B. Jordan...This is the key casting. It's been a massive point of conversation, debate, and even a shitload of racism. But I digress. MBJ just exudes the right personality for Johnny Storm. He's confident, seems a little cocky, and he has that sir about him. Truly a genius casting (let's just hope it works).
Tony Kebbell...To steal a line from Dr. Kinsolving's article, nothing needs to be said. Kebbell is phenomenal, and he'll own the role.
So, as you can see by my long-winded, rambling editorial, I'm pretty jonesed about this movie. It's something different. I think it has the pieces in place to be one of Fox's best CBMs, if not one of the best CBMs, period. It's got some stiff competition this year with Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man...but it'll be very interesting to see how it fares in the eyes of critics, moviegoers, and fanboys alike.
Thanks for reading guys. Time for a chimichanga!