Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Just got in from seeing the Fantastic Four film. We intended to go last week when it came out, but forces conspired against us. It’s been quite an uneven prospect, seeing this film, because the trailers have made it all look quite horrendously bad. Everyone except me was expecting something truly horrible, where I was cautiously optimistic. It couldn’t get as bad as Hulk, that’s for damn sure.

Having seen it, I don’t think it’s that bad at all. There’s plenty of scope for improvement, but they could’ve done far worse. One of the main problems with it, thematically speaking, is that the FF are supposed to be the “Superhero Family” and that dynamic was almost entirely missing. The problem with taking that angle would’ve been quite evident, though, because The Incredibles came out not that long ago and it really shamelessly lifted a lot of the stuff from FF. The Incredibles is almost the Fantastic Four movie that never was. That’s not to say there isn’t a character dynamic, though, one of the strongest things about the FF film is that the plot and story is almost entirely character-driven. It’s about people afecting people and their motivations come from that.

As you can probably guess, Johnny gets all the great lines and jokes, and the Thing gets the most pathos. Sue and Doom are the most altered characters, but the latter is well-defined at least. Reed is quite bland, it has to be said, and he doesn’t display a lot of the leadership ability and intelligence of the comics version, but he’s inoffensive at least. I always though Jessica Alba as Sue was some truly horrendous casting, and this film really proved me right on that. Chiklis does a great Thing, though, and his character is the highlight of the film.

They took enough of the stuff from the comic that it still feels close enough to be the Fantastic Four. They incorporated Reed’s guilt about what he’d done to everyone, Ben’s loyalty to Reed, and the antagonistic relationship between Johnny and Ben. Doom barely resembles the comic version at all, and while I understand the changes, it’s getting a little too far away from the character for my liking. Very little of the actual Doom remains in the movie version.

Plot-wise, the film does quite well. It’s simplistic (Reed convinces Doom to pay for them to go into space, they get powers in an accident that Doom’s arrogance causes, Doom’s company is ruined and he goes after the others to get revenge, and they stop him) but like I said, character-based enough to work. I particularly enjoyed that they didn’t tack on a huge evil plot to Doom’s story. He was just out for revenge against Reed, the man he thinks took everything from him. He didn’t care who he killed to reach that goal, but he wasn’t trying to hold the city to ransom or anything. Doom’s arc was perilously close to Norman Osborn in Spider-Man 2, though. Reed and Sue’s romance is again, quite far removed from the comics, but in this case while it’s not exactly how it went originally, it doesn’t feel tacked on or shoe-horned in like some films. I definitely enjoyed seeing the FF dealing with being made into celebrities by their powers. Spider-Man and the X-Men are hated and feared, but the FF are adored by the public, so it was pleasing to see the more original dynamic get highlighted.

The effects are all quite nice. There aren’t many places where it looked dodgy, though some of Reed’s stretching appears, a bit “weightless” in the way that CGI can. The set pieces are all surprisingly well-done, even the odd appearance of a ski/sonwboard exxxtreme sports scene. The intial scene where the Fantastic Four all demonstrate and test their powers to save people in a traffic accident was a great bit, and second only to the finalé where all four characters team up to take down Doom. There are plenty of missed opportunities, though and since they messed about with the origin quite significantly (I’m aware the original origin story is utterly stupid by modern comparisons) I was upset not to see the scene where the four stand around in a flaming wreckage discovering their powers.

There were a few problems, of course. Alba was a horrible choice for casting, and the first 10-15 minutes of the film are a little confusing because they move at breakneck speed spouting exposition so they can get into space and receive their powers. It was refreshing to see a film where the superheroes show up almost at the start, though. None of this “training to be a ninja” shite. Biggest of all, like the original X-Men film there’s too much riding on setup. This could lead into a truly great second film, but right now it’s weakened by the need to set up the characters and concept.

On a scale of Hulk to Sin City, I’d say this film hovers around the X-Men mark. Tomorrow, or possibly later tonight depending on how I’m feeling, I will reorganise and explain my list of comics films in order of goodness so that the comparison actually makes a little sense to you. When I added Batman to it the other week I realised it was looking a little schizophrenic, so I’m hoping to even it out a little. Until then, I can sense your impatience.