Movie Review: Fantastic Four (2015)

I figured I'd make a blog post rather than making my Facebook friends all read my blather. Anyway, I saw Fantastic Four last night, and here are some thoughts. Not doing this like a formal review, so it may come off conversational and unorganized. Here goes:

- I actually liked the cast. Having younger people made it a bit more relatable, though I do think they should have had a bigger Ben Grimm to begin with. I wouldn't mind seeing more of this fantastic four in an actual good movie.

- Certain aspects from the comics seemed to be changed or ignored unnecessarily. Grimm's junkyard WASN'T on Yancy Street? Why couldn't Victor Von Doom be descended from royalty? Did they really say "Central City" - it's bad enough the vortex thing reminded me of the far superior Flash season finale.

- I didn't mind the world-building of the film, but I felt like nothing happened for the longest time. It was just build, build, build. The first hour could have been told in 20 minutes or less.

- The visual effects were hilariously bad in some points. Whoever it was that said they looked like a Nintendo 64, they were pretty right. The Human Torch looked silly in a lot of shots and don't get me started on the Invisible Girl/Woman/whatever she is called in this movie.

- The movie wasn't AWFUL... I just think we have higher expectations now. Beyond the VFX and the pacing, nothing screamed "really, really bad."

- Whatever happened to Dr. Doom was silly, but didn't the other F4 movie do something like that too? I prefer the classic Doom, scarred monarch. Wasn't Dr. Doom (with Darkseid) one of the inspirations for Darth Vader? Doom should be bad-ass. TechnoDoom was just weird.

- I'm sure young girls find them sexy, but Miles Teller's scars are super distracting. Props to them giving them to the young Reed too, though.

- I still don't think Johnny Storm's skin color matters. Michael B. Jordan was fine in the role, though he was barely given anything to do. That might be another problem with the film: I almost feel like Reed is the only character who had actual development and storyline. Still, I found him to be less annoying than Chris Evans was, so hey!

- I know everyone is all "when the rights revert to Marvel"... and while yes, I'd love for the Fantastic Four to be in the Marvel sandbox, what I'd really prefer is an actual good movie with this cast. I'm tired of the reboots. We don't need a third Spider-Man in so many years (unless Marvel Spider-Man would've been Miles, which sounds more and more like a good idea as time has gone on.) I don't know what any four actors could bring to the Fantastic Four that these four actors couldn't. So... let them have their chance.

---

Okay. I've babbled. You can comment here or on Facebook. Thanks for reading!

Issue #666

It was recently announced that the current incarnation of Archie comic books would be ending their run with issue #666 - an odd place to jump off, but we'll go with it.

Interestingly, though, it reminds me of something I noticed with the first two American comic book series I ever saw to hit that triple-6 number of Satan - Action Comics and Detective Comics, both published by DC.

Perhaps by coincidence, those #666 issues all ended up with new cover logos by the time they got to their next #667 issues. Maybe the editors of those books were superstitious?

The only other American comic book series in the modern era that I can recall getting to that number (so, no Dell Four Color) were Batman, Superman, and The Amazing-Spider-Man - and all three, as far as I can recall, stayed as is. Of course, all of those series have now been rebooted and will probably never get to that high number again, so there's that. At least two of those #666 issues, if I recall, involved those characters going to Hell, though.

I'm excited for the new Archie reboot, by the way, though it's a shame the current highest-numbered book couldn't get retitled, maybe bringing back the Archie Giant Series with #667 or something... but, as I said before, it's still a weird place to leave off.