If there’s one film I should be excited about this summer, it’s Fantastic Four. I’m a Marvel kid from way back, and I’ve always gravitated to the team books more than the individual stars. (Aside from later off-brand characters like Luke Cage and Ghost Rider.)
I loved the Spider-Man movies, but if I saw a Fantastic Four movie made as well as those, well, my supreme pleasure could only be topped by an equally brilliant Avengers movie, one featuring the ‘real’ Avengers roster: Thor, The Hulk, Iron Man and Captain America. And yeah, any of the Henry Pym superhero identities and the Wasp, or Scarlet Witch, or whoever else. But definitely the big four.
However, the rights to the various classic Avengers are all owned by different studios, so that ain’t going to happen. Therefore, a great Fantastic Four movie is about as bee’s knees as it would get for me. We’re talking Great-American-Godzilla-Movie good, had there been such a thing.
However, the FF film has train wreck written all over it. It says something that the superhero movie I’m fervently awaiting is the DC universe’s Batman Begins.
If past comic book movies had taught us anything—and they apparently haven’t taught Hollywood much—it’s to get good directors who take the material seriously to make the movies. More than any other factor, the right director makes or breaks this kind of movie. This is also proved by non-comic book movies in the fantasy fields, as with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Let’s put it this way… Batman Returns, Tim Burton. Spider-Man & Spider-Man II, Sam Raimi. X-Men & X-Men 2, Bryan Singer. Hellboy, Guillermo del Toro.
Now this: Batman Forever, Joel Schumacher. Catwoman, Pitof. Daredevil, Mark Steven Johnson. Fantastic Four, Tim Story….
Who? Oh, the guy’s who’s biggest budgeted film prior to this $100 million plus production was Taxi with Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon.
That Tim Story.
Of course, the real red flag about Story wasn’t that he hadn’t handled so large a budget before. Neither had any of the other, successful comic book directors I’ve listed. No, the actual concern is that all of the successful directors cited are, well, auteurs, if we’re to use that phrase. Each had made extremely good and, more importantly, idiosyncratic little movies before being handed the reins of their major buck superhero movies. Moreover, each had success in the horror and/or fantasy realm.
Story, meanwhile, has one decent if generic film (Barbershop) under his belt, and one roundly attacked action comedy (Taxi). Since Fantastic Four aims to be a lot more like the latter film—and many statements have been issued during the production process that a good deal of humor will be on display, although they retreated from them when fans got grumpy—well, there are reasons for trepidation.
The real warning sign, though, is the casting. Michael Chiklis, I admit, is a perfect actor to play Ben Grimm/The Thing. No problems there.
The problem is the rest of the foursome. Now, the reason you want a good director, as well as one that respects the material, is so they’ll know what they can change (because changes will occur when translating material from one medium to another), and more importantly, what not to change.
Take Spider-Man. Raimi went with the idea of making Spidey’s webs organic rather than technological, and that was fine. Moreover, instead of meeting Mary Jane Watson when they were both approaching twenty, they were next-door neighbors and best friends as kids. That worked too, and was justified in terms of telescoping some of the backstory stuff—whipped up over thousands of comics—to fit in a movie. The important thing is that the details were psychological right for the characters. That’s why they worked.
So the Cold War origin, which the four heading out into space in an unshielded spaceship in order to beat the Ruskies, obviously had to go. (Tying Dr. Doom’s origin directly to theirs, however, is too cute by half.)
The Fantastic Four, it is often noted, is the family as superhero team. That means that the character dynamics between the titular four characters are the single most important thing to get right. And…its pretty clear they won’t be.
Criticism erupted when Jessica Alba was announced to have been signed to play Sue. The most facile, albeit still understandable, complaint was that she wasn’t a blonde. (After all, the character has been around for forty years, and in a visual medium that has established her appearance. And it’s not like there are no blond actresses in Hollywood.) That problem was been solved, more or less, by dying Alba’s hair.
More problematic is what triggered my concerns. Alba has a history of playing sexpot, riot grrrrl-type ass kickers. That’s not Sue. In this day and age, she’s not going to be the flighty young thing who spends hours trying on wigs, as she was in the early comic books. However, I will cry if they turn her into yet another Xena/Dark Angel/Alias clone. Sue is…a girl. Maybe that’s unfashionable these days, and I don’t mean the character has to be weak and shriek at the sight of mice, but I just don’t want her to be someone who trash talks deadly supervillains and then takes delight in laying the smackdown on them. And given the trailer, and her featured confrontation with Dr. Doom, that seems to be where they are going.
What really concerns me that the ages of the characters are all wrong. Again, the character relationships are clearly established, and are the most important thing to respect. Therefore:
1) Reed (Mr. Fantastic) and Ben should be significantly older than Sue and Johnny, and have known each other since they were college roommates. Ben and Reed, functionally, are brothers. They should be somewhere in the 35-40 year-old range.
2) Sue should much younger, around 21. She should be drawn to Reed by his intelligence, maturity and gentle nature, while Reed, who is a classic techno-nerd who never has had much time for or success with women should be flabbergasted to learn that the young beauty is attracted to him.
3) Sue is also drawn to Reed because she and Johnny have had a touch childhood together, one more or less sans parents. (Another reason for her attraction to father figure Reed.) Johnny should be 16, (as he was in the comics, but at least still in his teens. He’s an often bratty kid, a typical adolescent. Sue has been forced to act more or less as his mother, a role she has thrust upon her before she was ready.
4) Johnny and Ben should have a bratty younger brother/gruff older brother or uncle relationship. Johnny is, figuratively as well as literally, a hothead, while the quick tempered Ben is easily provoked into lashing back. In the context of this, Reed has to act as a father annoyed by the antics of his ‘kids.’
The casting indicates that much, perhaps most, of this is going out the window. Chiklis is 42, so he’s fine. Reed’s portrayer, however, is Ioan Gruffodd, who’s ten years younger than Chiklis. That throws their whole relationship dynamic off. I’m not much for star casting, to the extent that this would be star casting, but Tim Robbins would have been a perfect Reed Richards.
Alba is 23, who she’s about right. However, actor Chris Evens (Johnny) is also 23 (and also not a blonde—and they aren’t even dying his hair). Even if he plays younger, he’s too old to be the sometimes bratty character Johnny should be and get away from it. Instead of being a often obnoxious kid, he’ll just be a juvenile dickwad. And again, his lack of an age differential with Sue is a major, major miscue.
The buzz on the film is increasingly dire, and indicates my central fear—that the movie is being directed by someone who doesn’t really ‘get’ the characters—is all to justified. Believe me, I would love to be proved wrong and to leave the theater with a silly grin on my face. But I really doubt it.
