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fpbCan't say I'm surprised. (I haven't bothered to go see it. I just went through a few online reviews, from critics apparently all too grateful for the chance to let their invective powers out for a good sound ride.) I had got very bad vibes from the advertising material.
To begin with, Fantastic Four is a comic that has essentially lived for forty years on the achievement of its first nine. I do not think that, as a superhero comic, it has as memorable a concept as many others; what keeps it alive is the storehouse of ideas, situations and emotions piled up from 1961 to 1970 by the Odd Couple of Odd Couples, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Lee, a brilliant huckster and occasionally excellent plotter, and Kirby, one of the two greatest cartoonists who ever lived (the other is Hayao Miyazaki), had nothing in common except the characters; yet they managed, for nine years, one of the greatest comics runs the world has ever seen. And while Lee's scripts have aged quite badly, Kirby's art is as immortal as Beethoven or Michelangelo. Especially from #44, when the excellent inker Joe Sinnott joined them, to about #68, when a cut in the drawing paper format (intended to save money) slightly hobbled the artist, Kirby made the earth shake - not only in Fantastic Four, but in the brother titles Thor (which saw his finest artwork ever) and Captain America. And I will add that although it has repeatedly proved impossible to replicate the glory of the Lee-Kirby days, FF (as fans call it) has often been drawn by masters of the art: John Buscema, Walt Simonson, Jim Lee, George Perez, John Byrne, Alan Davis, great names one and all. So my first bad feeling about the advertising material was: why, instead of putting in any art from a recognizable FF artist, did the advertising studio create their own bland, unrecognizable impression of comic book pages? This did not show either understanding or respect of the comic.
Second, there are the characters. Fantastic Four depends on the interaction of a tight nucleus of friends, two of whom become husband and wife. Every feature of their character is important. So I was not happy to see that the Reed Richards character, whose moral and intellectual authority ought to be nearly as unchallengeable as Albus Dumbledore's, had been made younger - none of the distinguished streaks of white in his hair that he had from the beginning - and deprived of that symbol of authority and gravitas, his pipe. I was not happy to see that his future wife, Sue Storm, had been handed to the wholly unsuited gamine Jessica Alba. Of course, Sue Storm is an unfashionable character - a nagging elder sister who develops into a happily domestic married lady; but that is the only way she can function in the group, and to make her into a modern brat did not seem to me workable. Also, Jessica Alba is not a natural blonde, and both Sue Storm and her brother Johnny ought to be. Finally, and worst, the villain, Victor von Doom, did not look threatening; his armour did not have the required massive effect, and it was idiotically made of gleaming steel instead of black, rigid, menacing pig-iron. Victor von Doom is one of the best comicbook villains ever conceived, and cartoonists throughout the years have consistently understood who he was and what he should look like; it took this bunch of twits not to understand how the menace of iron armour ought to be visualized.
There was one man who could have done it all and produced a brilliant movie: Joss Whedon. Apart from the fact that he has been doing some reportedly excellent writing for Marvel comics, he has long shown, in Buffy and Angel both, a thorough understanding of the superhero genre, and, especially important, of the family/tight-group-of-friends dynamic that can make this group of characters work if anything can. Instead, they gave it to someone who had had one mildly successful small-scale comedy to his credit. Nice going. And just as the new Batman movie was giving yet another lesson in how superheroes should be brought to the big screen. There is something seriously wrong with Marvel as a movie company. Time Warner, give or take the occasional Catwoman or Batman Forever, have mostly taken good care not to disgrace their characters in their movie outings; Marvel, with the sole exception of the two X-Men movies, seem at all times to have been honestly convinced that any old dross could be packaged with the costumes of Marvel heroes and villains and do just as well.
To begin with, Fantastic Four is a comic that has essentially lived for forty years on the achievement of its first nine. I do not think that, as a superhero comic, it has as memorable a concept as many others; what keeps it alive is the storehouse of ideas, situations and emotions piled up from 1961 to 1970 by the Odd Couple of Odd Couples, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Lee, a brilliant huckster and occasionally excellent plotter, and Kirby, one of the two greatest cartoonists who ever lived (the other is Hayao Miyazaki), had nothing in common except the characters; yet they managed, for nine years, one of the greatest comics runs the world has ever seen. And while Lee's scripts have aged quite badly, Kirby's art is as immortal as Beethoven or Michelangelo. Especially from #44, when the excellent inker Joe Sinnott joined them, to about #68, when a cut in the drawing paper format (intended to save money) slightly hobbled the artist, Kirby made the earth shake - not only in Fantastic Four, but in the brother titles Thor (which saw his finest artwork ever) and Captain America. And I will add that although it has repeatedly proved impossible to replicate the glory of the Lee-Kirby days, FF (as fans call it) has often been drawn by masters of the art: John Buscema, Walt Simonson, Jim Lee, George Perez, John Byrne, Alan Davis, great names one and all. So my first bad feeling about the advertising material was: why, instead of putting in any art from a recognizable FF artist, did the advertising studio create their own bland, unrecognizable impression of comic book pages? This did not show either understanding or respect of the comic.
Second, there are the characters. Fantastic Four depends on the interaction of a tight nucleus of friends, two of whom become husband and wife. Every feature of their character is important. So I was not happy to see that the Reed Richards character, whose moral and intellectual authority ought to be nearly as unchallengeable as Albus Dumbledore's, had been made younger - none of the distinguished streaks of white in his hair that he had from the beginning - and deprived of that symbol of authority and gravitas, his pipe. I was not happy to see that his future wife, Sue Storm, had been handed to the wholly unsuited gamine Jessica Alba. Of course, Sue Storm is an unfashionable character - a nagging elder sister who develops into a happily domestic married lady; but that is the only way she can function in the group, and to make her into a modern brat did not seem to me workable. Also, Jessica Alba is not a natural blonde, and both Sue Storm and her brother Johnny ought to be. Finally, and worst, the villain, Victor von Doom, did not look threatening; his armour did not have the required massive effect, and it was idiotically made of gleaming steel instead of black, rigid, menacing pig-iron. Victor von Doom is one of the best comicbook villains ever conceived, and cartoonists throughout the years have consistently understood who he was and what he should look like; it took this bunch of twits not to understand how the menace of iron armour ought to be visualized.
There was one man who could have done it all and produced a brilliant movie: Joss Whedon. Apart from the fact that he has been doing some reportedly excellent writing for Marvel comics, he has long shown, in Buffy and Angel both, a thorough understanding of the superhero genre, and, especially important, of the family/tight-group-of-friends dynamic that can make this group of characters work if anything can. Instead, they gave it to someone who had had one mildly successful small-scale comedy to his credit. Nice going. And just as the new Batman movie was giving yet another lesson in how superheroes should be brought to the big screen. There is something seriously wrong with Marvel as a movie company. Time Warner, give or take the occasional Catwoman or Batman Forever, have mostly taken good care not to disgrace their characters in their movie outings; Marvel, with the sole exception of the two X-Men movies, seem at all times to have been honestly convinced that any old dross could be packaged with the costumes of Marvel heroes and villains and do just as well.
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Date: 2005-07-13 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 03:12 am (UTC)