Happy Panic Productions

Roger,Ebert, I read you: Fantastic Four (2005)

I was a sometime fan of thie comic, but the previews I saw made me very wary. I just didn't get the sense that this would be a movie that knew how to be entertaining. Also, nothing about the FF seems well suited to the motion picture medium. We are, after all, talking about the comic which is notable first of all for its building of a continuity between installments, and also for the ongoing interpersonal relationships among the tea members. This is the stuff of a serial, people, not of a self-contained two hour adventure. Lee and Kirby's genius was to break the superhero story out of the one-off adventure mold, and do something that, for all the world-saving exploits of the heroes, was on the personal scale nothing more than a soap opera. Shoe-horning that continuity into a summer blockbuster is a disservice to that stroke of genius.

It was nice to see Tim Story got the characters and the casting right (Chiklis is a good Thing, and Gruffudd rises to the challenge of making Reed Richards a character you don't want to beat up), except where he got it so very wrong. Ben Grimm voluntarily turns back into the Thing? Did this ever happen once in the comics? I remember the Thing living with a curse, staying behind on the desolate Battle World just because there he could turn human at will. The whole compelling basis of his
character is undone. Now we know he can stop being the Thing just as quickly as it takes Reed to build another of those Brundlefly machines. Yet he remains rocky... out of a sense of responsibility? He's no longer the Thing, he's Spider-Man.
And Invisible Girl is an unfortunate collision of bad writing and worse casting. Mere moments before she has to turn invisible at a magazine stand because she's "shy", Alba is strutting down the street like it's the catwalk. And I think enough has been said about Dr. Doom's origina and powers.

But maybe the single biggest problem with this movie, because it's the one part of FF that would have translated well to the big screen had Story bothered to pay it any mind, is that the scale of the physical plot is all wrong. The remainder of this movie, after the origin has been dealt with, would have occupied one page in Lee/Kirby's hands. Okay, maybe I'm exagerrating. Five pages, tops.

The real Fantastic Four only partake in adventures of a grand scale. On an average day, they're thwarting a plot to rule or destroy the planet. A big deal to them would be saving an entire dimension. The smallest plot I can ever recall them bothering with was the size of a metropolis. (Okay, technically, a Microverse.) And what is Dr. Doom's magnificent plot in this summer blockbuster romp? To knock off three members of the Fantastic Four so that his own girlfriend will like him again. I mean, he's not even trying to take anything that's not his -- they're technically still dating, for crying out loud! It's such a pathetically unambitious villian we have to watch in this movie, the only feelings he evokes are embarrasment and pity. The once mighty Dr. Doom, now nothing but a dweeb and a loser? I honestly don't think there has been a more broke-dick villain in summer blockbuster history.

I think Ebert nails this one. You have to keep in mind while reading this review that here is a guy who likes both comic book movies and comic books. But this feature is supposed to be fun, so I'll point out a couple of awkward passages.

It's all setup and demonstration, and naming and discussing and demonstrating.... He forgot to mention it demonstrates a demonstrative demo demonstratively.

...you see one fire truck saved from falling off a bridge, you've seen them all. And if you've seen one person get shot, you've seen 'em all, I suppose. Why don't filmmakers spare us this repetition and simply supply title cards to tell us what happened?

Otherwise, it's a well written review, except: what the hell does he keep digging on X-Men for?