Fantastic Four reboot-- Casting, Rumors, Pix, ect;

Eh, I'll always have a hard time hating on Alba too much for those movies, given how incredibly damn sexy she looked in that skintight costume.

 

But after you saw her use her powers to make one pimple "disappear" you had to wonder how many more zits that she was suppressing, if Susan was secretly only passing for astoundingly beautiful, when really Sue Storm was truly lugging around a mountain of pimples on her super pizza face.

#Sue Storm is the MoleWoman.

 

And my point escapes you. The studio is the peanut gallery from my perspective. They make decisions as if they were a clueless audience members.

As I said, it's a point of view. You have yours, and I have mine. Life isn't black and white.

Why do we need to debate semantics all the time on the internet? Does it make people feel good to attempt to prove others wrong on the internet instead of using deductive reasoning? We're saying the same thing. Fox fucked up, and made terrible choices.

 

If you think the peanut gallery is the studio, them you might need to think about buying a dictionary.

 

Because some matters actually are black and white.

1. The studio are not the audience, they're the ones that actually make decisions about the construction of a movie. It's their job, and unlike the audience they also have to balance the business side of things. Which they did.
2. They certainly wouldn't be doing said decisions from the nosebleed section.
3. They can't 'make decisions like audience members', because their decisions and judgements do matter. They're not a bunch of cheapskates blowing hot air from the safety of a million miles away.

Therefore, even by your description FOX doesn't fit the phrase 'the peanut gallery.' If they started looking to us for advice (especially those who are commenting without seeing the movie), THEN they would be listening to the peanut gallery.

As for why that particular argument is continuing, i don't know. Why did you feel the need to bring it up again? It had been days.

 

I think it's pretty clear what he's trying to say, that he knows what the term "the peanut gallery" means buts is *likening* the decisions of the studio to an audience member. Which may be somewhat hyperbolic, but probably not too inaccurate. I'd more argue that they're not make the decisions "like an audience member" but making decisions from "the peanut gallery" of the entire process of making the movie. I.E. they're making the decisions from a detached location (whether physically or metaphorically) without "on the ground" hands-on involvement with the process. They're just saying "do this", "do that" without any real connection or sense of what's really going on or how that decision will impact the final product.

Come on, how many dozens, scores, of times over the years of movie making just in your own lifetime of being aware of this kind of stuff have you seen a movie flop, bomb, or just not be good and then heard someone actually in the hands-on part of production say, "The studio wanted..."

"Batman and Robin" was a colossal failure with audience and killed that particular franchise and pretty much the entire super-hero movie genre for years because the studio became so disconnected from the concept of making a good, entertaining, movie and more connected with dollars and selling toys.

Which, sure, you could argue worked out for them in that sense as the movie was still a financial success and they did sell toys. But sort of a shallow victory when it pushes up against the thrashing it got from audiences and critics and that it did stall the franchise.

Around the same time the "Lost in Space" movie came out, another disastrous movie from a studio making decisions based on something else other than trying to tell a good story or being truer to the source material. So make it a bit darker. Make everyone moody and angsty. Oh! And you know what was cool in that other movie?! A CGI creature! Put one of those in there! People will eat it up and every kid will want a "Blarp" doll for Christmas. He'll be the next Cabbage Patch Kid, or Tickle-Me Elmo!

We all know about how disconnected-from-the-movie/source material almost nuked the Superman movie concept when it comes to Superman: Lives from all of the stories we've heard over the years. Watch Kevin Smith's discussion on his experience with the producer of that movie, making demands that certain iconic Superman things be removed, the casting he wanted (and for a time went with), and insisting things like having a gigantic spider somewhere in the movie and giving Brainiac a gay-stereotype side kick.

Seems like a lot of the same things happened with the F4 movie; which, I've not seen and at this point likely won't go see (will likely watch it when it shows up on Netflix.) I've watched a handful of reviews over the last few days from people, and read some, and they all talk about the mess the movie is.

We know all of the changes they wanted to make from the source material, which arguably is fine, but going with a darker tone for the Fantastic-freaking-4 was a bad decision. Then the movie was plagued with production issues which resulted in tonal, narrative and continuity problems.

I think's it's fair or some-what accurate to say that when it comes to the F4 the studio was making their decisions "from the peanut gallery," as they were making decisions disconnected from the movie that was being made or that their director or producer wanted to make. Also coming from "crank something out so we can hold onto the rights."

They were making decisions not based on what was good for telling a story, being faithful to the source material -as all of the successful comic book movies the last 10 years or so have done- or anything of the sort but decisions based on something else entirely at the cost of the movie being made.

"Peanut gallery" may not be entirely accurate to say and may even be a touch hyperbolic, but I think it's clear what the poster is trying to say. The studio fucked up, their involvement and meddling tarnished and ruined this movie and it's BO numbers and the single-digit rating on RT is showing that.

Of course they were making their decisions from a financial stand-point, as that's the entire concept of making a movie and being profitable at it. But the types of decisions they were making were disconnected from what was both good for their checkbook and for the movie, and they're feeling it.

All because they wanted "darker", "angstier," "a younger cast" and whatever else they pushed for that plagued this movie's production that shows so much on the screen.

So, yeah, they're something of an audience member going, "make the cast younger and give the movie a darker tone! I'm paying for this, give me what I want!"

And the people "on the ground" hands-on making the movie, writing it, casting it, creating the look of it, are going "Umm... That's not going to work with these characters and this property."

 

So INSYNC should have been Jedi in Attack of the Clones?

 

They couldn't made it worse.

 

Assumptions are still being made about Trank making a decent movie that was scuppered by the suits.

The evidence from the first part of the film doesn't support this.

 

No. It really, really doesn't.

And it's not even just the first two thirds, because some of the climax was clearly his as well. Maybe it's not put together how he envisioned it, but the components themselves aren't exactly great anyway.

People are fond of blaming the studio when things go wrong. But honestly, look at the other movies they've put out lately. X-Men? Walter Mitty? Kingsman? Planet of the Apes? The Martian? The studio is the constant, yet none of them had FFs problems. Even the other failures they've put out hasn't had FF's problems. You can't just put it down to having confidence in the other directors resume, because look at Rupert Wyatt's resume before he got handed Rise - two indies and shorts.

Shit has gone on that we don't know about. Hopefully, some day we will get a very entertaining documentary about all this. But until then (or when somone finally decides to engage Trank on Twitter) we simply don't know one way or the other.

 

(This is wild speculation.)

Lets say that the final battle albeit different took up about the same amount of time.

Meanwhile the 3 action scenes, 10 minutes long each, which is them with their powers doing stuff with their powers, which would have maybe been almost ten minutes long each, which int he final product was replaced with that very short one year later montage.

The movie was running half an hour short.

So, since they didn't have leftover stuff from the end, they used all the b-roll shite that should have been left on the cutting room floor about what happened in the Baxter building before they had powers to padd the movie to the contracted length FOX had paid for.

 

The nice part of me that wants to think the best of Trank, really hopes that's true.

There was a rumour going around that he did put in a cut, and that's what made the studios initially freak. I'll have to see if I can find where I heard it.

EDIT: Found it. First cut was 2 hours 10 min.

http://collider.com/the-fantastic-four-movie-details-josh-trank/

Trank there said there that they weren't changing the ending. Of course, this was publicity fluff. It was never officially confirmed that he was kicked off, was it?

 

Maybe, but it's ignoring the profound difference in power between the people who are watching from a remove because they're way, way above the filmmakers in the hierarchy and those who are watching from a remove because they're completely outside the process. It's like equating the king of a feudal country with the peasants because they're both equally removed from the day-to-day decisions of the manor lord. One is removed because he's way, way above the process, the others because they're completely powerless in the process. They're on opposite ends of the hierarchy. So there's got to be a better metaphor that would make the point less confusingly. More an ivory tower, perhaps, than a peanut gallery, although that implies an intellectual remove.

Good point. It's not as if Fox is incapable of making successes.

But on the other hand, a successful studio like Fox is so huge that it must have different projects assigned to different executives. Or the execs that are in charge of them also have a bunch of other properties to shuffle, so they don't pay equal attention to all of them. Fox's suits have enough X-Men movies under their belts (successes and failures both) to have gained an understanding of that franchise and to respect and value it, but the FF is this awkward little thing that they've never really figured out. And of course those are just two of the many franchises they have to juggle, so they don't have that much attention to devote to a minor, unproven property like the FF. Even a studio that knows how to make successful movies can still let some movies slip through the cracks.

Marvel Studios has the advantage of being smaller and more tightly focused. Their superhero films/shows are the one and only thing they do.

 

The first Cap movie was mediocre (at least in my opinion) but it could have been much worse and to me it's one of the weaker Marvel movies but it still was very entertaining.

Saving grace was the casting of Evans for the role who fit it like a glove (Marvel has got to have one of the best casting crews in the industry because they have never made a misstep with important roles and have launched several major careers now).

Even with all the flaws they got some very central things relating to how Cap ticks very right and that's what Marvel does best.. they know the core of the characters and do their best to translate it to screen.

The first FF movie was a financial success but that's not a big thing honestly because it had a big marleting budget and was riding on the Marvel superhero wave. Yet they mishandled much of the characters and story which is why it tanked critically. They have one of the greated Marvel villains ever and a much beloved comics series on hand.. something any decent writer could do very well with, heck many fanfic writers could have provided a better screenplay than the FF movies had.

As i said before.. they listened to the marketing department and tried to maximize appeal to their target demographic while ignoring the core of the source and we have seen the outcome.

 

Yes, they hired Trank.

 

^I'd say, rather, that they gave Trank the wrong project. The FF are a poor fit for his style, and he's perhaps still too unseasoned for a project with such high stakes. I think it's facile and unfair to say he's just an incompetent; he has talent, but it's not ideal for a project like this, or vice-versa.

 

I have to agree, it looks as if that was the main issue, for all concerned.

He is unlikely to be offered anything more suitable now - he may have been destined for great things. We'll probably never know...

 

Chistopher, you never cease to amaze me with you're precision. I think you've just basically agreed with me but took a paragraph to clarify. I'll restate what I said.


They hired Trank, for this movie.

 

It would be nice to think that Fox, in an attempt to make the DVD/Bluray more saleable, would include both versions.

Failing that, I wonder if it will 'leak' ?

 

With the way they double dipped "The Wolverine" extended cut and "Days of Future's Past" Rogue cut

no doubt we'll get FF4 extended cut