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

Re: Fantastic Four reboot-- Casting, Rumors, Pix, etc.

This lineup is already making me nostalgic for the 2005 & 2007 films.

 

Ten or twenty years ago I'd probably be excited for this movie. Back then there was less fidelity to the source material and people were more or less OK with it because that was the norm.

But we're in a golden age of comic book movies now where the filmmakers are as close to the source material as they can reasonably be. I'm still waiting on a trailer before I completely write this movie off, but based on what we know now, I can't imagine being interested.

 

Actually comics have been following the lead of their mass-media adaptations for nearly as long as superhero comics have existed. Superman's long jumps became flight in the comics after the animated shorts made him fly. Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, the Daily Planet, and kryptonite came from the radio series. The late-'60s Batman comics redesigned Catwoman's costume to resemble the one from the show (although they colored it green instead) -- and Batgirl was created for the comics at the request of the show's producers so that they could adapt her. In the late '70s and early '80s, the comics' Bruce Banner became a wanderer traveling the country like his TV counterpart. In the early '90s, Gotham City was destroyed and rebuilt with Gothic architecture resembling Anton Furst's designs from the Tim Burton movies -- and later the comics adopted animated-series characters like Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya, and Mercy Graves and Livewire over in Superman. And so forth.

Sure, it's true that the old comics in your collection won't change, but there's a long history of new comics changing to reflect their screen adaptations.

Except that this is in the same universe as Fox's X-Men movies, and the merits of those movies have never included fidelity to the source material. Even the best of them have mixed and matched and reinterpreted characters and concepts like crazy.

What makes this a golden age isn't that the movies are faithful to the letter of the source. We've seen bad movies that were faithful to the source, like Green Lantern, which crammed in so many continuity nods that they got in the way of telling a coherent story. What makes this a golden age is that the movies are made with care and quality, that they respect the essence of the source material and the standards of the audience even when they play fast and loose with the surface details.

 

@ Aldo--Exactly. If the first X-Men movie came out today, I wouldn't like it nearly as much as I did then. Marvel has raised the bar so high that other studios need to work to keep up, and FOX obviously has never had a clue what to do with this franchise.

Also, when I shell out my hard-earned money on an adaptation of my beloved funny-book characters, I want to see my funny-book characters on the screen as I remember them. I don't mind when they play with supporting characters like Heimdall, but I want my leads to at least partially resemble what I know because what I know is the reason I'm (theoretically) seeing the movie in the first place. Slavish imitation isn't necessary, but at least being able to recognize the characters is an important first step.

Sorry, Josh, better luck next time.

 

Nevermind. Carry on.

 

But that's just my point. Getting the right feel isn't about what the actors look like, it's about their personalities and the writing of their roles.

 

You know, I completely forgot that she did, probably because I was never able to watch the full movie it was so bad.

Ah, well, either way. I still think she'd be a better Sue than Alba or [probably] Mara

 

I'd be more interested if Jordan had been cast as Reed.

 

That doesn't sound too bad actually.

 

Discussing sure. Getting worked up about? Meh. Especially this.

 

Sue, Johnny and Ben distort their pigments when they use their powers.

The inconsistency of the colour calls into question their colour.

Which means that any different coloured person from any nationality, even white, should be allowed to play those three, while still remaining true to the inconsistency of the character.

The opposite is true of Reed Richards.

If he was able to stretch his surface area until it's depth was just a couple molecules thick, that surface area is easily a massive geometric multiple of the surface area of all other white human beings in the universe ever combined.

 

Michael B Jordan is kind of slumming isn't he with this? fruitvale, Vince from FNL, Wallace from The Wire, this is a guy usually in serious quality productions.

 

Cough cough *that awkward moment* cough

 

If I google his name, is there going to be some tragic story about public masturbation?

 

"That Awkward Moment" is the name of the movie he was in recently.

 

Why?

 

It's kind of funny that across the productions Sue's blonde hair seems to be the one visual trait that they seem to find important to keep.

 

Well, both live-action Reeds have his brown hair and narrow, squarish face, more or less.

 

I did like Jordan in Chronicle, and Bell in The Adventures of Tin-Tin, but not enough to change my opinion about the movie. Which at this point is very unsure. Most of the other superhero movies coming out have gotten me really excited, but every time I hear about this one all I can work up is "meh".
I'm not going to totally write this off until we start hearing confirmed, official news, but this is definitely the superhero movie I am most nervous about.