So I watched Fantastic Four and it's sequel The Rise of the Silver Surfer yesterday and today. I thought they were great. Really just perfect superhero movies. I am not sure why the bad ratings. The acting was fine from every one. Special effects were great. There was some silliness in the sequel that didn't work, but that is a minor complaint. Chris Evans makes a better Human Torch than a Captain America.
What I always say about the first FF movie was that it was closer to being what it should have been than Batman Begins was to what it should have been. Ben and Johnny, in particular, along with Reed and Sue, were pitch perfect. There were some so bile adjustments that I bought worked well. I don’t recall Reed being as emotionally stunted in the early comics, and I recall Sue being more emotional in the comics, butI I think these adjustments helped their character arcs in the movie. The first movie may have lacked a certain gravitas, but the costumes and portrayals were true to the early FF comics. Casting that Julian guy as Dr. Doom was about the only blatantly bad decision in that area. I didn’t like the second movie as much, they bit off more than they could chew presenting the Silver Surfer and teasing Galactus, but it was at least watchable. Laurence Fishburne was cool as the Surfer. Still, though, I looked forward to a third movie. Since the FF were my first Marvel experience and for many years, my favorite, I’v stayed hopeful and have looked forward to the MCU version of the characters.
Fishburne nailed the voice no doubt, but don't forget that the physical performance for the CGI came from Doug Jones, currently playing Saru on Star Trek Discovery.
Any contemporary adaptation is going to change that dynamic anyway. It was the older guy/younger woman--taking her by the hand and showing her the ways of the world thing--that was pretty common in the sixties. Dick Van Dyke show anyone?
Not just CG, Jones also played the Surfer in a full body suit and facial prosthetics for some scenes.
I really liked Dr. Doom is these films. I thought he was great in both. I thought Surfer was really cool too. But yes, the second film wasn't quite as good as the first. The serious parts of the second film were fine, but when they tried to have the silly light hearted moments, it didn't work well like it did in the first film. Johnny Storm came off as more of an asshole than as friend who just likes to mess around with you. Evans was the best part of the first film. He stole the show.
Another cool thing I forgot to mention was two of the TV reporters in the crowd in the first film were Canadians Terry David Mulligan and Ben Mulroney.
I see the 00's Fantastic Four movies for what they were. Just harmless fun. Global threat and the Fantastic Four have to deal with it. That's it. There was no build up to a bigger universe or one of the F4 dying because they have to die(BVS) or Johnny having a falling out with the team and leaving. Definitely much better than the gritty attempt a few years ago "Want to know why I say "It's Clobberin time?" Good grief
I rewatched the first movie a few months back and it just doesn't hold up. I was lukewarm when I first watched it but now it seems like a pale, flimsy imitation of better Superhero movies at the time. I remember liking the sequel more when I watched it but that was back when it first came out.
So having a Saturday alone and a temporary free trial for Disney+ this thread inspired me to watch all 3 F4 movies, even though I barely remember the first two, and the third one I've never seen before at all. (Yes I know, the unreleased one is on youtube, too - maybe Monday...) In all fairness to them all, I can't say I've ever been a huge fan of the team to begin with - I tend to view Johnny and Ben as two of the biggest, least interesting jerks in Marvel comics and Sue as a theoretically good character who seems to spend more time being abused by the writers than doing anything cool. Reed tends to get better or worse depending on the story, which I guess is not that unusual in comics. However, I love superhero movies/shows in general and I try to be open to film versions even of characters I don't know or like (Chris Evans' Captain America gave me a whole new appreciation of a character I never really connected to before that, just for one example). In general I gotta say Fant4stic really didn't meet the high standards of disaster everyone's rock-bottom reviews set for it. Teller, Mara, Jordan and Bell gave actually mostly interesting performances. Their worst sin was probably just being a little bit joyless and jaded - but at least they felt like real, mostly likable people. I didn't even hate Kebbell in the first half of the movie - it was a complete (and totally unnecessary) reimagining of Doom, but it seemed like one with potential. Granted, post-transformation Doom was pathetic and the action mostly boring with a ridiculously abrupt ending so not a great film overall but, eh, I've seen way worse in the genre. The original Story movie, on the other hand, seems to do the action a little better and everything else worse. Not just Julian McMahon, but also Jessica Alba and Ioann Gruffudd are terrible in that film. I've long pondered the possibility that Gruffudd might have been better if they'd let the actor keep his native accent so he didn't have to devote such herculean efforts to learning every line individually (making it impossible for him to react to Evans' constant ad libbing). But... even if that were hypothetically true, it still doesn't make his actual performance better. Chiklis and Evans are ok, but nothing special. Meanwhile the writing and direction feels like a cheap soap opera had a baby with a cheap 80s comedy (with all the corny, annoying music to match). And the fx look terrible (yes, I know, 15 year old movie, but I'm pretty sure that Thing body suit at the very least could easily have been better done than that, even back in the 90s). Rise of the Silver Surfer actually seems to be a suprisingly marked improvement. All the actors seem a lot more comfortable in the roles - even Alba and Gruffudd are at least passable. Now that he has an actual story to chew on, Chris Evans' Torch is even kind of impressive (but still nothing compared to his Cap). The effects look a lot better, Thing is a lot less plastic-y and Surfer looks pretty cool, if still a bit of early cgi-itis. Even the music is just so much nicer. Most significantly, the direction is simpler and doesn't feel so much like even the camera is trying to yuk it up and the writing seems to strike a *much* better balance between humor and genuine heart. This one I think genuinely deserves the 'simple, uncomplicated fun' distinction. I wish they'd've quit with the stupid making Jessica Alba strip naked jokes and not included Julian Mcmahon's obviously failed version of Doom (though even he was better than I feared - at least this story felt like something Doom would do, despite the bad casting and dumb electricity powers). And of course Galactus being a cloud that can be destroyed by his own herald was still pretty stupid. But overall I honestly like this one (unlike the first) and also think it genuinely works pretty well as a coherent stand-alone film (unlike Fant4stic). Also, while the shots of Doom on the Surfer's board were a bit too reminiscent of Raimi's Goblin for me, that sequence with Evans getting all four powersets together actually made me kind of excited to see a genuine Super-Skrull in the upcoming MCU films.