The origin of the Fantastic Four is structurally similar to their beginnings in the comic, but it screams too much government-funded mandate and one little nuance that I loved from the Marvel mags is that Reed Richards basically hijacked his own test rocket ship so that he could try it out before they cut the pursestrings. He conned his best buddy Ben Grimm to fly the thing... not to mention letting his girlfriend Susan and her hot-headed little brother Johnny tag along for the ride, not knowing they were all gonna get zapped by cosmic rays and get superpowers. This trailer looks like not only will EVERYONE know they're doing it anyway, but that Doctor Doom is involved in it somehow. Which is where this movie REALLY blows already: ya see, Doctor Doom is not the main villain to use for the first movie about the Fantastic Four. He should be saved for the second one, and keep him Richards' old college roomie who messed around with that machine so he could talk to his Momma's soul in Hell and wound up getting his face scorched off in the process. Yeah, bring Doom in for part 2, as the dictator of Latveria that Richards is the only one who can contest his bid for world power. But since this is the Fantastic Four and pitting them against Mole-Man out the gate wouldn't be any fun, they should have used this guy for the first movie's baddie:
But anyways, here's the trailer for Fantastic Four (Quicktime format). Gotta say that the Human Torch effects look pretty darned good though :-)
You're off just a little bit on your Thing wishes... if you check out the frist issue of Fantastic Four you'll see that Grimm is a lot less blocky, and more organically rocky... no pronounced brow (John Byrne really nailed that tight), and a lot more like the movie version than the later comic version. My complaint is the presence of Doom, who should just not be in this movie! It's too early! Nonetheless, I can't wait to see this!
ReplyDeleteDoh! Good catch on Thing's brow :-) Wonder if they'll have Alicia Masters in this one (hey she was in the Roger Corman one from ten years or so ago... not that anyone KNOWS that since it was never released :-P) Giving Grimm a girlfriend *and* trapping him under a rocky hide would set up a lot of human feeling (like making Richards feel guilty for putting Grimm through this to begin with).
ReplyDeleteBTW, Jack Kirby was involved in the FF movie back in the early Nineties (before he died in '94) and he was hellbent on seeing Galactus as the bad guy in the first movie. Ideally it shoulda been Galactus, then Doom in part 2, and somehow work in the *great* story from the comics that had then-unborn Franklin getting too powerful inside Susan's womb, which led Richards and Grimm to enter the Negative Zone to steal Annihilus' power rod so they could "drain off" the excess energy from the fetus. Would prolly take two movies to pull off... but that woulda been the FF's real time to shine.