Summer Blockbuster Part 3 (or 4?)

"Flame On!"
"It's Clobberin' Time."



Fantastic Fan

It's a really good time to be a fan of superhero movies. Fantastic Four opened this past weekend to pretty good critical acclaim and modest box office gains (a mere $56 million). F4 is one of the cornerstones of the Marvel Universe and has been around longer than I have. The movie has been a long time in coming and I was a little skeptical when I heard they were making it live action. The movie was really good. The visuals were exciting and there was a mix of the humor and action from the comics. There were some liberties taken with the story of Dr. Victor Von Doom (could it be more obvious who the bad guy is Stan Lee?), but I felt overall the film was faithful to the comics. The major problem that people will have with this movie is that there is a pretty extensive setup. Because Hollywood doesn't want to churn out 1 movie when they could possible squeeze out 5 or 6 from the same subject, this movie is set to start a new franchise. They spend a lot of time doing "character study/analysis" and getting the audience ready for the end of the movie and subsequent movies. As a huge GEEK and FAN of these movies, I can tolerate these things because I know the next movie will not be quite so slow. One thing that I liked a lot is the actors didn't distract from the movie (unlike Cruise in War of the Worlds). Everyone knows Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis and they are visible in the movie. But with Jessica's Sue Storm becoming invisible and Chiklis' Ben Grimm becoming the Thing, you can forget that they are fairly well known actors. The actors that play Reed Richards, Johnny Storm and Dr. Doom (Ioan Gruffudd, Chris Evans, and Julian McMahon respectively) were new to me, so they did not distract in any way. Bottom line: Go see this movie. It is a compelling story with action (even though there could have been a little more action) and of course a love story. The special effects were very good and there was even a bunch of humor throughout the movie. Look for Stan Lee to show up in this and many more F4 movies.


ce space Jessica Alba as The Invisible Girl, Sue Storm


ace spacep Michael Chiklis as The Thing, Ben Grimm


space Chris Evans as The Human Torch, Johnny Storm


space Julian McMahon as Doom, Dr. Victor Von Doom

Note: For those of you that don't know, there was an underground F4 movie on the internet a few years back. It was made on a shoestring budget and it definitely showed. The point of the movie was to use the license in order not to lose the rights to the license. The movie was so bad it was kind of good (in a cult sort of way). There are people that are still searching for the movie on the internet today even though the studio may have hunted down all copies before releasing this movie. So if you need a laugh and you can find it, look for the first live action Fantastic Four movie.