He's Super!
Jan. 25th, 2006 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenLast night I watched The Fantastic Four with my roommate, Lisa, and her work-buddy, Hannah, after the two of them had exhausted themselves trying to keep up with this really hard-cord Pilates video. All three of us were giggling like crazy just about every time Johnny Storm opened his mouth. Characters like his tend to grate on my nerves in general, but I found him amusing even at his most sophmoric (the shaving cream wake-up slap gag blew, but ohhhhhh I died when he played that joke on Ben Grimm when they got back from space--see the movie, you'll know what I mean.
The science was dreadful, don't get me wrong--we're talking almost Hulk-level bad--but we cheerfully decided as a whole to ignore it. Why was Victor von Doom affected by the cosmic storm? Who cares! Wheeeeeeee is he evil yet? Can we reverse the Four's powers with a machine that basically exposes them to the exact same thing they went through in space? Won't that actually put them still two lefts away from making a right--180 degrees from being right, in fact? Why should it matter! Plot device! Plot device!
And no, we don't care about the inconsistency of the power usage by the Four! Let's make the Invisible Woman unable to control her powers because she's a weak female! Wasn't it bad enough she was Jessica Alba? Mr. Fantastic can take a Thing punch to the gut without so much as distending beyond two dimensions, but drop him off a roof and he gets knocked out? La la la, I'm not listening!
But speaking of Mr. Fantastic, Ioan Gruffudd is love, people. I never read The Fantastic Four, but I have read enough related Marvel titles to kind of get the idea that Reed Richards is the smartest man on the planet. Like head and shoulders above (not speaking literally, though he could be if he chose, I guess) smarter than anybody else. Forge wishes he were Reed Richards. Makes Peter Parker coming up with a tacky solution that 3M, Elmers, and Duct-Tape guys would kill for seem like a mere flight of fancy, he's that smart. When the Beast wants to feel like normal people level of smart, he talks to Reed Richards for about ten seconds. I get it: Mr. Fantastic, Super Genius.
And, of course, the movie did it's damndest to make him seem like an ineffectual monkey. Why the hell, for plot reasons or otherwise, would Reed Richards have to be portrayed as desperate and broke? And if he's famous enough to be on the cover of Wired, can't he have some sort of celebrity status that would still attract enough attention to make people sponsor him that aren't Eastern European imports like Doom? He also manages to miscalculate the speed of solar storm--BEN GRIMM'S HIDEOUS MUTATION IS ALL HIS FAULT OMG TEH ANGSTZORS!!! He can't do the math on his electricty bill (um, an old building with 1930s style elevators might not be the best power-sucker for your googly machine).
Don't let us forget, however, that he is bumbling when it comes to people, too. And within this stereotypical smart-person character quirk, Ioan Gruffudd rescued Mr. Fantastic from total abuse. He managed to act twisty circles around Jessica Alba's one facial-expression-meant-to-convey-anger/hurt/love/interest/boredom/amusement/constipation, which isn't hard, but, the miracle is he made her look better for being worth his attention!!!! There is a God, and he is an attractive Welshman with a funny name.
Oh yeah, I also dug him physically. His character was soooooo adorable in general, don't get me wrong, and Johnny Storm's ABS OF DOOM and NATURE TRAIL OF DOOM (if you don't know what this is, watch the movie, and enjoy) are pretty impressive, but I am such a sucker for Englishmen. It's like that total twerpy guy says in Love, Actually: American girls are easy for guys with accents, and the British one is just one of the best. So what if Mr. Fantastic was playing at being American (FYI, it's a passable accent, but nowhere near on par with some that I've seen in the past year--the Batman Begins imports and Jamie Bamber from Battlestar Galactica come to mind)? He was British enough on the two seconds of commentary that I could stomach before I turned it off (I really only turned it on to see who was on it, and it was kind of neat that they got all the Four on there, but it'll be a cold day in Hell before I listen to Jessica Alba whine about herself or 'her talent' for that long), and that was enough.
Essentially, it's a miracle the movie didn't suck. What with all it had working against it...
I'd heard the CGI was not impressive, and, partially as a result of reading that over and over, I tended to agree. Invisible Woman was okay with her disappearing--when she was "invisible" but still visible to the audience, they did well enough with it that I accepted it. I prefer entirely blanking out Jessica Alba, but I am not an 18-24 year old male, so therefore my vote doesn't count. Her force shield sucked, though, as did Ms. Alba's every attempt to grunt and look like she was holding an invisible large novelty beach ball when she used her powers. Ditto the Human Torch effects when he was fully on fire--they need to go bother WETA and SquareSoft and PIXAR for help with flames (and water, too, because why not? maybe they can get ideas for the Invisible Woman's powers) and then make a sequel.
But, in defence of the CGI guys, there is just no way to animate Mr. Fantastic so that it looks at all real. His powers look ludicrously fake in the comics, so no duh, it's gonna look like you blue-screened his CGI feet when the actor was suspended in air holding another guy he was supposedly rescuing while keeping his feet on the ground several feet above. And the wrapping around Ben Grimm? Yeah, the more you make use of Mr. Flexible, the worse it looks. Things to consider next time, I suppose.
The Thing was, pardon the pun, fantastic. I could have done without the whole angsty bit, as I prefer my heroes troubled, not necessarily brooding all the goddamned time, but Michael Chiklis was amazing. The makeup was good, the sound effects when he moved rock skin against rock skin were credibly....rocky-sounding. Michael Chiklis managed to emote and capture Ben Grimm in or out of the Thing costume. I like that he's unapologetically not smart, but that he's loyal and a good friend to Reed. They complement each other much better than Reed and Sue in the movie, even though I have no slash goggles and wouldn't see that pairing ever. Their friendship was really well done, one of the better exchanges of both trust and mistrust that goes along with being friends (much better done than the nag-and-little-boy syndrome between Sue and Johnny).
Doom was meh. Lisa still can't figure out why he had the mask as it hardly seems an appropriate award for anything. Meh, write it off with the plot hole that let Ben Grimm get from Europe to New York faster than anyone could think to find him (for that matter, add it to the pile of things wrong with Ben's fiancee walking out on the street in her nightie after apparently leaving her door open because there was no space to hide keys in her get up). It wasn't great, but in the comic book-to-movie adaptation cycle of the present decade, I put it below Spider-Man but above Hellboy and Daredevil (I know, that's not hard, but there are some freaks who liked Daredevil). It's certainly nowhere near the crap that was The Punisher, or what looked like crap that I never saw, like Elektra.
The science was dreadful, don't get me wrong--we're talking almost Hulk-level bad--but we cheerfully decided as a whole to ignore it. Why was Victor von Doom affected by the cosmic storm? Who cares! Wheeeeeeee is he evil yet? Can we reverse the Four's powers with a machine that basically exposes them to the exact same thing they went through in space? Won't that actually put them still two lefts away from making a right--180 degrees from being right, in fact? Why should it matter! Plot device! Plot device!
And no, we don't care about the inconsistency of the power usage by the Four! Let's make the Invisible Woman unable to control her powers because she's a weak female! Wasn't it bad enough she was Jessica Alba? Mr. Fantastic can take a Thing punch to the gut without so much as distending beyond two dimensions, but drop him off a roof and he gets knocked out? La la la, I'm not listening!
But speaking of Mr. Fantastic, Ioan Gruffudd is love, people. I never read The Fantastic Four, but I have read enough related Marvel titles to kind of get the idea that Reed Richards is the smartest man on the planet. Like head and shoulders above (not speaking literally, though he could be if he chose, I guess) smarter than anybody else. Forge wishes he were Reed Richards. Makes Peter Parker coming up with a tacky solution that 3M, Elmers, and Duct-Tape guys would kill for seem like a mere flight of fancy, he's that smart. When the Beast wants to feel like normal people level of smart, he talks to Reed Richards for about ten seconds. I get it: Mr. Fantastic, Super Genius.
And, of course, the movie did it's damndest to make him seem like an ineffectual monkey. Why the hell, for plot reasons or otherwise, would Reed Richards have to be portrayed as desperate and broke? And if he's famous enough to be on the cover of Wired, can't he have some sort of celebrity status that would still attract enough attention to make people sponsor him that aren't Eastern European imports like Doom? He also manages to miscalculate the speed of solar storm--BEN GRIMM'S HIDEOUS MUTATION IS ALL HIS FAULT OMG TEH ANGSTZORS!!! He can't do the math on his electricty bill (um, an old building with 1930s style elevators might not be the best power-sucker for your googly machine).
Don't let us forget, however, that he is bumbling when it comes to people, too. And within this stereotypical smart-person character quirk, Ioan Gruffudd rescued Mr. Fantastic from total abuse. He managed to act twisty circles around Jessica Alba's one facial-expression-meant-to-convey-anger/hurt/love/interest/boredom/amusement/constipation, which isn't hard, but, the miracle is he made her look better for being worth his attention!!!! There is a God, and he is an attractive Welshman with a funny name.
Oh yeah, I also dug him physically. His character was soooooo adorable in general, don't get me wrong, and Johnny Storm's ABS OF DOOM and NATURE TRAIL OF DOOM (if you don't know what this is, watch the movie, and enjoy) are pretty impressive, but I am such a sucker for Englishmen. It's like that total twerpy guy says in Love, Actually: American girls are easy for guys with accents, and the British one is just one of the best. So what if Mr. Fantastic was playing at being American (FYI, it's a passable accent, but nowhere near on par with some that I've seen in the past year--the Batman Begins imports and Jamie Bamber from Battlestar Galactica come to mind)? He was British enough on the two seconds of commentary that I could stomach before I turned it off (I really only turned it on to see who was on it, and it was kind of neat that they got all the Four on there, but it'll be a cold day in Hell before I listen to Jessica Alba whine about herself or 'her talent' for that long), and that was enough.
Essentially, it's a miracle the movie didn't suck. What with all it had working against it...
I'd heard the CGI was not impressive, and, partially as a result of reading that over and over, I tended to agree. Invisible Woman was okay with her disappearing--when she was "invisible" but still visible to the audience, they did well enough with it that I accepted it. I prefer entirely blanking out Jessica Alba, but I am not an 18-24 year old male, so therefore my vote doesn't count. Her force shield sucked, though, as did Ms. Alba's every attempt to grunt and look like she was holding an invisible large novelty beach ball when she used her powers. Ditto the Human Torch effects when he was fully on fire--they need to go bother WETA and SquareSoft and PIXAR for help with flames (and water, too, because why not? maybe they can get ideas for the Invisible Woman's powers) and then make a sequel.
But, in defence of the CGI guys, there is just no way to animate Mr. Fantastic so that it looks at all real. His powers look ludicrously fake in the comics, so no duh, it's gonna look like you blue-screened his CGI feet when the actor was suspended in air holding another guy he was supposedly rescuing while keeping his feet on the ground several feet above. And the wrapping around Ben Grimm? Yeah, the more you make use of Mr. Flexible, the worse it looks. Things to consider next time, I suppose.
The Thing was, pardon the pun, fantastic. I could have done without the whole angsty bit, as I prefer my heroes troubled, not necessarily brooding all the goddamned time, but Michael Chiklis was amazing. The makeup was good, the sound effects when he moved rock skin against rock skin were credibly....rocky-sounding. Michael Chiklis managed to emote and capture Ben Grimm in or out of the Thing costume. I like that he's unapologetically not smart, but that he's loyal and a good friend to Reed. They complement each other much better than Reed and Sue in the movie, even though I have no slash goggles and wouldn't see that pairing ever. Their friendship was really well done, one of the better exchanges of both trust and mistrust that goes along with being friends (much better done than the nag-and-little-boy syndrome between Sue and Johnny).
Doom was meh. Lisa still can't figure out why he had the mask as it hardly seems an appropriate award for anything. Meh, write it off with the plot hole that let Ben Grimm get from Europe to New York faster than anyone could think to find him (for that matter, add it to the pile of things wrong with Ben's fiancee walking out on the street in her nightie after apparently leaving her door open because there was no space to hide keys in her get up). It wasn't great, but in the comic book-to-movie adaptation cycle of the present decade, I put it below Spider-Man but above Hellboy and Daredevil (I know, that's not hard, but there are some freaks who liked Daredevil). It's certainly nowhere near the crap that was The Punisher, or what looked like crap that I never saw, like Elektra.
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Date: 2006-01-26 03:02 am (UTC)