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He's Super!
Jan. 25th, 2006 01:06 pmLast 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. )
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. )
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.
