Friday, July 08, 2005

The Fantastic Four

I'm pretty hard on movies based on comic books. It's a difficult task to take a Character that has appeared monthy for 50 years and tell a two hour story that is faithful to the lush background that has been built. I was a Comic Book geek as a kid and because those characters had an important place in my imagination, I can take affront to a movie that does not respect the subject matter.

I'm not a Super-Fan who knows, expects or wants every detail to be perfect. Dont cram 50 years of story telling into one movie, but also dont change the storyline 'just because'.

We now have the technology to create these films with a sense of realism, so expect them to keep coming.

Movies that Sucked:
Daredevil - One of the Hazards of casting someone famous as the main character. I kept thinking 'Bennifer' everytime they showed Ben Affleck

Hulk - A horrible job with the graphics. Hulk looked like a green play-dough man. The storyline sucked, it took over an hour for the guy to finally turn into the Hulk. WTF?

Punisher (Dolf Lundgren) - A blatantly low budget B film or worse. I dont mind that, what pissed me off was that The Punisher didnt wear the skull face shirt. How do you miss that F'ing detail? Without the shirt it's just a vigilante film.

Punisher (Thomas Jane) - Much better produced, but The Punisher wasnt 'Bad' enough. I never cared about the character enough. The Punisher in the comics is a guy with a sick sense of Justice that often goes too far.

Batman - This does not include Batman Begins. Those other ones were far too Over-Produced. Every character was played by one celbrity or another. It was a parade of actors and not a story about Batman. Like the Punisher, Batman is a sick bastard. The films had the feel of a Musical.

Movies that Rocked:
HellBoy - I never read any HellBoy comics, but after seeing this movie, I read all I could about him on the Internet. It had great depth of character, and was a pleasure to watch.

XMEN
- Depite all of the big names in this, they were well cast. A superfan might find alot to nitpick about, but I thought it followed the spirit of the comic and was fun.

Batman Begins - A great great film. I'm going to go see it in IMAX format sometime this weekend.

SpiderMan - Nicely done. The best thing they did was cast an (at the time) unknown for the role, based on his ability to act. I loved these movies.

So I'm not liking what I see in the Fantastic 4 Trailers. The biggest problem I see is that "The Thing" looks like he's made out of a Rice Crispy bar. Equally bad is their representation of Dr Doom. He supposed to be one of the most evil men in the world, and he looks cheap. I could have done a better job. I actually HAVE done a better job. The whole movie looks forced.

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