Tag: fantastic four

Superhero teams don’t make sense

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Superhero team movies are all the rage these days. If it’s not the Justice League teaming up then it’s the X-Men or Fantastic Four. All of which is very cool. But as I started thinking about the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War movie I came to the realization that a lot of superhero teams really don’t make sense.

The Avengers
The Avengers

If you look at a team like the one in Avengers (2012) of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow, these are characters thrown together to battle some great, unstoppable foe that they can only hope of defeating with each other. Which makes some sense. They all come together for the big dust-up and prevail in the end. What doesn’t make sense is why do they stay together?

Thor is a god who lives on another planet, so making it to Avengers meetings can be problematic. The Incredible Hulk is an unstable monster who’s only kept in check by Bruce Banner and should probably stay as far away from people as possible. Captain America is a super soldier, and as such shouldn’t he be working for the government? Tony Stark/Iron Man is a playboy whom time and time again proves that he doesn’t work well with others.

Who’s paying them? Are they indentured servants giving up any semblance of normal lives in order that they can put their lives on the line day in and day out to battle things like robotic terrors and science gone amok for the greater good? Are they superheroes, or are they superslaves?

I suppose you’ve got Hawkeye and Black Widow who are already working with SHIELD when the movie begins, so they make at least some sense working as part of the team.

But for the others, not so much.

The X-Men
The X-Men

Things get even worse when you take into account the X-Men. The X-Men are a group of super-powered mutants lead by Professor X who secretly teaches outcast mutants at his school where the teachers moonlight as this super-powered team. By day Jean Grey might teach math to a bunch of seventh graders, but by night she’s out saving the world from the likes of Magneto with the other X-Men. So these are teachers, who have to be doing all the things teachers do like helping kids with their homework and coming up with their curriculum. But these X-Teachers are really spending most of their time zooming around the globe trying to stop armageddon. Am I to believe that Scott Summers is aboard the Blackbird grading papers in between fighting Apocalypse and Mr. Sinister?

Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four

I suppose the one team that does make sense is the Fantastic Four. This is a family-ish team with stretchable Reed Richards who’s married to, or at least gets married to at some point in the story, Sue Storm who’s brother Johnny and friend Ben Grimm are all given superpowers after one of Reed’s experiments goes awry. Regardless of the fact that they’re all almost killed by this experiment, them banding together does make some sense because of the whole family angle and the fact that they get their powers at the same time.

While all that might be plausible, at no point did anyone like Johnny or Ben say to Reed, “I appreciate the opportunity to fight the Mole Man once every few months, but I’d really like to go back to school to learn how to become a chef.”

Looking at the superhero team from the outside it’s interesting to see how scary someone like Iron Man is. He’s got the power of a small army at his fingertips and roams around the globe doing whatever he thinks is right no matter what the consequences. Or even the Incredible Hulk who at any moment can Hulk-out can devastate any city more effectively than even an atomic bomb. For them to be running around together to the average person might just be terrifying.

Of course these movies all take place in a fictional universe where all of the superheroes are nice to each other and none of them has ever thought about how much better the world were be if it were their group running it. 😉

Direct beam comms #4

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TV

Is it just me, or is the Netflix series Jessica Jones just a hard-drinking darker version of Veronica Mars (2004–2007)?

 

I was recently able to catch up on the Starz series Ash vs Evil Dead and am happy to say that it’s GREAT. Horror comedies like Ash vs Evil Dead must be hard to pull off since there sure aren’t many of them. Let’s see, there’s the Evil Dead series, What We Do in the Shadows and Shaun of the Dead movies, parts of Tucker and Dale vs Evil and … well, that’s about it.

And Ash vs Evil Dead isn’t JUST horror/comedy either, it’s got a lot of heart too which surprised me.

The one thing is that I’m not quite sure how Ash vs Evil Dead fits with the Evil Dead cannon as a whole? It’s almost like in the Ash vs Evil Dead universe The Evil Dead (1981) didn’t happen but Evil Dead II (1987) did. And either they’re ignoring Army of Darkness (1992) or they just haven’t gotten to the part where Ash is, “Trapped in time, surrounded by evil and low on gas,” yet.

Movies

Kylo Ren from Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Kylo Ren from Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Star Wars: The Force Awakens: I was really excited about this one when I saw the first trailer. It seemed that Disney and J.J. Abrams were taking what made the original trilogy great and and molding this into a new film series. After seeing The Force Awakens, I thought the movie was really good but my two complaints are that a lot happens in the film that’s pure coincidence and The Force Awakens is essentially a remake of Star Wars: A New Hope with a dash of The Empire Strikes Back but with everything being BIGGER and more bombastic than before. Most of the beats from A New Hope are present in The Force Awakens which is fine, but I just wish Abrams had gone and done more of his own thing than making a “greatest hits” movie like he did here. B+

Ex Machina: It took me a while to see this one even though several friends highly recommended it to me the last few months. Writer/director Alex Garland is one of the best voices in realistic sci-fi/horror like with 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Dredd and he continues his winning streak with Ex Machina, about the creation of the first artificially intelligent being that might be a little too intelligent for mankind to contain. B

Fantastic Four (2015): Do we really need any more superhero origin movies? Not that we don’t need origin stories for superheroes, just that is there really a need anymore to devote an entire movie to origin when there’s plenty of more interesting ways to do that? Like Iron Man is an origin story but is told in such a way that much of the origin is covered in the first half of the movie and the more recent Ant Man handles his origin by having it be something that’s slowly uncovered over the course of an adventure rather than devoting an entire film to it which Fantastic Four does.

In fact, the actual Four don’t get together until nearly the end of the movie. It’s the film that’s essentially an advertisement to the forthcoming sequel that looks kind’a interesting that’s never going to happen since the first movie didn’t do well enough at the box office.

Fantastic Four isn’t a bad movie, it’s just that in an era of great superhero movies it doesn’t stand out in any substantial way. C

Books

I got the books Sketching from the Imagination: An Insight into Creative Drawing and Art of He Man and the Masters of the Universe this year for Christmas. Sketching from the Imagination is a look at the sorts of techniques different artists use when sketching for fun or work while Art of He Man is a visual history of all the art generated behind the scenes when coming up with a toylike then maintaining it over the years with new toys and playsets.

I remember a Fantastic Four movie that wasn’t all that fantastic

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Note – this is an updated version of an article that was originally published in 2005.

I’ve seen the Fantastic Four movie, but it’s probably not one of the ones you’re thinking of. Set to be released in 1994 this Fantastic Four movie was shot, completed with special effects yet never officially released, a rarity in an industry that will do almost anything to recoup an investment. Before its release, Fantastic Four ’94 was promoted in specialty magazines like Cinescape and Comics Scene so the movie was well known by fans and insiders. Yet as the years past and we waited for a release date that would never come many wondered if they’d ever get to see this film.

Unfortunately, some of us would.

Fantastic Four ’94 starred a group of b-list and no name actors who would go onto such things as The Truth About Beef Jerky (2002) and The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All (1999). The plot of Fantastic Four ’94 follows that of the comic book which is essentially also the plot for all the modern Fantastic Four movies too: four friends are bombarded with cosmic rays during a scientific trip into space that causes them to develop superpowers. With these powers, they must do battle with the evil “Doctor Doom” and movie-only villain “The Jeweler.” However, the budget of Fantastic Four ’94 dictated that the powers were less “super” and more “awful.”

Reportedly made on a $1.5 million dollar budget — to put that number in perspective, if industry reports are to be believed $1.5 million is about what it cost the creators of the latest Fantastic Four movie to produce about one MINUTE of film — effects for Fantastic Four ’94 ranged from good — The Thing suit looked decent enough — to very bad — Johnny Storm has the ability to ignite his entire body in flame and fly, but he never does this until the end of the movie in an awful CGI shot used to close-out the story. Mr. Fantastic’s ability to stretch any part of his body is achieved via quick cuts — he reaches out his arm and the movie cuts to the actor wearing an arm-lengthening prostheses — while The Invisible Girl simply vanishes from the screen leaving no trace, arguably the most effective visual effect in the movie and probably most cost-saving.

Rumors abound as to the reasoning behind just why Fantastic Four ’94 was never released. In the book The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, author David Hughes suggests that the movie’s producers were contractually obligated to deliver a Fantastic Four movie by a certain date or the property would revert back to its owner and they would loose all rights to any future Fantastic Four movies. Realizing that director Chris Columbus (the first two Harry Potter movies) was in the process of developing his own big-budget version of Fantastic Four, and eyeing a piece of that film’s grosses since they owned the rights to any film versions, the producers hired schlock-king Roger Corman to film his own version of Fantastic Four for that $1.5 million, thus fulfilling their contractual obligations. Apparently, there was nothing in the contract about their Fantastic Four movie being released, only it getting made.

It’s also rumored that after the producers working with Chris Columbus on his version of the movie saw how awful Corman’s version of Fantastic Four looked they decided that rather there being any chance the movie would be released and general public see a very bad Fantastic Four movie, and potentially hurting their own big-budget franchise, they would pay the producers of Fantastic Four ’94 to keep the movie under wraps and never release it.

Rumors also suggest that this was the intention of the producers of the never-released version of Fantastic Four all along.

So how did I, and thousands of other comic book fans worldwide, get to see a movie that was never released to the public in any format? The answer; the power of bootleg.

Sometime in the late 1990s a print of Fantastic Four ’94 was accidentally (or perhaps intentionally) leaked to the public and this made its way onto the comic book convention circuit. Suddenly, dealers across the country were making copies of this never-released movie and selling it themselves at $20 a dub on VHS. The tape I saw of Fantastic Four ’94 looked to be a dub of a copy of a copy on VHS. It was watchable, but just barely.

Trust me when I say that the never-released version of Fantastic Four ’94 is just as awful as I describe. The whole production seems cheap and quickly thrown together like you’d expect for a $1.5 million dollar Corman movie. And I’m not slamming Corman, I think that some of his movies attain a weird sort of greatness where his films transcend their limitations and become something other than a forgettable low-budget film.

Fantastic Four ’94 is not one of those films.

While in retrospect Fantastic Four ’94 didn’t hurt any upcoming Fantastic Four movies with its awfulness as the producers feared — the next Fantastic Four movie wouldn’t be released until 2005 and would be awful in its own way — Fantastic Four ’94 release would’ve done nothing to help the superhero movie brand. But it’s not like releasing it would’ve hurt that brand either.

The time period that Fantastic Four ’94 would’ve been released into theaters was not a good time for comic book movies to begin with as there was a whole string of disappointing films from Batman & Robin (1997), Judge Dredd (1995), Tank Girl (1995), Spawn (1997) and Steel (1997) to name a few. So it’s not like releasing Fantastic Four ’94 into this mix would’ve spelled the doom for comic book movies as we know it.

I wouldn’t call Fantastic Four ’94 a “lost classic” by any means. It’s certainly one of those rare “lost” movies that for whatever reason is simply unavailable to the public. But having watched parts of it again with its low-grade made-for-TV movie aesthetics it’s not a great loss to our cultural archive that more people haven’t seen it.

I think Fantastic Four ’94 best fits with films like Captain America 1990 and The Punisher 1989. Those movies too are just as bad as Fantastic Four ’94 yet those films were released. While those two films are available on home video while Fantastic Four ’94 is not, it’s not like many people outside the fan community have seen those movies either which isn’t a bad thing.

2015 Summer movie preview

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With three movies due out it seems as if Marvel Entertainment has bought and now owns the naming rights to summer. The first of which is The Avengers: Age of Ultron on May 1. Really The Avengers Part 2, or is it Iron Man Part 5…, Age of Ultron has the whole team back together again battling the robotic Ulton, one of the most iconic Avengers villains. Much like with the first Avengers flick, the fate of the very Earth will hang in the balance in this film!

Except since there are two more Marvel movies out this summer and a whole slew of Marvel films scheduled for theaters all the way up until 2019, I think the fate of the Earth has already been decided in a corporate board room.

mad_max_fury_road_ver2Mr. Road Warrior himself Mad Max returns to the hellish highways of the apocalypse on May 15 in Max Max: Fury Road. This fourth outing for the character, with Tom Hardy in the title role and co-starring Charlize Theron, has Max trying to rescue a group of fellow apocalyptic travelers from the clutches of a crazed outlaw gang of motorheads.

In other words: More merry Mad Max mayhem!

A remake of the family-scarer Poltergeist is out May 22. I’m interested in this one, if just because the original 1982 film about a girl vanished into the guts of a family’s haunted house gave me the heebie-jeebies as a youngster. I mean, Poltiergeist has one of the kids in the movie being practically eaten alive by a tree one minute and terrorized by a clown doll the next. C’MON!

It helps that this new Poltergeist is being produced by Evil Dead horror auteur Sam Raimi too.

A fourth Jurassic Park movie, Jurassic World, is set to bring a little chaos to theaters June 12. While this is being billed as a sequel to the first three films from 1993 to 2001, to me Jurassic World looks to be an reboot of the Jurassic Park franchise as a whole. The trailer for this one has a slew of people visiting Jurassic Park when something goes wrong that turns loose the dinosaurs to chomp on some unsuspecting folks. Or, it’s a bigger version of Jurassic Park sans the guiding hands of Steven Spielberg.

Terminator: Genesys, the fifth film of that franchise, will “be back” in theaters July 1 with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Due to the vagaries of time travel, this time he’s joined by a young Sarah Connor (now Emilia Clarke) as the two along with Reese (now Jai Courtney) fight off a bunch of different and deadly terminators out to put an end to the Connor timeline once and for all. Or at least until the next movie.

Marvel movie #2 is Ant-Man out July 17. There’s not too much known about this one other than it stars Paul Rudd in the title role of a superhero who can turn incredibly small. But if Ant-Man follows the Marvel Mold™ of late it’s no doubt that the fate of the planet will be in Ant-Man’s teeny-tiny hands.

poltergeist

A fifth Mission: Impossible movie, simply titled Mission: Impossible 5,  is out July 31. Even though I probably shouldn’t I’ve enjoyed the Mission: Impossible movies since the first one was released in ’96. Even if the missions the M:I teams have gone on over the years/sequels have gone from impossible to impossibler to “there’s no way in heck they’d be able to do any of this stuff whatsoever!”

The final Marvel movie out this summer, that’s really a Sony one, is Fantastic Four. A reboot of the Fantastic Four films from 2005 and ’07, this version looks to put a new, darker spin on the big four. Or, if it works it could be the dawn of a new age in the tone of comic book movies but if it doesn’t we might just have another Catwoman on our hands.

Premiering on TV screens before Mission: Impossible in 1964 was Man from U.N.C.L.E., the first series to take inspiration from the James Bond films to a TV series. Now a film version of U.N.C.L.E. is set to close the summer movie season August 14. This 1960s period piece seems to be equal parts Jason Bourne and Austin Powers.