Fantastic Four - movie review

I came to the realization today (well, I have known it for awhile, but always hesitated to admit it) that despite my love of movies, I truly despise movie critics. Yes, the Fantastic Four will not make any AFI Top 100 movie lists, but it was a fun, enjoyable movie. Yet, critics have lambasted this movie for everything it was attempting to do. While studying Secured Transactions this evening, I thought about why the general public goes to the movies. The answer is to get from their lives for a few hours and be entertained. But, for some reason, movie critics and movie snobs completely disagree with this past statement. I judge and rate the movies I watch on a number of characteristics, but the single biggest component to my rating is how much I enjoyed the movie. Now, comic book movies are a special beast altogether. I grew up loving comic books, though never really collected them. Hell, even the theme to my Bar Mitzah was comic books. So comics hold a special place in my heart and thus, there are a plethora of comic book movies in my DVD collection. Now, there are some I like more than others. There are a few comic movies that I have somewhat disliked, most recently The Punisher sucked the big one. However, there are a handful that I have thoroughly enjoyed (and subsequently purchased), that have been critically panned and other comic book geeks have hated. These include Daredevil, The Hulk, and Elektra. Yes, on the scale of comic book movies, these fall somewhere in the middle, but that doesn't make them bad. In fact, I think most people that disliked these movies didn't hate the movie itself, just some part of it. The fact that Ben Affleck played Daredevil turned a great deal of people off and the fact that Elektra was a spin-off to Daredevil, singlehandedly killed what was a decent movie. I can only assume that people hated The Hulk because it was more of a drama than an action movie. But, Ang Lee created a wonderful, beautiful character study of Bruce Banner and his large green alter-ego. Yes, it ran a little long and the CGI was not perfect, but lets be honest. The first Spider-man had so many CGI glitches, yet many say this was as close to a perfect comic book movie as could be. Come on, the movie had frickin Macy Gray in it (though, the cameo of Bruce Campbell was awesome). Comic book movies are tough to make because it has a fanatical fan base of comic book geeks, but there are those of us who love that Hollywood keeps putting these movies out (and I am so looking forward to X3 and Ghost Rider). Now, movies based on video games is where we absolutely need to draw the line.

So on to the movie itself. This was nowhere close to the best comic book movie (especially since there have been two far superior ones already this year - Batman Begins & Sin City). But for most of the 2 hour 6 minute runtime, I was entertained. This movie spent most of its time enjoying itself, especially the scenes between Johnny Storm "The Human Torch" and Ben Grimm "The Thing." [The shaving cream and action figure scenes were frickin hilarious]. I do have a few complaints, though. The final battle scene was a little short and not as exciting as many of its predecessor comic book movies. The costuming of Dr. Doom was almost as bad as the Green Goblin in Spider-man and could have been a tad bit better.

The casting was pretty good. My biggest complaint is that Jessica Alba was just a tad too young to play the Invisible Woman, considering she is supposed to be about the same age as Mr. Fantastic, but they are about 10 years apart. However, the casting of Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis were inspired. Both were awesome. Unfortunately, I was keeping my fingers crossed that Evans would have played The Flash (if that movie will ever get made) instead because his persona as a flashy young egotistical hotshot would have suited Evans style perfectly. But he was pretty darn good as the Torch. The makeup of The Thing was awesome as well and thankfully it was done the same way and by the same dude that did Hellboy.

I was very skeptical at first about this movie because the director Tim Story doesn't have a great track record (Barbershop and Taxi) and a very similar movie (and awesome) was done last year (The Incredibles) which forced the writers to make adjustments to avoid using some of the same jokes. But, all in all, they did an admirable job. Though this movie will not make my top 10 comic book movies, I will be buying it the week it comes out on DVD in a few months.

I give the Fantastic Four a fantastic 4 beers out of 6. Sorry for the pun, my brain is fried from Secured Transactions and Commercial Paper. Frickin UCC.

Interesting Tidbit

While procrastinating the other day, I came across something very interesting. I was reading an article about the current multi-week box office slump, which I believe is in its 19th week, and found a link to boxofficemojo.com that had information regarding the all-time box office leaders (current and historic). One of the historical dates was the last time Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was #1 on the list all the way back on March 12, 1998, just days before the abomination that was Titanic claimed the top spot (I am still trying to figure out how that movie topped $600 million domestic). Times have changed and below, you can see how the top 10 has changed in the last 7+ years.

March 12, 1998
1. Star Wars $460,998,007
2. Titanic $453,867,325
3. E.T. $399,804,539
4. Jurassic Park $357,067,947
5. Forrest Gump $329,694,499
6. The Lion King $312,855,561
7. Return of the Jedi $309,306,177
8. Independence Day $306,169,268
9. Empire Strikes Back $290,271,960
10. Home Alone $285,761,243

Today (July 6, 2005)
1. Titanic $600,788,188
2. Star Wars $460,998,007
3. Shrek 2 $441,226,247
4. E.T. $399,804,539
5. The Phantom Menace $431,088,301
6. Spider-Man $403.706,375
7. LOTR: Return of the King $377,027,325
8. Spider-Man 2 $373,585,825
9. The Passion of the Christ $370,782,930
10. Revenge of the Sith $367,113,992*

How much times have changed. Jurassic Park is now #11; Forrest Gump #14; Lion King #15; Return of the Jedi #19; Independence Day #20; Empire Strikes Back #23; and Home Alone #24

*Still in Theaters and subject to change

For more information, go to http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/domestic.htm.