Originally published at: Will there ever be a good Fantastic Four adaptation? | Boing Boing
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the TL;DW: no.
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What does he mean they “saved Marvel Comics—twice” when was the 2nd time?
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Ah… I misread the title as “HAS there ever been a good F4 movie?”
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When they stopped Galactus from devouring Earth
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At least things eventually worked out for Chris Evans and Michael B Jordan. Poor Jay Underwood is probably still wondering when it will be his turn to get cast in a far better Marvel movie where he gets to hang out with Black Panther in Wakanda.
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Betteridge’s Law applies.
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I guess Marvel have developed plans to integrate them into the MCU, now that they have the movie rights back, but FF are so comic-booky I don’t know how you do an adaptation that isn’t goofy as hell (if you’re being faithful to the source material) or doesn’t work (if you’re not). I mean, four people are bombarded by “cosmic rays” that give them powers based on the four, pre-Aristotelian, Greek elements, after which they don stretchy blue fetishwear and zoom around in flying cars. There’s no grounded or gritty version of them that doesn’t become ridiculous.
That works equally well as a response to either question, though.
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It’s not Impossible:
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Have they tried both darker and grittier?
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Do you think the Infinity Stones are too comic-booky? Or “gamma radiation”? Or Pym-particles? Or outright magic? Because if so, you’re not watching the same MCU as the rest of us. It also helps that in some of the newer F4 books the “comic rays” thing has been explained a bit more and the reasoning for going into space has been extrapolated to an experimental FTL drive. I can see any number of ways to ground that, especially when you’re starting to mess with physics and FTL travel anyway. As for the costumes? Yeah, you generally can mostly ditch those, or have Reed’s famous genius create them as a way of keeping his family clothed when they’d otherwise be constantly destroying their street clothes. Flying cars? Even the Avengers have their iconic Quinjet thanks to S.H.I.E.L.D. so something along those lines isn’t entirely out of the question.
It can be done, it’s not impossible.
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Sometimes fantastic can be too fantastic.
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I think that the best adaptation would be a television series that crosses the streams between workplace and family dramedy , And, what the hell, mockumentary (as an in world show in the MCU)
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I think they’ll have to just show up in another MCU movie, and have them be funny. Then they can “spin-off” another FF movie if they want.
If Thor can be made funny, then certainly Ben Grimm can be made funny.
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Ben Grimm is already funny. Clobbering Time is already funny. They just need the right talent to position them. Because they are going to have to have some kind of backstory to explain where they’ve been all this time when they predates most of the other characters.
Now how about a flashback to a sweet cutaway view of the Baxter Building in downtown Manhattan.
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I think the FF’s cinematic future is in good hands with Marvel Studios. John Watts, director of the MCU Spider-Man films, will direct, and I think he has a pretty good feel for high-tech science with a heart. Hopefully Spidey will show up and pal around with the Torch, and I think the plan is to give Dr. Doom a rest so they can do him right. Personally, I wanna see the Mole Man in their first film! A wonderful version of the FF showed up in the second season premier episode of the animated show Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. “The Private War of Dr. Doom” starts off with the FF and Avengers gathered for a friendly game of cards before a perfectly-realized and formidable Doom comes along and busts things up. It’s too bad that show only got 2 seasons.
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Personally, I hope they DO give the Four a chance to do their own thing.
A few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought it possible mainly because Tony Stark / Ironman sucked all the air out of the room for the “Supergenius / technological wizard / superhero with issues” character.
By the way, it always kind of irked me that Tony Stark had the LOCK on every-single-flippin-technological-doodad in the MCU. ESPECIALLY Spiderman…ANNOYING… There are SO many engineer/scientists in the Marvel pantheon that…it was just kind of ludicrous…
ANYway, now that Stark is dead, it’s a PERFECT crack in the world to wedge the Sue Storm / Reed Richards science duo into that niche as super inventors, even if they re-write a bit of history and he’s building on what Stark left behind…And once they are in, Johnny and Ben can get a foothold in there somewhere…
Anyway, I hope so…
…and PLEASE don’t introduce Doom until number 2. Get the footing, lay the foundation and build the family and ALL of the motivations and THEN give them the Big Bad to fight…
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They tried turning down brightness and contrast, but that didn’t help.
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