I've been a bit lax on my upcoming stuff on Mondays simply because I've been pretty busy, but I thought I would take some time out to talk about the Fantastic Four movie coming out today. Ron saw a press screening and thought it was a good film, but the critics joined together at Rotten Tomatoes think differently. The movie currently scores a 24% on the Tomatometer (11 Fresh, 46 Rotten reviews via critics) and that doesn't bode too well in my mind. Makes me think about possibly not seeing it in fact.
I'm not as big on the Fantastic Four (I refuse to change the latter into a 4) as I am other superheroes like Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men or even Superman. They are the original super team, but the comic has had its bad runs in the recent past and before Mark Waid took over about 2 years ago the comic was headed toward disaster. I think Waid's "Unthinkable" story re-introducing Dr. Doom with a new set of armor and a more interesting way of attacking the family was fantastic and now Doom is supposedly stuck in Hell, but I'm sure he will be back. The followup story, "Authoritative Action", is also a great one as the Fantastic Four take over Latveria in Doom's absense and find themselves on the bad end of the public relations spectrum both in the United States and around the world.
Now Waid is gone (after getting a reprieve earlier from Marvel when the backlash came over him being taken off the book) and J. Michael Straczynski (of Babylon 5 fame) has taken over the comic. Anyway, getting back on topic (I can go off on comic tangents easily) all signs for this movie pointed toward it being bad. It took a long time to make, there were reshoots late in the game (like 2 months ago late) and the early previews made it look like crap.
I think the guy who plays Johnny Storm is probably going to come out of the movie looking the best simply because the role is a hothead one and he makes jokes just like Storm does in the comics. I think he alone will probably rise above the ashes of this movie as its brightest spot, but I think Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis may not be helping their careers with this movie. Alba is there for the "hot woman" factor, but I wonder how well she acts in this movie. I may never know until DVD, but I wanted to send out some warning flares to people interested in this movie. Chances are very good it will not be anywhere near as good as Batman Begins.