Movie Review: Fantastic Four

Courtesy of Marve/20th Century Fox

Story points and plot is divulged below...read at your own peril.

The Marvel universe has been taken in a lot of good directions over the past 15 or so years.   The X-Men franchise - though had some middling along the way - has overall been very strong thanks to some great directing work. The Avengers (including Hulk and Iron Man movies) has also had some issues but again the strength is still there making the franchise a billion dollar entity.

All of this was possible because Marvel stepped up and basically created their own production house - not satisfied with letting others take the lead on their own characters.   Which is what makes this film so surprisingly bad.

Actually, let me take that back...it's not bad; it's worse than bad - it's boring.

Fantastic Four is a reboot to the previously failed franchise staring Ioan Gruffudd (King Arthur), Michael Chiklis (The Shield) and Jessica Alba (Sin City) which held true to the original story of how the team got their powers. The first movie wasn't bad, a typical Origin Story to introduce an audience not all that familiar with superhero movies back in 2005.   Where the train went off the tracks was in the second film when they decided to follow the Silver Surfer/Galactus storyline (an utterly famous arc in the comics which has spawned hundreds of stories since) but apparently deciding that a giant pink and purple humanoid with amazing powers and gadgets they made Galactus some kind of cloud creature with tentacles...yeah.

So, is the new Fantastic Four worse than tentacle monster Galactus? Sadly, yes.

The film dives into the childhood of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm where, in fifth grade, the two collaborate on an amazing device that can transport matter into another dimension.   Fast Forward seven years (so that makes Reed like...17?) and one of the top minds in the world is trolling high school science fairs looking for talent? Yeup.

Courtesy of Marve/20th Century Fox

Richards gets brought on board at the Baxter institute where Franklin Storm (Sue and Johnny's father) runs a prestigious (although apparently secretly funded) institute for gifted youngsters.

Oh, and Von Doom is there.

Richards and the team, along with Doom who is apparently a badass with a past (that isn't gone into other than in random asides) and whom is in love with Sue (gotta keep that part of the continuity, right?) work to complete a large-scale version of Reed's original machine to travel to this new universe.

After testing it and confirming it works the team gets benched in lieu of professionals (a novel concept) but the boys get drunk and decide to use the device themselves.   Predictably that endeavor goes awry leaving Doom presumed dead in the other universe and the other three transformed. The trip back causes some sort of disruption field which affects Sue as she's wildly and RANDOMLY TYPING A MILE A MINUTE ON A KEYBOARD because we all know that the faster and more random you type into a scientific computer the more likely you are to be successful at what you're trying to do. Not blaming Mara for bad acting necessarily...though she seemed to do kind of the same thing in House of Cards a couple times...

So now they've got powers and are going to team up to save the world, right?!?!? Wrong.

Courtesy of Marve/20th Century Fox

To apparently create heightened and never actually fulfilled drama to this story Richards runs away from the complex the team is being held at. He disappears, naked, from a hidden and totally off-the-grid military installation in the middle of winter...just, why?

The story skips ahead a year. They've all gotten better control of their powers and a new device is ready to transport a team back to the other universe...where Doom is alive and has been busy cultivating world-altering powers!

In the end the movie culminates in an all-to-short fight between the Four and Doom where predictably and incredibly easily they are victorious. The world is saved!

I was genuinely excited for this reboot. The FF are one of my favorite teams as they are origin of my favorite Marvel character the Silver Surfer who has played a prominent role in their universe of the decades of comics. It seems really unlikely the studio will green-light a sequel given how much this movie has been panned; which is unfortunate. And if Twitter is to be believed even the Director thinks the final product is shite...intimating that there were outside influences at work that destroyed his better vision.

Courtesy of Marve/20th Century Fox

The cast had promise but the story was flawed. Buried in the minutia of character development. Why does there need to be a origin story movie for all superhero characters? Where is that written?   Jedi have the Force - it's explained (albeit briefly) and then it's understood and accepted. There's no damned origin movie explaining how Jedi's got their powers or why. Just make a movie that's entertaining and shows the characters in their element. If people don't understand why so and so has these powers and what's his name has those powers they can FUCKING GOOGLE IT.

It just feels that these movies more often than not fail due to the hindrance of having to spend screen time devoted to explaining things that don't really need explaining. Just tell us a fun, entertaining, action laden story!

Sadly FF is a big pass.   Don't waste your money. If you want to see it, wait for streaming of DVD.   The graphics and fight scenes don't even require the big screen like most action movies do - there's not enough of them to warrant it.

Tb

Avengers: Age of Ultron Review

Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Marvel Studios has once again set the standard by which all other movie Universes will be measured against.  They've spent the last ten years building franchises from the ground up (Iron Man, Thor, The Avengers) all leading towards movies as-yet unreleased that may simply destroy the world with their awesome.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron movie brought us one step closer to the Infinity War movie Marvel Studios has been lording over our heads for years.  Like a kid who knows what he's getting for Christmas in June and can't touch it till that fateful day; Infinity War will be the culmination of events the Marvel Universe has been setting in motion for a long, long time.

But, let's focus on the present.

Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Avengers: Age of Ultron has a basic theme - we must protect the whole world.  Tony Stark, still dealing with the mental demons of the battle of New York, develops the framework of the Ultron program.  The Ultron program is meant to be a fully function A.I. designed to protect the world from threats too big for the Avengers alone to battle.

But, as we've seen with countless other A.I. movies and books humanity is judged to be an unworthy inhabitant of Earth; a cancer necessary to be eradicated.

Moving past the cultural undertones of this film and looking at just the fun parts, and there are plenty, we see that the witty banter is at a heightened level.  Whedon pulled no punches even making fun of Captain America's age with a joke about foul language,  There was the on-point humor of Tony Stark making us all remember why he's the most fun to hate hero we have in Marvel.

The new characters introduced: Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (though he was already introduced in X-Men Days of Future Past - different actor) and though their history is different than that in the comics it is necessary to ensure a separation from the X-Men universe and the Avengers universe.  In the comics Magneto is their father.  We are also introduced to one of the most powerful, and completely undervalued characters, Vision (Paul Bettany).

In a year that promises to be epic in terms of monster hit movies (Jurassic World, Star Wars), Age of Ultron set a proper tone and a high standard by showing that on-screen chemistry and comedic timing can make a huge difference in the quality of a film.  I hope Snyder and Singer can pull of the same with 2016's next big comic movie installments.

Courtesy of Marvel Studios

One of the complaints about the first Avengers movie was that the only action came at the end and though it was outstanding the sequence was stunted.  Age of Ultron should leave no one wanting for action and the scenes we've come to expect from big-budget action movies.  The final chapter of the film is both stirring and moving.  Your heart will break and immediately be mended only to break again.

Marvel Studios has this franchise headed in the right direction and by using it as the sun in their universe of movies all other films are enhanced by its over-arching story line.

This is a can't miss in the theatres and should be seen multiple times to catch all the nuance of story playing out in each scene.  Enjoy!

This is your bin fodder movie review guru signing off!

Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Remembering a Friend

Over the past few weeks I've been trying to think of the best way to honor the memory of a friend who left us far too soon.  Matt Jordan was a phenomenally talented artist that I had the honor of working with on a few occasions.  I decided that the best thing I could do was to publish something he worked with me on that has never before seen by the public.  It was meant to go into an anthology that has, in the last three years, failed to come together.  I'm proud of this story because it forced me to use my ability to describe a scene to an artist without using characters to push the story along.  Enjoy..MONSTERS AMONG US!

Netflix Catch-Up: Arrow Season 1

Courtesy of CW

Arrow is a new and interesting take on the Oliver Queen - Green Arrow story.  For this iteration Queen was stranded on an island for five years after the yacht he was on with his father and others went down.  His time on the island changed him; from the vapid, partying playboy he was into a dark, vengeance seeking night stalker.

The show, in and of itself, has intriguing stories that happen along the way.  Seeing Queen leaping around, shooting arrows by the dozens with precision and accuracy is neat - those moments are like the comics come alive (without the boxing glove arrow - I know, it was my favorite too dammit!).  But the majority of the show leaves much to be desired.

My biggest issue with the show is really two issues - first: the cast; it's way too daytime soap drama acting with the pouty faces and furrowed brows.  Then there's sub-plots.  The overall story makes sense: Ollie's dad was in with some bad people who were doing to do bad things to the city - he leaves Ollie a list of names to guide him on his quest to right past wrongs.  The sub-plots with all the "romance" and "character growth" is bad, just...bad.

Courtesy of CW

I realize that it's hard to write a show that's one-hundred percent about the hero character doing hero stuff (I remember Lois and Clark) but being a CW show, Arrow goes too far in the opposite direction.  Additionally, it's like the writers oftentimes were trying to inject some "comic style writing" into the show with cheesy one-liners and bad puns but they just fall flat and make the show look like it's written for children.

Those things being said - the show is entertaining and one thing the writers are really good at is leaving you at an episode ending cliff-hanger.  The end of season one's final episode is the culmination of it all.

This isn't a show I would seek out and watch religiously on a weekly basis but as a Netflix binge-watching show it suits a lot of needs.  It's worth checking out; if only to watch Emily Bett Rickards in hot nerd glasses talking all techy.

When season two is posted I'm sure I'll watch; hopefully the acting improves with time...but I don't have the highest of hopes. For now, watch a trailer for Season One here and see for yourself:

Movie Review - Guardians of the Galaxy

Courtesy of Marvel

 Marvel has done an interesting thing in the last 15 years or so of movie making - they've gotten a lot of things right.  In the comic book movie making business; that's a rarity.  From the terrible, and I mean god-awful, made-for-tv Justice League movie with the FAT doctor from M.A.S.H. as the Martian Manhunter, to just plain awful television programs (The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, The Flash) the comics industry has tried and failed on many occasions to bring their product mainstream.

There are the occasional success - mostly in the form of animation (Justice League, Teen Titans, Spiderman, X-Men) but it wasn't until the Brian Singer X-Men movies (despite the terribleness of the third installment) that the industry turned a corner.  Then Sam Raimi's Spider-man came along and everyone sat up and took notice.

It was as if everyone had forgotten after 1983 that nerdy movies could be mainstream cool.  Do you honestly think the "cool" kids didn't see the Star Wars movies?  Of course they did, EVERYONE SAW THOSE MOVIES!

But what Marvel has done so successfully is take ancillary characters (such as Blade) and make successful, interesting, money-making movies.  Thus we have: the Guardians of the Galaxy.

I've been reading comics since the early 90s and I can honestly say I've never read a single Guardians story.  I like space, Silver Surfer is my favorite character - but they didn't cross paths a lot.

The characters aren't known.  They aren't Wolverine or Professor X.  They're gritty.  They're criminals.  They use a lot of guns and they kill a lot of people.  But that's not why this movie is so good, that's not what makes it worth seeing.

It's what the characters ARE that does that: they're interesting and they stay true to who they are.  Giving yourself over to the suspension of disbelief - being an outer-space movie where a central character is a gun-toting, talking raccoon - there is a true sense of believability about these characters.  They have history.  They have emotion.  They've all felt the depths of pain that loss at a core level inflicts on a person.

Courtesy of Marvel

I could sit here and write a detailed account of the movie and the twenty-seven reasons why you should go see it (the soundtrack would EASILY make the top five of that list by the by) but that's not what this is about - this article is to help you understand why this movie is so important.

We are on the cusp of the greatest five-year stretch of this generation's movie-making history (with Avengers 2, Batman v Superman, Star Wars VII, Captain America 3, JLA "possibly", and others) and it's movies like this that will help bring in that broader audience.  Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana - these are actors people like and are willing to go outside their comfort zone to see...and that's the hook.

We are entering a golden age - look back at the late 70s early 80s with Star Trek and Star Wars enthralling audiences worldwide.  The industry has struggled, filler movies like the Matrix trilogy has tried to filled the void, but now we've survived the paltry portrayals of our beloved characters and ascended to a place where the right people (JJ Abrams) is looking out for the interest of fans - and we can all be thankful for that.

Bin Fodder: Grounded

Hello!  Welcome to another edition of Bin Fodder!  This week I review Grounded, written by Mark Sable with other original works to his credit such as Hazed and Rift Raiders.  The art is by Paul Azaceta who has a slew of credits both at Marvel and in the indie world. 

 

Courtesy of Image Comics

Grounded is set in a world where superheroes only exist in comic books.  At least, that’s what the general public is led to believe.  The story’s main character, Jonathan Shepherd, has grand aspirations of being a superhero himself; he just needs to find out what his superpower is.  He starts out thinking that he’s secretly super-fast, but that dreams ends rather quickly.  He runs through myriad other power aspirations culminating in a belief in an ability to fly causing him to jump off the roof of his house.  This ends in the inevitable failure of flight and broken bones.

Skip ahead to high school and Shepherd is still a comic book loving nerd and social outcast clinging to the belief that superheroes are real.  Turns out, they are.  And not only that, his father’s one of the most powerful ones!  He happens to find this out while his dear old dad is sleeping with another woman, a superheroine.  Yeah…pretty crappy day overall.  But it only gets worse.

Courtesy of Image Comics

For Shepherd’s protection his father takes him to the high school for super heroes where he must now attend.  So he goes from being the only kid in school who wants superpowers to being the only kid in a school full of superpowered kids not to have any.

What ensues is a somewhat strange and often times confusing storyline involving mind-control, evil teachers, strange technology and invisible skyscrapers. 

Azaceta has an uncanny ability to seamlessly flow between his modern style and the classic format used to depict flashbacks or in-story comic book tales giving the story a lot of added quality.  The writing is a little sloppy.  It seems like Sable was trying to tell too many stories at once and everything just gets jumbled.

Sadly it seems like the project was abandoned almost as quickly as it was finished, since the homepage for the site only has updates through when issue three (of six) was expected to hit shelves.  Additionally, the cover specifically calls this story Grounded Volume 1: Powerless, implying that a follow-up story was to exist but never came to fruition.

In the end, I found myself lost several times in the book because of the confusing mixture of stories and characters.  

Until next time,

This is Bin Fodder Guru Tim Blacksmith signing off!

Bin Fodder: Marvel – 1602

Hello!  Welcome to this week’s edition of Bin Fodder.  Today I’m dipping back into the mainstream to talk about Marvel Comic’s 1602.  I do this for two reasons: first, because it’s Neil Gaiman, one of comics’ most celebrated indie writers with books like Sandman and Books of Magic to his credit. Gaiman, like me, has dipped his toe in the mainstream waters before having done spot-writing on Batman and Detective Comics.  He teamed with artist Andy Kubert of the famous Kubert family of artists to create Marvel 1602. And second, because I have yet to review a Marvel book and it seemed only fitting that I do so.  

The story of Marvel 1602 sets many of Marvel’s classic characters, including the Original X-Men, the Fantastic Four and Daredevil (Matt Murdoch), in early-modern Europe.  The premise for the existence of these characters is divulged by the Watcher Uatu to Dr. Steven Strange through a very Gaiman-esque style of linguistics magic.  Essentially, a hero from modern times (our present) is displaced into the past which creates a rip in the time/space continuum.  The Universe, in an effort of self-preservation, sets in motion the events which establish a force strong enough to stem the tide and fix the problem (the classic hero characters).  There’s just one problem with this: he rip in time takes place fifteen years prior to the beginning of the story and many if not all of the hero’s are far older than fifteen.  But, it’s comics, so we let that go and move on. In an effort not to give away the ending (since I am not one to have spoilers in my articles) I will simply say that working together the combined forces of the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and many others save the universe, as is to be expected.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

To go along with Gaiman’s well-known and much ballyhooed style of writing, Kubert does an outstanding job of designing the characters to fit in with the motif of their surroundings.  In many ways Marvel 1602 is the company’s attempt at doing what DC Comics did back in the mid-nineties with Kingdom Come stylistically if not symbolically, which is to show very established characters in new forms and in a new light.  With Richard Isanove doing the digital illustration which, of course, pales in comparison to the paintings of Alex Ross, nonetheless is magnificent in its own right.  

 

In the world of Marvel 1602 there are two villains, the first and main is Otto von Doom (a.k.a. Dr. Doom) who is still set up as the iron-fisted ruler of Latveria.  The second, and much more minor, is Richard of Scotland, who sees fit to supplant the queen and rule all of the United Kingdom.  Doom, much like his modern counterpart, is desirous of knowledge and bent on ruling the world.  In this alternate reality he has captured the Fantastic Four and uses fear of reprisal against the others to force Richard Reed (a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic) into aiding in his scientific endeavors. 

 

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Other characters play large roles as well, such as Sir Nicholas Fury (a.k.a. Nick Fury), Thor and Peter Parquagh (a.k.a. Spiderman), though he does not assume the role of Spiderman until volume two of the story (not covered here).  And some make very minor appearances such as Sister Wanda (a.k.a. Scarlet Witch) and her brother Petros (a.k.a. Quicksilver) as well as Vulture Fliers, who are in fact assassins who appear to be genetically engineered clones. 

Marvel 1602 does a good job of taking the reader into that period of time with colloquial terminology and staunch religious doctrines.  Where the story falls a little flat is, as stated previously, in the timeline but also in the use of the characters.  Gaiman does what I think many of us sometimes wish to see, superheroes acting super, but he shows his lack of experience in the field during this story.  Gaiman has too many characters for an eight-issue miniseries and it shows in the lack of time that the majority of them see action.  I can see where he was compelled to include the Fantastic Four in the story since it could prove somewhat more difficult to have the X-Men battle a villain they’ve not regularly, if ever, faced.  However, that’s the fun of alternate reality stories!  Go outside the norm, go beyond comfort levels!  I don’t know if I am to blame Marvel Comics or if I am to blame Gaiman for this fault, so I shall blame them both equally.  The story of Marvel 1602 could have been so much greater had he not tried to squeeze in so much.

Overall, the art and the dialogue of Marvel 1602 rate four stars, but lack of imagination and faith in the readership brings that down. 

So, my friends, go Bin Diving and find this and other gems!

Until next time,

This is Bin Fodder Guru Tim Blacksmith signing off!