Thoughts are funny little things. The longer they stay in your head, the longer they stew. And while that doesn’t necessarily imply that thoughts in your head rot, (I’m certain some do), maybe it is necessary to find an outlet. Almost like a tap for your thoughts to flow out incessantly and bless the world with their presence, however idyllic or even repugnant they may be. Artists do this. Paint a picture of what’s in their head. Chefs do this, creating dishes that a gourmand craves but lacks the vision himself to reconstruct. Writers do this. 

Now, I’m by no means a writer. Not by profession at least. But I’ve always turned to writing as an outlet. Well that, and whining to my parents about how my life sucks when it doesn’t really, but I’ve always viewed the former as not only a much more socially acceptable outlet, but a, dare I say, fun one. Writing helps me. I’ve always found it easy for me to put feelings into words, whether it be a review of the new star wars movie, or a satirical glance at the life of a fledgling scientist. I like writing. I genuinely do, and I think in these times of banal days I feel it is time to flex the proverbial writing muscle and put my fingers to my keyboard and write away.

The next question however, and a very valid one, is what to write about? Should I log my activities and add deep and cryptic metaphors to my daily ruminations? No. That’s what twitter is for apparently. Logging your thoughts and the thoughts of others with sardonic commentary in 140 characters or less. Shall I wax poetic about sleepless nights, and cold days in the Bostonian climate? Should I look at the world through rose tinted spectacles and elaborate on everything with my immaculate vocabulary that makes it seem as if I’m belittling anyone who does not possess my prowess and command over the English language? No I shan’t be doing that. Should I construct these deep and large worlds and epic stories that may be turned into a massive box office successes someday? Nope to that as well. 

I think all I’m going to be doing is writing. Just putting the metaphorical pen to paper, opening my mind and letting thoughts be constructed into words, and words into stories. Will these words be worth reading by anyone? Perhaps. But I think something that people overlook in writing or for that matter all art is who are we doing this for? After all, what beauty is art without an eye to behold?

The answer is Me. I’m writing for myself. And I’m gonna keep doing that. Just writing.

Okay, so I thought I’d try this thing out. Welcome to Regarding, where I ramble on about stuff that bother, excite, stimulate or stay stuck in my nerdy hole of a mind. Today, I shall talk to you regarding the Fantastic Four (2015) film. 

I think the thing which bothers me so much about the Fantastic Four is that despite them being Marvel’s (and Comic Book Histories) premier superhero team, they are sidelined in the eye of the muggles. Now why might this be? Well when you have 4 crappy movies that serve as representation of your comic book lore, that may be a reasonable explanation. And yes, I counted the most recent one as well, despite not seeing it yet. And on that note, I should also declare that I am not going to see it for a very very long time. Why? I shall get to that, in due time. But back to comic book movies being a representation of comic books. It always happens. Best example? Batman. Would Batman be such an important badass of pop culture if the only things we could use for reference besides the comic books were Batman and Robin (1997) and The Batman (1966)? I don’t think so. You see, the movies are the best way to get something to the masses. And when those attempts fail, those characters are kinda stained from those images. The only people who have any hope for good movies of that material are people who know the material (i.e fanboys).

So now coming to the matter at hand. Fantastic Four 2015 or Fant4stic. I have not seen this movie, and I do not intend to. I instead have read/watched quite a few reviews about the movie, and trust me I have seen most of it. Including spoilers. 

To better understand why this movie failed lets try to dissect it using cool features of text known as Sub-headings.

Source Code

Like I said, the FF have a huge huge amount of source material to borrow from. You can make a FF movie about the cosmic adventurers, you could show a little darkness by properly rendering characters like Dr.Doom, who in the source material is one of the universe’s biggest villains ever. You could even take inspiration from some alternative tales like Ultimate Fantastic Four which I believe this movie has tried to take inspiration from heavily. At least initially. Now whatever your source material, you as creator can take inspiration from or choose to just take some elements from. You could take things from the source which you find intriguing and build on them, or you could ignore the source material and do something original which still somehow seems to tie into the source material at it’s core. Whatever it is, the choice is upto you and you alone (Legends of the hidden temple reference FTW). 

Now if you have chosen your interpretation, you need to explore it. You need to respect it, and you need to build a tone from it most importantly. If the tone of the film is all over the place, then thats a cardinal sin of film making. You see, these comics might be ridiculous but tonally were consistent. If you wanna make the FF a bad ass family of adventurers while continually exploring the family dynamic, then that’s great as long as you continue to do that. Starting off with a hard core science fiction body horror gritty take is also absolutely cool, as long as you stick to it. Starting off with science fiction grit to suddenly segue into a full on superhero movie at the very last moment is a horrible sin that this movie seems to commit quite hard.

Character over Plot

I personally, have always adored films that favor character over plot. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with films that favor plot, it gives me more joy to see a Reservoir Dogs over an Ocean’s Eleven. I’ve always believed that character drives plot and not vice versa. Its easy to get carried away and focus on the plot but without solid characters your movie is just gonna be all fizzle and pop. Now with the FF you have a very rich plethora of well defined characters. Honestly you don’t even have to try that hard. Let’s see, Reed is the patriarch, a genius and may have guilt over what he’s done to his friends. Johhny is a hot head, impulsive, fun lover who will not let his friends get hurt. Sue is the matriarch, maternal, affectionate, a genius but also can suffer from fatigue trying to glue her team together, and Ben is a hideous deformed man on the outside who can project jerk like tendencies and feels horrible due to his exterior but has a heart of gold. And Dr.doom is an ego maniacal villain. Okay Dr. Doom may be hard to get right but more on him later. But see, the thing is simply getting these character traits and making them play off each other isn’t exactly enough. They need to undergo development. That I feel is the crux of a story. Char Dev. For example the previous two FF movies kinda got the characters and interplay mostly right (Esp between Johnny and Ben) but needed development. Reed feels guilty so what? Reed is guilty and Sue helps him get through that. Sue could tell reed it is okay as they all have each other. Sue could feel really tired of taking care of Johnny and Ben but Ben could view Sue like the sister he never had and respect her for that. Johnny could be an impulsive idiot but Ben could teach him patience and kindness. Reed could be a genius but Johnny could use his down to earth-ness to bring Reed back to our real world and remind him of the problems the team really faces. Is that really that hard now? If you think it is, I urge you to watch both Avengers movies. Joss Whedon really understands characters and character interplay. The first avengers showed that brilliantly where each character “needed a push” from another character. Cap and Tony, Tony and Bruce, Bruce and Natasha, Natasha and Hawkeye, and the whole team and Coulson. I guess what I’m trying to say is for a movie that’s supposed to be an origin story, for a team, nothing brings the characters out into a team than interplay and development. This movie has none of the above. Seriously. Speaking of Origin story…

Origin-ality

By now, origin stories are cliched. Everyone, including the muggles know how the origin story in question plays out. And directors know that the audience knows this. So what do they do? They try to twist things a bit. For example, in this movie Sue doesn’t go with the team but apparently still gets powers. How? No clue but she does. Look, the thing with an origin story is that while it is tricky, the best way to deal with this is by making the origin story innocuous. Make an origin story without the audience realizing that it is an origin story.  Best example? Nolan’s trilogy. The entire trilogy was an origin story. Even Batman begins, the movie that actually does show the origins of Batman does it in such a way that the audience doesn’t see it coming. Non linear narrative. You open on Bruce training in some valley ad then you see him as a young’un with his dad, you see him older coming back to Gotham and then you see the death scene or something like that anyway. You get my drift. A straight up origin story has no meaning in a movie featuring characters that have been rebooted several times over. 

And finally,

The Villain 

Comic Book movies these days suffer from the lack of a compelling villain. Apart from Loki, the Joker, and maybe Ultron, which villains these days can you say made a real mark on you? I’ll tell you. Kingpin. From Daredevil (2014, Netflix). The villain there was integral to the development of the hero. Literally. While most movies featuring a hero try to loosely follow Joseph Conrad’s rules, the great ones try to apply that to the villain as well. They make him an equal of the hero. This is the villain’s origin story as well after all. And the villain can be a compelling piece to push the hero his development. Kingpin does that. Kingpin is the reason that Daredevil becomes the Daredevil. But we see Kingpin’s motivations as well. We see situations through his POV. We understand why he does what he does. Agreed, this is a TV series we’re talking about, but still, you just need to modify that perspective to fit into a movie format. 

ULTIMATE THOUGHTS:

Do not watch this movie. 

Sincerely,

Skinman.