I was, honestly, a little underwhelmed, perhaps owing to having my hopes raised by all the positive reactions I had seen on Bluesky between the day it was released and the afternoon I got around to seeing it, and perhaps owing to my own expectations based on the cool 1960s, Space Age aesthetic that the trailers and other marketing showed off. That is, it just looked like it was going to be pretty neat, and a sharp departure from the look, feel and tone of the previous FF movies, and the rest of the expansive Marvel Studios filmography.
Instead, I left the theater feeling pretty much like I do after most Marvel movies: That what I had just seen was a perfectly fine superhero movie, a competently made, perfectly adequate adaptation of the comics for a mass, mainstream audience. (Honestly, I liked Thunderbolts* quite a bit more, even though that was much more of a "regular" Marvel movie, in terms of aesthetics and tone.)
Here are some of the thoughts that occurred to me while watching, which, taken altogether, probably make it seem as if I had a negative reaction to the film, but they are really more just questions than complaints. Again, overall, I thought it was fine.
Spoilers, obviously, follow.
•I thought the four principals were all pretty good, and, overall, well-cast.
I think it helped that, Pedro Pascal aside, I had no idea who any of them were from whatever films they might have been in before, so that when I looked at, say, Johnny Storm or Susan Storm, I saw Johnny Storm or Susan Storm, and not famous Hollywood actors Chris Evans and Jessica Alba, for example. (This was, of course, helped along by the fact that I see so many fewer movies these days then I used to.)
That said, whatever weaknesses the first two films might have had, I think I might have preferred the casting in them. Evans felt more like comic book Johnny to me than the guy who plays him here did, for example, and Ioan Gruffudd definitely looked the part of Reed Richards more so than Pascal did.
Pascal didn't look much like Richards (Sorry, I could maybe take Reed with a beard by this point, not just a moustache, and damn, did you see Reed's arms in that opening scene where he's wearing an undershirt in the bathroom...?). But I think he played him well, and I kinda like this slightly darker, much more conflicted view of Reed as a guy whose own genius can make him unhappy and even hurt his loved ones and who, for all his smarts, isn't always smart enough.
Vanessa Kirby was quite excellent, I thought, and the filmmakers did a fine job of giving her a lot to do and a lot of emotional content to work with.
While I'm hardly a terribly experienced reader of Fantastic Four comics, I always felt that, traditionally, it was too easy for her character to be reduced to that of "The Girl" in them (and, perhaps, in some of the other adaptations), so it was nice to see her being something of a leader and, perhaps, the most prominent of the four characters (I don't think we can put her traditional portrayal down to pure sexism, though, nor to the nature of her powers—that is, literally disappearing from view. Rather, I think some of it has to do with the fact that Johnny and Ben are just so damn colorful and appealing as characters in the comics and cartoons and suchlike that the FF seems to have a "fun" half and a boring, "grown up" half).
•They sure were stingy with the stretching, weren't they? Based solely on what I saw in the film, I would guess that Reed's powers are that he can stretch his arms and legs like five times longer than the average person and, um, that's it, really?
The filmmakers seem to allow him to stretch just enough to let us know that he does indeed have stretchy powers, but not so much as to overtax the special effects budget...or let us get a look at an elongated arm or leg (let alone a neck!) that lasts more than a split second.
Given that Marvel Studios had previously changed Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan's stretchy powers for her appearances on her show and in The Marvels movie, it makes me wonder if they just aren't confident about what stretchy powers look like on the big screen, at least in live action? (Elastigirl's powers looked fine in The Incredibles, although that was animation.)
It makes me wonder if the Distinguished Competition will eventually give us a Plastic Man or Elongated Man in one of their future films...
•Was it just me, or did Ben Grimm—who I don't remember being referred to as "The Thing" at all in this film—seem a little too small in this film...?
Like, he seemed to be the same size as the other three, rather than hulking over them. I just clicked on IMDb to check on the release date of those previous FF films, and I noticed there was an ad for the new film there in which Ben's size is magnified, so that he dwarfs his teammates, even though he's standing behind them in the ad...
•I have no idea what on Earth they were thinking giving Ben a beard midway through the film, but it distracted me the rest of the film's runtime.
Ben needs to shave? (The first thing I did when I got back to my car in the theater parking lot was to do a Google image search for Ben Grimm + beard + comics.)
So he grows, what, rock hair out of his rock face, I guess...?
Does it also grow out of his scalp, and he just sandblasts that away daily too? What about his body hair? Does he sandblast his whole body every day too, or...?
Look, the only context in which I want to see Ben Grimm with a beard in a movie is if he is in the process of being the historical Blackbeard the pirate.
•Speaking of The Thing, I was somewhat surprised that he spent the entire film dressed head-to-toe, never appearing in his original, blue briefs-only look, with his rocky chest and limbs exposed.
Heck, even in the cartoon show that exists within the world of the film, which we only get a brief glimpse of, he's wearing a shirt.
I guess four years into his career is long enough for him to develop a whole wardrobe of appropriately big and tall clothes, but it struck me as notable.
•I hate to even say this publicly, as I know it is an opinion that was shared very loudly by many assholes and some of the worst people on the Internet, but I wasn't really sold on using the Shalla-Bal version of The Silver Surfer instead of the Norrin Radd version, which was previously featured in the second FF film (And which ended up being maybe the best part of that movie, which sure had a disappointing version of Galactus, imagining him as some kind of cloud instead of a giant with an awesome funny hat).
I understand that this is a different universe than the "real" universe featured in all the other Marvel Studios movies, and so perhaps they wanted to use a female Surfer to distinguish it, but if there isn't a Norrin Radd version in the other universe, then what's the point, exactly? And it's not like they did anything else to the involved characters to suggest that they were alternate-universe versions of the "real" characters (Reed's moustache aside, of course).
While I suppose they might do something dumb with the multiverse and therefore include the first filmic FF and their Surfer in an upcoming movie, I don't think, otherwise, we're likely to see the standard issue, male Surfer in future Marvel Studios movies, and so the rationale of distinguishing this universe by the gender of its Surfer would seem moot.
As someone who would like nothing more than to see a Defenders trilogy of live-action movies starring Doctor Stange, The Hulk, Namor and The Silver Surfer, this is important to me.
At any rate, Julia Garner did a fine job with a role that actually didn't ask much at all of her.
•Okay, I give up: What was Natasha Lyonne doing in this movie, exactly?
•I did like all the name-dropping of FF villains in the movie, particularly in that passage near the beginning, although I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get to see any of them, save for Mole Man and a singular Super-Ape.
And I thought that Mole Man, though funny, felt very Marvel Studios in his portrayal, as they basically just gave an otherwise totally normal-looking guy a pair of stylized sunglasses to sort of suggest the character, rather than going the whole nine yards, with the green costume, the cape and the staff. Hell, they didn't even give him Moleoids; just some folks in mining helmets milling around in the background.
Given how comics-accurate Galactus looked, and the fact that they even spent a second on the monster that breaks through the street on the cover of Fantastic Four #1, I woulda thought the Mole Man's look might have followed suit...
Given how comics-accurate Galactus looked, and the fact that they even spent a second on the monster that breaks through the street on the cover of Fantastic Four #1, I woulda thought the Mole Man's look might have followed suit...
•Again, I'm no expert, but was Galactus a little...too big here...?
•I can't imagine how these characters will fit into Avengers: Doomsday, which the movie announced via a sentence of text on the screen they will appear in, nor can I imagine how they will fit into the Mavel Cinematic Universe going forward, at least if they are meant to be joining that universe proper rather than staying on their own retro-looking Earth (A scene in Thunderbolts* sure seemed to imply they had entered the main Marvel universe).
I suppose that's a problem for Marvel Studios to work out, but it does worry me...
•I am now completely, 100% ready for Namor to meet the Fantastic Four. Bring him on...
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