Fantastic Four (Man of Steel Edition) (2015)

[Threash]

https://twitter.com/FB_BMB/status/628681852052721664

[Velorath]

Soneone go watch it and tell us all about it!

Who'll take the hit for the ol' f13 team?

[HaemishM]

That sounds fucking terrible and is falling in line with everything else I'm hearing about this.

[Nevermore]

I'm stunned that this movie is a train wreck.  Wait, no.  What's the most opposite of stunned that you can be?  Because that's what I am.

[jgsugden]

I will not see this film.

[Evildrider]

So does this mean that Trank is the new Uwe Boll?   

[HaemishM]

Maybe the reverse Boll, since he did actually start his career with a good movie.

Fun fact: The Reverse Boll is the most requested item on the menu at German whorehouses. 

[Margalis]

The last third of the movie is pretty horrible. Badly paced, badly written dialog (the last part involving the naming of the team is particularly cringe-worthy), bad characterization, bad action scenes, and bad special effects.

Here is that naming scene, for anyone interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSMg_GWiBt0

[murdoc]

[Velorath]

Nothing I saw while watching this suggested to me that there was a better movie in there that just got screwed over with reshoots, editing, and studio interference. There's just very little in this movie that works. Like I said, the closest they get is the scene with Reed, Johnny, and Victor after finding out they won't be making the first trip, and even that comes across odd due to Sue's absence and Ben's last minute inclusion.

[Margalis]

Dude was kicked off of Star Wars apparently due to a mix of the fact that his movie was turning out poorly and his behavior during the FF shoot. People seemed very eager to throw him under the bus in a very personal way, so I'm tempted to believe the rumors. Usually rumors about troubled movies are about reshoots and such, not that the director is trashing the house he's staying in, impossible to work with, etc.

This tweet certainly supports the idea that he has attitude issues.

[jgsugden]

How can you think that Trank is at fault? Aldon Smith vouched for him! More ways in which this movie is being discarded: the X-men team is clarifying that FF takes place in a different universe.

[Evildrider]

Trank was championing the movie til it came out to shitty reviews.

[Lakov_Sanite]

the X-men team is.....

Distancing themselves as far and as fast as they can before the smell of shit lingers on their movies.

[Velorath]

the X-men team is.....

Distancing themselves as far and as fast as they can before the smell of shit lingers on their movies.

They already got some practice with erasing the third X-men movie from the timeline and politely ignoring the first Wolverine movie when it comes to Deadpool and Gambit. It's a little late for them to pretend they have anything resembling a cohesive canon.

[Evildrider]

X-men 3 and Wolverine: Origins are supposed to both be whacked out of continuity.

[Threash]

Days of future past was supposed to reset all the stupid shit that happened before.

[Soulflame]

Saw this, but not by choice.  It's pretty bad, but not super awful.

That is to say, I don't recommend seeing it.  But if you're dragged along, keep your expectations low, and are willing to snark at the CGI, the dialog, the plot, and everything else, you'll probably survive without any significant sanity lost.

[Evildrider]

[Threash]

Was there a "give it back to Marvel" option?

[Evildrider]

Was there a "give it back to Marvel" option?

It should be the only option.   

[HaemishM]

It's the only one that makes sense, but considering there's not enough money in that for Fox, I don't see it happening. I'm not even sure they'd go for a Spider-Man/Sony sharing kind of deal. Marvel really just has to wait long enough for the property to devalue so that they can get the rights back for less than $50 million.

[Khaldun]

When's the next time Fox has to make one in order to keep the license? That's when it's being sold to Marvel, if ever. They'll wait otherwise, hoping that either the property's value goes up for some unknowable reason or in case they get a new team of people in the door who actually have an idea for this franchise that isn't a turdbomb.

The io9 review is especially good/perceptive: the film was doomed to stink because both Trank AND the suits at Fox who were in charge of developing this property don't like or understanding superheroes generally and don't like the FF in particular. I liked Chronicle well enough but you could see even there that Trank was somewhat glum and deconstructive in his view of the genre.

http://io9.com/fantastic-four-is-the-most-self-loathing-superhero-movi-1722651722

[Merusk]

Fox doesn't like or understand Sci-Fi on the whole. Neither the movies, the TV or the publishing wing have ever done right by the genre by anything other than accident.

When you look at the whole of their filmography the way they treat superhero/ sci-fi properties starts to make a lot more sense. IMO, at least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_20th_Century_Fox_films_(1935%E2%80%931999)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_20th_Century_Fox_films_(2000%E2%80%93present)

So many films that are overwrought comedy or dudebro in nature. Something that takes itself seriously while understanding that it's still in camp territory like Marvel has done is beyond Fox as an organization.  It's a company culture thing at this point, IMO. No way to move past that easily.

[Mattemeo]

While I never wanted this film to be bad, now that the verdict is in and it's due to sink from theatres without a trace within a fortnight ($26.2 million opening weekend putting it behind Mission Impossible 5 in its second week is pretty fucking catastrophic for a film of this size and a franchise this well known), I'm really, really hoping that someone in Fox understands the term 'hemorrhaging' and they sell the rights back to Marvel to simply recoup some of the losses this film is going to cause them. At this point it's in the air whether it'll even make budget back.

I don't worry so much for anyone involved (besides some heavily sweating Fox execs), none of the cast will be tainted and even Trank could come out of this ok; this is his second film and Fincher screwed the pooch with his debut Alien³ both directorially and relationship-wise with Fox yet went on to bigger things.

[Threash]

Green Lantern was considered a disappointment with a 52 million opening weekend, and that didn't include any early thursday showings.

[Velorath]

When's the next time Fox has to make one in order to keep the license? That's when it's being sold to Marvel, if ever. They'll wait otherwise, hoping that either the property's value goes up for some unknowable reason or in case they get a new team of people in the door who actually have an idea for this franchise that isn't a turdbomb.

Fox was back in the news again a day or two ago saying that negotiations with Marvel allowing Fox to do an X-men TV series are going well and that they're expecting to be able to announce something soon. I really wouldn't be surprised if selling the FF rights back to Marvel ends up as part of the deal now.

Also Entertainment Weekly has a decent article up about the whole Trank situation. Nothing really new in there and we're never really going to know exactly what happened, but it's a good examination about what various anonymous sources on all sides have been saying.

[Khaldun]

"It’s partly linked to Trank’s personal disputes – involving accusations of deliberate damage done to the house he was renting, as revenge over a dispite with the landlord – which sources say eventually manifested on set as hostility and frustration from Trank. "

Nerf?

[Ginaz]

Even though I used my free points to see this, I still feel like I wasted my money.  It makes the first 2 FF movies look like God damn masterpieces.

[SurfD]

Even though I used my free points to see this, I still feel like I wasted my money.  It makes the first 2 FF movies look like God damn masterpieces.

I just wish they could do a FF movie that doesnt somehow manage to turn Doom from one of the best Marvel villians into some thrid rate hack with some kind of cgi skin condition....  Maybe if marvel gets the rights back we will see a Doom worthy of the name

[Velorath]

With the way they handle their villains in the movies, maybe not so much. Ideally if Marvel got the FF back, I'd like to see them do a Netflix Doom series focusing on him when he's growing up in Latveria.

[Khaldun]

Films do have a complicated problem with fully-masked villains. Not many actors want to take a role where you don't see them very much, especially a role where the mask conceals everything about the face. It takes away your biggest tool as an actor, and you can't use some of the same visual tricks the comics can to give a masked character facially-registered emotions.

But also you just can't do Doom or the Fantastic Four unless you're willing to go full comic-book. There's no halfway or dialed down version of Doom that works.

[eldaec]

It's a challenge, but hardly an unknown one. Not least since VO and motion capture work has become so central to modern movies.

Also, not sure I agree the DrDoom or F4 *must* go full silver age, or must have the mask in every film.  If you write and direct well you can do whatever you like.  Doom's only consistent  defining character traits are ego, open disdain for others and being smart, this isn't new territory to work in.

For my money the toughest part of F4 to adapt into a non-comic film is Mr Fantastic, who has a ridiculous superpower and a character that quickly becomes dull unless well written or played for laughs.

[Merusk]

Iron Man found a great solution to the problem did it really well. There's no reason to get an "inside the suit" view of Doom like we do Tony & Jarvis, though.

The villainy development part has been covered by other writers really well. We have one well-developed villain in the MCU right now: Loki. He's only such because we've seen him in multiple movies. If he was only in Thor then dead he'd be as badly moustache-twirling as every other one.

Even Thanos is surprisingly underdeveloped for as many movies as he's referenced. "evil guy who grimaces and smirks" isn't much better than "guy who goes into psychotic rage for reasons we get one or two throwaway lines about."  In his development they're playing too much up to the comics fans and not enough to "show, don't tell" for the moviegoers.

[Nevermore]

Darth Vader was fully masked way back in 1977.  You'd think someone could manage a fully masked Doom today.