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Nocturnal Admissions

By D.K. Holm

July 5, 2005

[nota bene: The following column, by necessity, contains some spoilers! If you don't want to know the ending of the movies mentioned, don't read on.]

It's Stumbling Time

FANTASTIC FOUR
In evaluating THE FANTASTIC FOUR, you can break it down into four parts.

One fourth of it is pretty good.

But another fourth is really, really bad.

Then there is the quarter that is pretty boring.

Then there is the fourth that is the real movie, waiting to get out.

Or let's put it this way. Your 10-year-old nephew will probably get a kick out of it. In fact, though the advertisements don't clue you in to this, FF is for kids. It gets a certain rush from alluding to going Number Two in a not bad sight gag involving an unseen Reed Richards, an elongated hand, and a roll of toilet paper across a hall. But the point is that like NATIONAL TREASURE, it's really a kids' film. You just don't know it until about 15 minutes into the film.

Once upon a time the FANTASTIC FOUR was the flagship comic book of the revitalized Marvel comics back in the early 1960s. After its birth in rapid succession came Spider-Man, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, Thor, Daredevil, and the Silver Surfer, just to mention a few. Stan Lee gets credit for inventing all of them and as a mascot cameo whore he is the "face" of the new old Marvel. But we all know what really happen, and one wishes that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and some of the other artists were around to revel in some of the glory that is their due.

My first Marvel experience was FANTASTIC FOUR No. 4. I found it on a rack in the cramp magazine section of a grocery called Domino's a few blocks from my house. A budding comic nerd (later to be derailed by movies), I found the issue instantly galvanizing. So different, so rough, so contrary to the bland DC comics I might flip through with a desultory wave of the hand on a languid summer afternoon. An instant Marvel advocate I collected all subsequent Marvel comics, and still to this day remember where and when I bought AMAZING FANTASY No. 15 (I wish I still had all these comics, but that is another grim, sad story).

Of course I wasn't alone. Marvel changed the comic book world, and in large part it really hasn't changed back. Most comic books still follow the Marvel model, whose hallmarks are dramatic splash pages, a wide variety of panel sizes, troubled heroes, and narration that is at odds or in counterpoint to the action or the word balloons, among other things. I was gratified a few years into my Marvel mania to come upon an issue of ESQUIRE that celebrated Marvel comics as a fad among college students. The article fairly accurately summarized why Marvel comics were so special.

My loyalty was in descending order of the comic heroes appearance: FF first, Spider-Man second, and so on, except for Nick Fury, who leapt to the top of the heap thanks to Jim Steranko's exotic style. But then I stopped, lost track, and never picked up the comic collecting mania again (although it is fluttering in the background at all times, like an alky's temptation).

So I was surprised to see how much I remembered of THE FANTASTIC FOUR as the film unspoiled and occasionally touched based with the source comics. In the biggest change, Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon) is on the space station (a ship in the comic) when the cloud of unknown whatever (a burst of "cosmic rays" in the comic) changes the DNA of the quartet and the villain. This means that Dr. Doom is another X-Men like character (a sort of Magneto) rather than a really brainy scientist competing with the comic's stuffier Reed Richards. Another change is that Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) is working for Doom, having broken up with Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) in the backstory. Doom is still from Latvinia, but little is made of that connection until the film's last quarter.

The quarter of FF that's good is the little modernizing touches that bring the characters up to date without violating their spirit. For example, Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) is now an extreme sports nut, which makes sense, irritating as that is otherwise. Johnny is certainly the liveliest of the four characters, and has the best lines. Another nice touch is the humor over obvious things, such as certain sexual and execratory aspects of real life. Also the special effects tend to be at least adequate, at least in the best scene, set on a bridge with fire trucks and such.

That's the good fourth. The boring fourth is the part of the movie in which the characters wrestle with their new identities. They pine around, argue with each other, moon, pout, basically do nothing for about 20 minutes. It's very, very irritating. Is it just me, or should an action film have more than one sole action sequence?

Johnny Storm's pranks on The Thing (Michael Chiklis, who gives probably the best performance; in fact THE FANTASTIC FOUR could even stand a lot more Vic Mackey-like aggression) are in the spirit of the comic, as is Reed Richard's sense of guilt about making him so. But so much of the film, at least a quarter of it, is not right. For example, to mention something really minor, Reed Richards makes the cover of WIRED as a bankrupted scientist. But that just doesn't ring true. WIRED would never offer anything as downbeat as a hint of technology causing harm in the market or in business, at least not on its cover. In the scene on the bridge, RR tells SS to take off her clothes, turn invisible, and lead them through the crowd. So, like, was does she have to be invisible to do this? Later, throughout the "isolated Fantastic Four" part of the movie, in which the quartet hide out in the Baxter Building while RR works on changing them back to normal, Sue Storm is lecturing everyone else on staying inside. Then suddenly, for no reason, she is shown walking down the street. But wasn't she just saying … never mind, it doesn't matter. The scene is just a prelude to SS disrobing again, a big tease that only a pre-adolescent would dig. For all Alba's disrobing, the team only dons superhero costumes at the tail end of the tale. The film is also horribly photographed (by Oliver Wood). It's muddy and brown, and when Jessica Alba speaks she occasionally shows Purple Mouth Syndrome. Meanwhile her face has the distractingly thick sheen of an overly made up Vegas showgirl. And some of the special effects are horrible. The Thing's steps don't sound so much like thunderous footfalls as they do the slurping sound of the soaked-shoe-steps of a wharf fisherman walking home after an unexpected dunking.

Inside THE FANTASTIC FOUR is a good movie waiting to receive strength-giving cosmic rays. Maybe that is the film that existed ab ovo before all the reported rewrites descended on the project. It's the witty part of the film that could stand to be accelerated, along with the action scenes. It's the part of the movie that evokes the original comics, not the parts geared to a kid waiting for his pubic hair to sprout. Such a film would be one that could accommodate Jack Kirby's visionary grandeur, his images of lonely creatures speeding through space, the vividness of his characters both in motion and repose, and his catalog of hubristic villains wanting to dominate nations, worlds, galaxies. It would not be Stan Lee's FF, with its worrying over bills and petty feuds between colleagues. This FF could be meaner, leaner, more focused, and yet a lot grander in the Kirby style, rather than bogged down in low-grade grandstanding.

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