Caltrops - Peter Molyneux's The Movies - Re: Mr. Fantastic gets punked by Pixar!

Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies

by Ice Cream Jonsey 12/31/2004, 8:41pm PST

Choson wrote:

ICJ: Marvel's Greatest Sycophant. Unless you meant that the FF movie "was going to be shit from the start".

I did mean that. Precisely that, in fact! If there is a way to make the Fantastic Four interesting in a two hour movie then I'd love to see it, but everything I've read about this film gives nobody any reason to be excited. There is a weariness to the FF at this point. Marvel relaunched a lot of their books under the "Ultimate" line and last I knew they hadn't bothered to go anywhere near the Fantastic Four because really, at this point, what more can you say? I sure hope the Thing finds a way to not be rocky any more!

Here is some bonus coverage in the form of what I have thought of the latest batch of Marvel Comics inspired movies:

The Hulk: Complete shit. Every choice made in this movie, except for the casting of Thunderbolt there, was a bad one. This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Daredevil: Oh, a super hero who kills people by throwing them in front of the subway! How interesting! "We sure haven't seen that before," says our boy wonder, three-named director. I certainly thought the cast was going to let it down and to my surprise it didn't. The direction and writing were excreable, however.

The Punisher: Just a waste of time. Either give me a guy who is blowing shit up nicely from start to finish or pick one of the solid tales that someone has done with the character and make it a movie. When a movie is afraid to use the character's alias until the final scene and when they are snorting at the protagonist's costume then it's implied that I'm supposed to feel like an idiot for reading comic books. I don't need a movie to tell me I'm a moron for dropping $3 on a comic, I can get that by looking at my receipts from "Halley's Comics" or "The Android's Elbow." The part that I object to is not that someone is saying "comics are stupid" but MOVIES saying that "comics are stupid," especially since there's been no known form of media that has produced as much utterly worthless tripe in as little time as film.

X-Men 2: I have no objections, it was fine. Oh, except that the name is officially "X2" because calling it X-Men would be stupid! See above.

Spider-Man 2: I haven't seen this a second time. I recall thinking that the first half was excellent. I left the theatre feeling like someone threw up in my seat. I don't know how to describe it properly. Something bugged me about the end of that movie and I haven't figured it out yet. I'm sure it will show up on HBO or something eventually and this will get sorted out once and for all. I am leaning towards considering this to be a "bad" movie, currently.

Blade Trinity: After Blade 2 I think I'm good. Blade 2 was a franchise killer, only the franchise lived again, like vampires.

The rash of awful comic-inspired movies is going to have no effect on the world at large, except that eventually we'll stop getting them at all. This would not be the worst thing ever, I'm not particularly worked up about it, but I'll go ahead and say that it would be nice to one day have the option of, say, Watchmen becoming a movie, or Sandman or something. One of them is going to bomb big time -- I know that Daredevil was close to not making any money with its domestic release -- and if I had to guess which one starts killing off projects due to how little it will make it would be FF. I don't know that I'm rooting for Marvel above all else. I think they haven't learned anything from the original FF, Punisher and Captain America movies and I don't know that they really care.

You've never convincingly argued why exactly "The Incredibles" turned the masterpiece that is "The Fantastic Four" into complete shit

Well, you left me with this in the other thread:

Here's how I counteract the rest of that review: You hated the half-Jap/half-German superhero costumer designer? I liked her. You thought the parts about suburban living and working in an office were long and boring? I didn't. Neat, huh?

I am not sure where you expected me to go from there. Telling me you liked the costumer designer -- that's like telling me you enjoy drinking lye. You're telling me that on your world everyone drinks gold and your dollar is backed by Evian. This is alien to me.

From where I stand, it was an entertaining, clever homage to superheros, if not "Watchmen"-clever. Of course, I don't think that was even Pixar's intent. Were you expecting Pixar, which has been a family-friendly, but better than average fare film studio to suddenly take a completely different tack?

I don't need homage to superheroes, as noted above, most of the movies that have been made about them are utter shit, so before anyone tries to lionize them, Jesus, give us at least a golden age. I had never seen a Pixar film before this one. And you have to understand that going in -- EVERYONE liked this movie. I avoided the Toy Stories and the Shreks (IIRC that's not a Pixar flick, but close enough for my purposes here) and Ice Age and so forth. When people are telling you that it's impossible to not enjoy I am open-minded enough to give it a shot. And how did things start off? We get a preview for some movie called "Cars" which is EXACTLY what I can't stand about these stupid things. They can't do humans! Oh, ha, ha, no! So they will take cars and toys and fish and sharks and polar bears and give them wacky adventures that I just can't get into. I am a caring man, Choson. You'd think of me as someone you'd want to babysit your kids or whatnot if you disregarded all the on-line cursing I do and my hatred of kiddie CGItoons. But man, sitting through that enormously awful preview followed by the cutting-up-a-sheep short which was attached to every Incredibles presentation... they're giving me exactly what I hated and feared about these cartoons.

I probably don't hate Incredibles as much now as I did when it first came out. I think one's opinions can gain a certain perspective over time, and when I think about it I recall that -- for instance! -- this was the first thing I've ever seen (heard) Craig T. Nelson in where I didn't immediately hate him. What was the name of the first bad guy, Bomb Appetit or something? That was pretty good. But the Incredibles quickly succumbed to that bit that Bobby Slayton does about Going to the Movies: Comedian Bobby says something to the effect of how he hates going to see chick flicks with his girlfriend about relationships and families and so forth because "I have a family. I have a relationship. I do not have monsters eating people under my stairs." The Incredibles dragged on at the beginning in its attempt to show me a guy with a bad job and going-nowhere relationship and Christ, if I were less in control of things in my life I can quite easily get those things! I can't get Frenchie chucking nukes at me from office buildings, and I would like more of that, please.

So that's the attached short and first half of the flick and why I didn't like it. From there we get into the braying jackass of an intentionally annoying character and there was no fucking way the thing built up any sort of quality reserves in me to allow me to laugh along with it. I also knew nothing about the movie going in except that Jason Lee played the bad guy. I had no idea what his character looked like, what powers he'd have, blah blah blah, just that he was in it. And Mr. Incredible, while trying to remember the would-be sidekick's name, calls him "Brodie." I am now officially being punished for having watched Mallrats by having auto-spoilers in the Incredibles. Much like how I don't need to be reminded why comics are stupid, I don't need further abuse for having seen Mallrats a couple times. That was a little thing, and sure -- the revelation of who the villain was is not exactly like stating that Keyser Soze was a ghost all along, but I was in a bad mood and the thing is poking me going, "Eh!? EH?!?! CLEVER AREN'T WE, FANBOY, HA HA HA!"

Secondly, Marvel wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they tried to sue and would look like a bunch of jackasses -- apparently you've never heard of a thing called "influences"?

Come on. Now you're just being obtuse. If I say, "I watched a movie about a family that had the powers of stretching, turning invisible, being incredibly/fantastically strong and turning into fire" then both qualify. When I mention the lawsuit thing it's because Marvel was directly affected by the quality of presentation of the Incredibles and it's forced them to drop another twenty million into their shitty flick. I don't think I have properly stated my intentions to the Fantastic Four movie: I am hoping for a disaster along the lines of one that leaves another 100,000 third worlders homeless. I am hoping that the world sticking its thumb down to the crapass piece of garbage embarasses Marvel Comics enough to where just possibly we get a decent movie out of some of their endless source material. At the very least I hope this prevents the rumoured Tom-Cruise-as-Iron-Man-and-oh-Iron-Man-isn't-wearing-a-mask-with-the-suit flick and other assorted wastes of time.

the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!