NO IMPOSSIBLE MAN = NO CREDIBILITY

Right, so I went to see Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four tonight. It’s possible that you might have heard about it. You know, the film that got the lowest-ever score on Rotten Tomatoes? The film that’s the worst abomination cinema has ever known? The film that’s an affront to everything that’s good and right in the world? Why are we just sitting here gabbing when we could be tarring and feathering Josh Trank? THE MAN’S A MONSTER.

OK, stop. No. You've had your fun. Can we maybe, perhaps, stop being so hysterical about this thing? No, it’s not the best comic-book movie ever made. But you know what? It’s pretty far from the worst. Here are just a few shittier comic-book movies: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Daredevil, Blade Trinity, Man-Thing. Batman Returns, Batman & Robin, Batman Forever, Superman III, Superman IV, Ghost Rider, Green Lantern. In my own personal rankings, Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four is probably on a par with Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk – which admittedly, is my least favourite MCU movie, but it’s by no means abominable (see what I did there?).

Some context first. Being primarily a lifelong X-Men fan, I’ve had a long time to get used to the idea that movies and comics are very different things. The first X-Men film offered only the merest of glimpses of my personal vision of Marvel’s Merry Mutants – and while I loved it anyway, it wasn’t without a certain amount of internal conflict about all the things they got completely wrong (i.e. changed for cinema). Eventually I reached the stage where I was comfortable with the idea that the cinema and comic universes were very different – complementary, perhaps, but their own entities. In many ways, the relationship between comics and cinema is much like Marvel 616 and the Ultimate Universe – the latter being a more streamlined, simplified, ‘cooler’ take on the former. It’s no coincidence that the movies have often turned to the Ultimate line for inspiration. And this latest iteration is no exception, plucking most of its story elements directly from the first couple of arcs of Ultimate Fantastic Four. The MCU also drinks deep from the Ultimate well – the most stark (excuse the pun) example being the casting of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, given that his likeness was appropriated for The Ultimates. 

Point being, I can happily see my comic films as parallel worlds or What Ifs?, as counterparts to the comics. I don’t require verisimilitude. The MCU and the Avengers do not, to me, feel like their comic counterparts, but I dig them both. I’m happy to take the films on their own terms, just as I take the comics in that fashion.

The one true Fantastic Four

Given all that, which is a roundabout way of saying a) this film is not very much like the 616 universe, and b) I'm not really all that concerned about that, what to make of Fantastic Four?

Taken on its own terms, it’s… well, a bit weird. The first two-thirds, a slow-burn sci-fi character study, are actually pretty compelling. The early bonding between child genius Reed Richards and best buddy from the wrong side of the tracks Ben Grimm is handled beautifully, and their bond is palpable and believable. Reed’s encounter with Franklin Storm and his induction into the interdimensional project is intriguing. And following the inevitable accident, the subsequent transformations, before our heroes learn to cope with their powers, make for some unexpectedly compelling, unsettling scenes of body horror.

But then there’s a sudden and huge leap – a ‘one year later’ leap. And it’s here where things start to unravel. Many others have mentioned this, but it really does feel like a big, generic mega-budget superhero blockbuster was awkwardly pasted onto a pretty interesting, simmering, atmospheric sci-fi flick, and the two don’t gel well at all. [Insert your own speculation here about studio interference and/or director meltdown and assign blame accordingly.] While there are some fun scenes in the latter third, the pacing becomes a desperate dash to the finish and it’s all ultimately a bit unsatisfying. What could have been an interesting, slower, quieter take on the superhero genre ends up as little more than a slightly confused prequel to some far better films that will most likely never be made.

A few closing points, good and bad.

GOOD: The Thing looks great in motion. Pants or no pants, this is by far the best rendering of live-action Benjy yet. Sometimes he feels like he could stand to have a little more weight, but he’s a sturdy presence nonetheless.

BAD: The best scenes from the trailer, of Ben being dropped from a place onto a military installation and wrecking the joint, were cut from the film at a late stage. A pretty shocking omission.

GOOD: Miles Teller carried the film as young Reed Richards, and to me inhabited the role really well. He had the awkwardness, the drive, the intense intelligence… could have used a little mania, but I liked him. In fact, all four team members were well cast, even if their interaction could have been handled better (see next point).

BAD: Before this film came out, I was confident that, whatever else happened, Trank (whose affinity for character work was well chronicled in, err, Chronicle) could relied upon to grasp what makes the FF unique – their family dynamic. But the ball was majorly dropped here. Reed & Ben were a tight lifelong partnership, and Sue & Johnny’s sibling relationship was good – tense and cool, though warming up – but as a quartet…? Reed and Sue had some extremely tentative flirting and burgeoning chemistry, but were basically work colleagues, while Johnny & Ben barely even speak to each other until the closing scene, and there's no real sense of the four as a team. Poor.

GOOD: For all the hoo-ha about Michael B. Jordan and Kate Mara playing siblings – because oh my god, how could that ever happen in real life, apart from all the ways in which it can and does happen?! – this was played nicely and not turned into a tiresome plot point. A brief mention about adoption, and that’s all (arguably, even that was unnecessary, as Franklin had already mentioned she was his daughter).

BAD: This is the big one. Dr Doom was absolutely bloody awful. No getting around it. Looked terrible. Had no presence. No menace. No aristocratic arseholeness. While, as mentioned, I don’t require faithfulness to the comic, this Dr Doom retained nothing that’s interesting about Victor aside from the name. Nothing. Not one thing. The great thing about Doom is that he is a self-made man of power, and as such considers himself superior to the misbegotten freaks of nature that are the FF. Why Trank decided to repeat the mistake of Tim Story and portray Doom as just another superpowered freak is beyond me. And worse, Doom here is no imperious, arrogant megalomaniac, but just a mopey, slobby nihilist bent on pointless destruction because… well, reasons, OK? He was essentially fruit-dehydrating maniac Eddie from Friends, covered in broken glowsticks and duct tape, with an ill-defined assortment of superpowers. Had this character simply been renamed Annihilus or the Molecule Man, it might have worked better, but this was just a colossal waste of one of comics’, nay fiction’s, most interesting characters. Crap, I tells ya. Crap! 

(Addendum: Come to think of it...he's a creepy looking techno-organic thing, has freaky cosmic powers, he's a nihilist bent on destruction, and lives in the frickin' Negative Zone. He bloody well IS Annihilus. Well, Annihilus-lite.) 

A mid-tier movie, then. Starts well, ends badly. Shit Doom. Far from perfect, but not deserving of the nigh-universal, excessive opprobrium.

THE HAND-JIVE OF DOOM

Our semi-regular geek cinema group watched the Corman FF film last night. And it's... certainly a film.

And whaddya know, the following morning the wonderful Fantasticast released their very own commentary episode (which I haven't heard yet, but I'm sure it's a blast...).

Made over a wet weekend in 1992 for roughly the price of a round down the Lamb & Flag (minus the Scampi Fries), Fantastic Four was rushed into being by producer Bernd Eichinger because his rights to the property were about to expire. Opinion varies as to whether he ever intended to release this thing (no pun intended), but certainly the cast and crew thought this was destined for a cinema release. Alas – or mercifully – it was pulled in advance of the premiere, and sealed in that massive warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark. For years only available on bootlegs from comic fairs, the film finally blossomed into being in the age of the internet, not quite gaining a cult following along the way.

On virtually all levels, it's a stinker. Painfully cheap, poorly thrown together, an ill-fitting mish-mash of styles, including some blatant homages to Burton's Batman films, cinematography that's questionable at best, poor action, shonky special effects, deeply unflattering costumes, dubious acting and a horrible '80s sheen all over everything.

OK guys, in this scene you're being tortured.
Look orgasmic, disgusted or bored. Up to you.

And yet... it's actually remarkably enjoyable. Not even necessarily in a so-bad-it's-good-way, either. The circumstances of its genesis mean you're willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. So what if Johnny Storm turns into a cartoon when he finally flames on? So what if the Thing looks like a gorilla made of sofa stuffing and his mouth is out of sync with his dialogue? So what if Dr Doom compensates for his face being hidden behind a mask by wildly overacting with his fingers? So what if Reed's powers are reduced to effectively duct-taping a glove to the end of a broomstick?

Reed Richards: godfather of the finglonger. 

There's an honesty and purity of intention that shines through the awfulness – you can sort of, if you squint, see what Corman and his crew were trying to do, but had neither the time nor the money (or possibly the talent) to even approximate it. True, some of it is just awful – e.g. the whole Jeweller character/side plot is abysmal – but there's some genuinely great stuff, too. In particular, every time Doom is on screen is a real treat, hand jive notwithstanding.

FOOLS!

The reason we watched this, of course, was as a precursor to Josh Trank's upcoming Fantastic Four. This film has, of course, been much reviled by geek communities throughout the multiverse. I'm still cautiously looking forward to this. While my excitement level for this movie is more of a simmer than a boil, the trailers have certainly not repulsed me in the way they have seemingly everyone else in the whole world. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The constant cries of 'It's nothing like the comics!' seem odd when it's clearly based heavily on the ultimate version of the team (the same universe that makes its influence felt pretty heavily in the MCU and the Fox X-Men films, incidentally). It's not that it isn't based on the comics, it's just based on comics that perhaps aren't the most fondly remembered by some fans. And that includes me – 'my' FF is Kirby/Lee, Byrne and Hickman, but I'm still interested in this take.

Another common criticism is that the FF is inherently goofy and wacky, and that Trank's 'gritty' take will be a massive departure from that. Putting aside the fact that it doesn't look that gritty to my eyes, I think this argument does the FF a disservice. The FF are an extremely mutable concept, able to handle all kinds of moods and modes. And the stories that made me connect with them as a kid were certainly not goofy, but pretty damn dark – in particular, Byrne's Psycho-Man/Hate-Monger/Malice saga was pretty disturbing to me. Fantastic Four, after all, is a book in which Doctor Doom at one point makes armour out of the skin of his dead lover.

The goofiness! 

What enables the FF to handle all kinds of stories is that they are a family. This is my big concern with Trank's movie. If he can get the interpersonal dynamics right, everything else will fall into place. If not, the whole thing will collapse. It's far too soon to say either way, but his work on Chronicle shows that he's very much character-driven.

Plus, my daughter is absolutely thrilled by the trailers and very excited to see it – which did provide a moment of horrifying clarity that perhaps the people making comic-book movies are not thinking primarily about 40-year-old obsessive geeks who get all upset if Alicia Masters wears the wrong type of cardigan, but are trying to take these characters to a new audience, a new generation.

Having said all that, reviews of the movie have been embargoed until the night of release, which probably means it's a sack of shite. We shall see.

DO NOT GO JENNNNNNNNTLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Sweet Headless Aunt Petunia! My battered nerves are close to fraying and the very milk of my soul is furring at the fringes, which must mean it’s time for yet another visit to the BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOM. It’s always a pleasure to dive bonce-first into some 100% genuine comic-mart 50p bins, and this week I’d like to chat about one of my favourite recent finds in said bargainous troves – FF (Vol. 2).

Launched at the end of 2012, FF is a counterpart title to Fantastic Four, written by Matt Fraction with art by Mike and Laura Allred. The basic premise is this: the Fantastic Four are heading off on an inter-dimensional adventure (ostensibly for a holiday, but in reality in search of a cure – Reed Richards has discovered that the team’s powers are killing them). In theory, their time-bending jaunt will mean they’ll be gone for a year from their perspective, but only four minutes in the ‘real’ world. Knowing all too well how often these kinds of things don’t go quite according to plan, given the unreliability of his ad-hoc doohickeys, Reed decides to appoint a team of pinch-hitters to fill in during the purported 240-second absence – both as a superhero team, and as mentors to the gifted kids of the Future Foundation (it’s complicated… see Hickman’s vast and glorious run on the previous volumes of Fantastic Four/FF). Each member gets to pick their own replacement: Reed selects Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man; Sue chooses Medusa, queen of the Inhumans; Ben turns to old friend Jennifer Walters, the Sensational and/or Savage She-Hulk; and Johnny forgets what he’s supposed to be doing and at the last minute appoints his pop-star girlfriend Darla Deering, who is kitted out with Ben’s old Thing exoskeleton (sans head).

So let’s get this straight: Matt Fraction, the Allreds, Ant-Man, She-Hulk, an Inhuman and a pink-haired female Thing. That there list comprises seven of my favourite things in the comics world. So why, in the name of Spragg the Living Hill, did I not pick this up at the time? Is it possible that DC spiked my espresso? More likely, my inner Fantastic Four fanboy was all ‘That’s not MY FF. What is this untrammelled ersatz bilge?’ and stormed off in a cosmic-ray-infused huff.

My FF was all about foreshortening.

As it turns out, FF is one of the most immensely satisfying books I’ve read in a while. Part of the appeal lies in the perfect balance of seriousness and silliness. On the one hand, you’ve got the disappearance of the original FF after their absence, as predicted, turns out to be much, much longer than the promised four minutes; the arrival of a mutilated figure who claims to be the Johnny Storm of the future, the last survivor of the time-lost team; Darla’s crisis of confidence; She-Hulk and Wyatt Wingfoot tentatively exploring their long-dormant feelings for each other, trying to understand why their relationship dwindled. Most affecting of all, Scott Lang is traumatised by the death of his daughter at the hands of Doctor Doom, suffering debilitating flashbacks, his judgement clouded by grief, reluctant to even be around the Future Foundation kids.

Yet, on the other hand, there’s a lot of brilliant, giddy and genuinely joyous humour: Ant-Man and Darla chasing Yancy Street ‘Internet jerks’ through a hotel; Alex Power’s flicking of a tiny holographic Dr Doom; the Moloids’ unrequited love for She-Hulk (who they call ‘The Jen’, or, in moments of extreme collective sexless lust, ‘The Jennnnnnnnnn’); their futile attempts to thwart her pitching of woo to Wyatt Wingfoot; the cartoonishly wannabe-evil and ultimately counterproductive machinations of Bentley-23 (son of the Wingless Wizard) as he attempts to aid said Moloids in their thwarting; the titanic failure of the least threatening Kirby-esque monster you’ve ever seen. There’s a plethora of genuine I’m-laughing-out-loud-and-the-people-on-the-bus-are-scared-of-the-crazy-guffawing-beardy-man moments in here.

Weaving together big concepts and high seriousness with decent comedy is no small task, but if any creative team can manage it, it’s this one. As far as I’m concerned, with Hawkeye and Sex Criminals, Matt Fraction has proved himself the single most adept and fearless writer working in comics today. And as for the Allreds… there’s just something infinitely flexible about their distinctive style. Yes, it’s ultra-cartoony, bright and vivid, a heightened, self-consciously two-dimensional reality steeped in pop art, seemingly perfect for light-hearted, romantic and comedic work. Yet, as their time on Madman and X-Force/X-Statix showed, this aesthetic is curiously well-suited to high drama, serious issues, even mind-shredding horror. At its fringes, the Allreds’ work edges into the indie-cult style of someone like Daniel Clowes or Charles Burns – there’s an eerie, disturbing potential in these bright, wholesome renditions that lends an extra, truly upsetting power to scenes such as those depicting Scott Lang’s grief. Rather than undercutting the emotional heft of these pieces, it provides a juxtaposition that amplifies them. And there are moments of pure visual-design genius too, which revel in the unique possibilities of the comics medium – see Scott and Darla’s chase scene in #3, the Wyatt/Jen dance sequence in #4, or the multi-layered newspaper front page in the same issue.

As the first few issues close, with the prospect of a doomed mission, a possible impostor, a traitor in their ranks, and multiple interpersonal dramas, I’m gasping to catch up and kicking myself that I haven’t done so already. Yet it’s a bittersweet future ahead of me, as the book was cancelled with #16. A shame, but a smattering of Fraction-Allred is infinitely better than no Fraction-Allred.

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page)