Fantastic 4 - Is it me or we don't really see them do anything?
Finally watched the new F4 over the weekend and I enjoyed it enough (more than recent MCU movies), especially for the style of the world they created and the actors they picked
BUT
My gf & I both agreed that it felt like we barely got to see them do anything. It feels like we mostly saw Johnny & Susan shine with their powers, while Ben & Reed pretty much sat on the back burner the whole time.
I was stoked when we saw Johnny flying down with Ben in his arms towards Galactus, but even that felt a little lackluster as all it amounted to was a *very* brief distraction. As for Reed, damn, this guy was just shown for his intellect, yet his """genius""" plan was to do the Ol' Switcheroo against a cosmic being by making him walk into a very obviously marked triangle of warning tape.
I feel like Silver Surfer got to be more badass on screen than half the team, even stealing Johnny's thunder by slamming into Galactus (which made sense, can loose him on the 1st appearance, lol)
Thoughts?
BUT
My gf & I both agreed that it felt like we barely got to see them do anything. It feels like we mostly saw Johnny & Susan shine with their powers, while Ben & Reed pretty much sat on the back burner the whole time.
I was stoked when we saw Johnny flying down with Ben in his arms towards Galactus, but even that felt a little lackluster as all it amounted to was a *very* brief distraction. As for Reed, damn, this guy was just shown for his intellect, yet his """genius""" plan was to do the Ol' Switcheroo against a cosmic being by making him walk into a very obviously marked triangle of warning tape.
I feel like Silver Surfer got to be more badass on screen than half the team, even stealing Johnny's thunder by slamming into Galactus (which made sense, can loose him on the 1st appearance, lol)
Thoughts?
Commentaires
Hell, Reed can't catch a break, especially considering his previous appearance & brutal demise in MoM
It's kinda the downside of starting them *this late* with with Galactus as their first villain; by nature, he's kinda hard to do anything meaningful against.
It does feel like some of the best moments showing their powers were relayed to the power cut of the talk show at the start of the movie, which is a shame
First, he doesn't manage to sense any powers within Franklin due to the baby "hiding its powers" and even Susan takes away from his gadgets by just going see-through for him to look at their child. Then, we have him design the "Super Baby Carrier" that is supposed to be shock-explosion-fire proof, yet it can easily be opened telepathically by Galactus. We also see his plan get utterly stomped by Silver Surfer going around the globe to break the pilons.
And I just couldn't take Reed's Willy Coyote plan of having Galactus walk on the very obvious triangle trap.
He felt like a punching bag/butt of the joke for the entire movie, which is a real shame, imo
That’s like saying that beavers don’t know how to build dams because you ran over one in your F-350 and it broke.
I'll give you the first point, as sure they didn't know he had telekinesis
But did they really expect the omnipotent million of years old being to not see the very obvious trap laid on the floor in the middle of a labeled triangle? Did Reed also forget that Galactus was able to sense the cosmic power off of Franklin from a distance? Seems dumb from a genius like Reed to think Galactus would not be able to sense that the dummy carrier was void of this essence
And he knew Silver Surfer was capable of FTL speeds yet no defenses at all were set up to protect the pilons from her attacks
In the same way that you can’t tell me how yellow tastes or what the word “and” smells like, there are limits to what intelligence can achieve in the face of higher dimensional beings. ESPECIALLY when you’re in a time crunch. He did what he could. The plan fell apart twice, and he quickly pivoted in that situation. There isn’t always going to be a clear “this answer solves the problem cleanly and easily”. But he still solved the problem
Also, let's be real, he did NOT have any backup plans for Galactus noticing the switcheroo. Hell, Reed even seemingly forgot his own powers and ran to grab Franklin and swap the carriers, rather than stretch his arms
They likely thought they had more time before the Surfer returned, and/or that the Surfer wouldn't know what the pylons were for.
This was a film about them as people in their universe. It was building their characters and motivations in the mcu.
We got to see the trust that their universe has built up in them.
It was all character introduction rather than hero introduction as that had been done many times before.
Literally their whole world trusted them. Which is something that can't be said for the heros in the main mcu-verse.
It shows them as being the accepted line of defense for that world so they are regarded as the ultimate team.
Its character building, not world building.
The Fantastic Four aren’t a normal superhero team.
They are a family first, explorers second, and THEN superheroes third. We saw a lot of them being a family. We saw a good amount of them being explorers. We saw a little bit of them being superheroes. The movie did a good job balancing the different aspects of the team and having less superhero stuff going on is a result of that
The film was actually pretty accurate to how the classic comics were done. Even down to Reed’s sparing use of his powers. I know people gripped about that, but I feel like there’s probably more comic pages of Reed tinkering with his gadgets than stretching. His brain has always been his primary power and fighting with his stretching ability was 2nd.
Not sure I agree with your point. Is the Fast and the Furious about family or doing cool shit with cars?
It also reminds me of a comic writer describing the Titans as being a family, and that is why they are different from all other comic book teams. I didn't think that was true either.
I'm not sure what the argument would be that the Fantastic Four aren't superheroes. They are. In the comics right now they are fighting Dr Doom who controls the world. The "first" argument doesn't work. The X-Men aren't superheroes first?
The Avengers are notoriously a bunch of coworkers, so I’m curious to see why you would even include them here
In the comics, characters are married to each other, literal siblings, treat each other as siblings, etc.
Currently they are fighting Dr.Doom, but Doom controls the world because he seized control of *Dr.Strange's* title of Sorcerer Supreme in a previous *Avengers* storyline (Blood Hunt). The Fantastic Four are simply helping the Avengers clean up a mess started in their story because they have the most experience with Doom. Which is typically how their involvement with the rest of the Marvel Universe goes. They're a utility superhero team who only gets called in when specifically needed. Otherwise they're usually more focused on whatever scientific exploration mission Reed is currently obsessed with, and solving whatever problems happen along the way from Reed taking them through time, space, other dimensions/universes, etc.
They absolutely *are* explorers first, and superheroes second. That's the Avengers, X-men, and GotG job. And the Fantastic Four let the others handle those jobs. The Fantastic Four's job is to handle whatever mess Reed's science endeavors gets them into. And then the Fantastic Four only get pulled into regular superheroics whenever anyone needs Reed's brain to solve stuff or it's an all hands on deck situation. So their more "typical" superheroic action moments happen during crossovers, not their own comics
They used the pull of gravity from the neutron star to slingshot themselves up to the necessary speed to achieve FTL. In doing so, they saved the fuel that would’ve been expended reaching those speeds to start with, allowing them to safely travel home.
It's like a series of bullet points completely undeveloped.
Perfect example is when they were using Franklin to bait Galactus into the platform. The baby carrier was in the platform, they distracted Galactus to look away, and then Reed RUNS onto the platform and swaps baby carriers.
Bruh why are you running?? Stretch your arm over there and make the swap. Small detail but it really stuck out to me.
Reed was going to move them “to a new solar system, within 2% of the inhabitable zone”.
How do you know that he hasn’t already accounted for the moon and is planning to use some celestial body that is already there as earths new moon? The fact that he uses the term “inhabitable zone” implies that all necessities for our life to exist are being met in this zone. One of those necessities would be the moon. That is two separate ways I’ve given that he could’ve already accounted for the moon.
For example, Earth 828 has no war. They solved world peace. Every country except Latveria doesn’t even have an army anymore. This is not a world built on realism.
Everyone noticed the setting looking retro-futuristic but didn’t account for how that setting would affect the tone. This movie carries the same sense of awe, whimsy, and wonder that was prevalent when looking at the space race back in the day. There is an intentional naïveté to this world that is supposed to be a purer mirror of ours.
I didn't mind it overall.
You know one thing that bothers me more than it should. The stylized chalkboard that’s curved. It’s lots of wasted space and for the smartest man on earth doesn’t make sense.
Johnny deciding an alien language with a paragraph and one line…was a choice. Him having access to Galactus destroying worlds. Where did that come from.
The trope of an angry mob being subdued and completely quiet while she tells them they’re shit out of luck.
I just don’t get the hype for this movie. It feels manufactured and I’m betting as time goes on and Disney focuses their bots on other projects we’ll see very few defenders of this film
"Everyone who's excited for something I'm not excited for is a bot" is not an argument to be taken seriously.
This was a singular alien language and also happened to be her exact dialect.
Of course it was her dialect; it was the people who'd known her before she became the herald.
As an MCU fan I will probably rewatch, but it doesn't feel like the comeback it needed to be
It still on the higher end of recently produced Marvel stuff, hard to hate it