I'm not a huge comic book fan. My favorite comic when I was growing up was actually ::cough:: Richie Rich ::cough::. I was never much interested in superhero comic books, although I did watch superhero shows on TV. Consequently, I'm aware of the general facts and origins of the biggees like Spiderman, Batman and Superman, but certainly not all superheroes.
It was thus without much foreknowledge that I saw the first Fantastic Four movie. We saw it at a drive-in which started the movie before it got fully dark so the image was a bit washed out. Still, I more or less enjoyed it. It wasn't fantastic, but it was okay. The melding of Dr. Doom's origin with the origin of the Fantastic Four didn't bother me since I didn't know their origin anyway. My main complaint was that the movie seemed short and lacking a couple of good fight sequences. (Strangely, this was also my major complaint about the first X-Men movie.) Basically, Doom shows up, starts getting aggressive and the FF take him out. End of movie.
I had higher expectations for the sequel, FF:ROSS. The commercials and buzz indicated that they had learned their lesson and ramped things up a notch. Happily, they seem to have succeeded. While still short an action sequence or so, the new movie is better in almost every way than the original. The action was pretty good, the Surfer was cool, and the story was interesting. It's not a perfect movie, but it was a fun, popcorn movie that was true to the comic. It was a much more enjoyable experience than Shrek 3, Pirates 3 and, to some extent, Spiderman 3.
One aspect I liked in particular was the lack of angst among the FF over having super powers. Frankly, when a superhero gets all whiny about having incredible powers, I want to smack him with a Kryptonite (or whatever, as appropriate) hammer.
Gee, you can fly but it's really tough being you? Shut up!
2 comments:
I was actually disappointed with this one. When I saw the first, on video, I had fun, and then afterwards thought about all the stuff I didn't like and decided I didn't really like the movie. I was excited about this one, though, because of the Surfer. For me, there wasn't enough Surfer. A lot of fanboys were angry about not seeing Galactus, but he wasn't a cloud, like many had feared. He was just obscured by the cloud. This didn't bother me, especially after seeing the shadow of his helmet passing Saturn. No, I was more disappointed by the lame dialog, and the fact that a Doom with the Power Cosmic could be beaten up. I also think Doom's voice is lame. He sounds like Nerd Doom.
I'm not sure what more the Surfer could have done. Isn't he kind of a one note character? It's not like he can kick back and have some lattes with the Four.
In both movies Doom was lame. In the first, he shows up and gets smoked. In the second, to my shock, he does almost exactly the same thing. He never has a crime spree, just one quick encounter with the FF and they quickly wail on him.
But I liked this one better than the first. I thought it was all-around better done.
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