Hit Me With Your Flame On

The Fantastic Four – I just don’t understand the point of making a Fantastic Four movie that removes every single interesting thing about the series and its characters, especially when it is proven that being extremely faithful to source material is the key to producing massively successful geek films. Why abandon the superheroes-as-family-unit concept, even if The Incredibles ripped that off and made it to the theatres first? Why make Reed Richards, who is meant to be the most brilliant man on earth, a bumbling and ineffective fool? Why diminish the subtext of the group – that Sue is Johnny’s mother figure as well as his sister, and that Reed is Sue’s father figure as well as her husband? Why waste time with the origin story when the most interesting thing about the group is that they are explorers, and that they’ve always been at their best when they are venturing off into the unknown? Why not play up the fact that Victor Von Doom is the ruthless monarch of a small nation when that is utterly essential to his character? Also, why on earth would you put a guy in an iron mask, and still have him talk in his regular whiny voice when he ought to be menacing?

I’m not totally offended by the awfulness of the movie, but I am definitely saddened by the fact that the majority of the population will now associate the Fantastic Four (easily one of the five best superhero concepts of all time along with Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and the X-Men) with excessive shlockiness. It’s such a shame, because those old Lee/Kirby comics from the 60s are among the most brilliant comics ever made in any genre, and Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, James Sturm, and Warren Ellis have all done impressive work in reinterpreting the characters for a modern audience.

Dog Ruff “Jon E Storm” – If the film got anything right, it was Johnny Storm. The spirit of the character was the only thing that actually seemed at home in a cheesy, brash 00s Hollywood film, even if the studio mainly used the character as a flimsy excuse for packing in an absurd amount of blatant product placement. Longtime readers will no doubt remember this electropop ode to The Human Torch from when I originally posted it back in 2003. Everyone else is in for a treat. (Click here to buy it from Tigersushi.)

The Fantastic Four “Meet Dr. Doom!” – This is an episode of the old Fantastic Four radio serial from the early 70s, narrated by Stan Lee himself. This is a straight adaptation of The Fantastic Four #5, featuring the first appearance of Dr. Doom. This is a story from before Lee and Kirby hit their stride on the series, and it certainly loses a lot of appeal without Jack Kirby’s artwork, but it’s also sort of camp and adorable. They certainly did a much better job casting Reed Richards and Dr. Doom, that’s for sure.