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The people writing Reed are stupid, that's the problem.

Someone post the 4chan meme explaining this.
Sherlock 4chan.webp
Fantastic Four follows this to a tee. Reed's intelligence is basically treated as a superpower. It's given far more prominence than his stretchy abilities, which the film was very reluctant in showcasing up until the climax because they looked like shit.
 
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Fantastic 4 was decent, especially for recent MCU movies although GOTG 3 was considerably better.
I think some of the biggest problems with this film are the character dynamics, lack of growth, and some of the characterization. Which are things the 2005 film and its sequel did much better. Sue gets mad at Reed for about a minute and it amounts to nothing, Ben and Johnny have no real conflict whatsoever they’re just close friends. All 4 members of the team are scientists in this film which is just stupid. Instead of being a cool/cocky womanizer who can be rude and self centred but ultimately learns to be a real hero, Johnny just thinks the silver surfer is kinda hot, is smart enough to decode an ancient alien language all on his own and is very nice to Ben. The only character with any sort of growth is the silver surfer and it’s kinda forced in my opinion. Apart from that every character remains the same start to finish except Ben grows a beard half way through and it looks dumb.
 
Also, Mole Man was kind of a funny character in this, but why does he just look like some fat guy? Mole Man had a very distinct, stylized look in the comics.
View attachment 7692694
Ah yes, moles. Known for their good eyesight and non-grotesque appearance.
I like how the movie tells us that Human Torch is a womanizer, but he only interacts with two women in the entire film, one of which is his sister. Very cool!
I can at least live with him not being a flirt, but not making him an immature little shit feels like a betrayal of the character. He's the youngest member of the team and he's a hothead. You know, FIRE POWERS?

It says a lot when the Human Torch in Deadpool & Wolverine felt like a more faithful depiction, and he was meant to be a joke.
It's given far more prominence than his stretchy abilities, which the film was very reluctant in showcasing up until the climax because they looked like shit.
I heard that Galactus stretches Reed like putty in the climax, but its only like, 20 or 30 feet.
Perhaps him womanizing one woman is too much for Hollywood writers.
Just wait until the sequel makes him asexual.
 
It says a lot when the Human Torch in Deadpool & Wolverine felt like a more faithful depiction, and he was meant to be a joke.
It's tragic that RR understands the whackiness of CB characters better than Feige and his team. For them, their reference of funny is SNL. That's the type of humor they go for and they all are the same character at the end.

RR, all flaws considered, gives each character their own personality. Blade wasn't saying jokes here and there, he's a serious person who only made a joke after he's happy again killing villains. Same for Elektra, she wasn't making sassy comments, because she knew the seriousness of the situation. Laura is the same humorless autist that his dad is in this continuity. Gambit was... Gambit.

Meanwhile, had Disney written this, they'd all be saying jokes here are there because they think this is what Whedon meant when he said that you need to add humor. But the jokes are very limited to what it's acceptable humor for people like Feige, the references being SNL, Reddit, or late night shows.
 
The Human Torch is the one character I wouldn't mind if they made flamboyantly gay. Because of all the "flaming" jokes they could make. Essentially just make him Archer from the episode where he tried to pick up the Cuban faggot spy, but also with fire powers. "I'm soooooo hot!...Also I'm made out of fire!"
 
I'm glad that Fantastic Four was self-contained story wise even though that's going to go out the window when the next MCU film gets released. I am slightly less pessimistic about the MCU after watching it but I'm not getting my hopes up that they won't immediately fuck it up again.
 
I have a nitpick I don't dare ask anyone to take seriously: Galactus could have simply nullified or stripped the Fantastic Four's cosmic powers from their DNA at any time following their refusal to come to terms with his ultimatum. I understand he was nerfed by the same writers who can't write a smart guy's motives or expository dialogue, and that such details as it or Pascal's refusal to shave his gay mustache are the least of the film's issues.

The writers clearly asked themselves, "Why would Galactus even need to step on the Earth to destroy it in the final act?", and attempted to answer it by inventing the contrivance of "He wants the baby." Then they kind of stopped trying: Galactus meets the cast because they built a ship that can travel directly to him, yet has to come to Earth to retrieve the baby himself, while his herald uselessly floats around, looking like a PS2 render. Really, Galactus is on the Earth so we can see him stretch the stretchy character, and a character as small as a gnat to him inconsequentially stagger him with a punch to the face. Again - these are merely nitpicks.

My main criticisms of the film - already shared by many - are that, despite the antagonist being a universal threat, nothing in the film feels like it's at stake (it doesn't help that Galactus is duly defeated without lasting sacrifice from anyone but the tertiary antagonist). The only character arc in the film is Shalla Bal's (a minor character existing purely to introduce the main conflict of the story), and the main cast's lack of character establishment (much less an arc) means that the audience never gets the chance to sell themselves on seeing the Fantastic Four as more than four actors in special effects costumes, rather than a team comprised of distinct personalities. When I look at the main cast, I see a faggot, a guy with blue contacts, a woman with fake looking hair, and a CG character with an incongruous voice that never suspends anyone's disbelief by effectively interacting with the environment (I think because Thing's stand-in was a literal rock named "Jennifer"). At no point do I look at these characters and see the Fantastic Four as canonized in comic books since the 1960s; because these actors are quite deliberately acting out of character for the sake of appealing to clickbait journalists, rather than movie-going audiences familiar with any of the previous four film adaptations. Apparently, Feige and Disney felt these long-established characters should be applauded for acting different, for reasons never given, and which serve no purpose within the film. For me, it resulted in distracting moments wherein the main cast - despite being prominently featured in-frame - came across more so as foreground extras in their own movie.

The only performance I had even a passing interest in seeing was Ralph Iverson's and; similarly to Ciarán Hinds in Justice League, I didn't feel his performance ever made it through all the CG and voice filtering, or achieved imbuing the role with the gravitas necessary to get the viewer to buy into a story needing to be driven by the threat the character is supposed to represent. Galactus ends up being just another green screen tennis ball character, existing only to interact with other computer generated imagery (itself existing purely to establish scale with the giant character of Galactus).

My low expectations were met: It's another in the endless line of lukewarm Disney turds extruded for people who think they like movies because they like going to the movies. Good for them - As with most of these films, my being a comic book fan means I'm not the target audience.

Edit: I forgot to add that, for anyone wanting to see the best Fantastic Four film adaptation: Watch the Roger Corman one, instead of this - Unless, of course, you really like flavacol and thirty minutes of air conditioned commercials.
 
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Natasha Lyonne as budget!Alicia Masters without blindness was.....meh, I can't even remember her character's name. I liked that the Corman cast got to be in the film. Ioan Gruffold and Doug Jones were at the premiere. Apparently 94!Sue got the idea to get everyone together which is wholesome. She hardly aged too.

(BTW Ioan had to put up with some crazy shit this past decade, in that he is a victim of domestic violence. His ex wife Alice Evans is a fucking psycho. Maybe an lolcow if it escalates. But seriously the stuff she did to him is insane.)
She's been very vindictive and manipulative towards Ioan since their separation (he had court receipts for this and was granted a restraining order, some of the shit was unhinged) and she's fed their daughters a lot of crap about things like "Daddy loves his new girlfriend more than you now" and spun his basic attempts at parenting into wrong doing on his part, etc etc.

She has basically behaved like the myth of the scorned ex come to life. Like, so stereotypically so that I almost dismissed his allegations as the same old "shitty guy making it up" BS at the time until the court docs circulated with all their text chains etc.

She also needs to get clean because apparently she offered the kids coke and had them leave the house unlocked for her dealer.

Still can't wrap my head around RDJ Doom and its definitely not a Ben Kingsley Mandarin situation either. He is greedy as is Feige asking him back.
 
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I'm going to just refine what I said before:

I felt like Sue was way too much of a driving force behind everything, basically moving the plot forward continuously and being in more positions of power than the other guys. Might as well have called it Sue Storm and the Three Stooges. The others had scenes, but they all felt sidelined and don't accomplish much.

I'm not sure how faithful to the comics books it is, but she wore the pants about the house. Reed does his Science Time and his little inventions, Johnny does some kind of modeling playboy shit, Ben does...something? Yet Sue's in a major diplomatic position where she steers public opinion.

They go on their visit to Galactus with Sue being heavily pregnant, and she basically is the only reason they escaped. Silver Surfer literally beats up all the men, and Sue saves them all. They go on the ship chase where her invisibilty was all that saved them from the Surfer.

When they spill the beans about the negotiation and everyone wants them to give up the baby, it was Sue and her Child Lives Matter speech that defused everything. When Galactus stomped through the place, Sue is the one who drives him back into the portal. These things wouldn't be so bad if the other characters were allowed to do more, but Sue is just too front-and-centre doing everything that it's too noticeable. Johnny gets to do more than the other two, but it's still nothing by comparison.

If they were going for how much it mattered that they're Marvel's First Family, they did a really poor job of letting the characters shine in combat when they needed to.

There was that rumor mill of the Fantastic Four failing and most people dying, and honestly? I would've liked that a lot more. Gives them a good anchor as to why they want to do right and protect Earth-616, and maybe Galactus could still be counted as a threat. But what we got? Felt like nothing, a weak entry in a long series of weak entries.
 
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I felt like Sue was way too much of a driving force behind everything, basically moving the plot forward continuously and being in more positions of power than the other guys. Might as well have called it Sue Storm and the Three Stooges. The others had scenes, but they all felt sidelined and don't accomplish much.

I'm not sure how faithful to the comics books it is, but she wore the pants about the house. Reed does his Science Time and his little inventions, Johnny does some kind of modeling playboy shit, Ben does...something? Yet Sue's in a major diplomatic position where she steers public opinion.
I've not seen the film for comparison but in the comics Reed is more the leader than Sue is. Sue however is very respected and a capable character in her own right. She's not, that I recall, ever been portrayed as the spokesperson for the group or external leader. More typically if there's a level of direction exerted it's to pull Reed out of whatever mental hole he's diving down and back to current events. Though that aspect of Reed is exaggerated. He's no fool and his chief failing at most is a tendency to lose himself in his equations and forget to eat for a few days. He's also capable of making some very tough decisions.

Sue in the comics is a competent partner and character in her own right. Though she has been known to dabble in marine biology on occasion.
 
I've not seen the film for comparison but in the comics Reed is more the leader than Sue is. Sue however is very respected and a capable character in her own right. She's not, that I recall, ever been portrayed as the spokesperson for the group or external leader. More typically if there's a level of direction exerted it's to pull Reed out of whatever mental hole he's diving down and back to current events. Though that aspect of Reed is exaggerated. He's no fool and his chief failing at most is a tendency to lose himself in his equations and forget to eat for a few days. He's also capable of making some very tough decisions.

Sue in the comics is a competent partner and character in her own right. Though she has been known to dabble in marine biology on occasion.
Yeah but modern feminism dictates that any position that is under a man (in every sense of that term) is tantamount to being a slave.
 
Though I might be proven wrong about the film being a disaster, I truly wonder if this film will actually do good at the box office. I don't know it's budget but most of these marvel films have been so expensive that they can't make money
It feels like a break-even movie to restore audience good will after the most recent bad movies that came out before.
 
The Human Torch is the one character I wouldn't mind if they made flamboyantly gay. Because of all the "flaming" jokes they could make. Essentially just make him Archer from the episode where he tried to pick up the Cuban faggot spy, but also with fire powers. "I'm soooooo hot!...Also I'm made out of fire!"
Reminds me of how Barney Stinton's gay brother was as much of a playboy as he was.
I have a nitpick I don't dare ask anyone to take seriously: Galactus could have simply nullified or stripped the Fantastic Four's cosmic powers from their DNA at any time following their refusal to come to terms with his ultimatum. I understand he was nerfed by the same writers who can't write a smart guy's motives or expository dialogue, and that such details as it or Pascal's refusal to shave his gay mustache are the least of the film's issues.

The writers clearly asked themselves, "Why would Galactus even need to step on the Earth to destroy it in the final act?", and attempted to answer it by inventing the contrivance of "He wants the baby." Then they kind of stopped trying: Galactus meets the cast because they built a ship that can travel directly to him, yet has to come to Earth to retrieve the baby himself, while his herald uselessly floats around, looking like a PS2 render. Really, Galactus is on the Earth so we can see him stretch the stretchy character, and a character as small as a gnat to him inconsequentially stagger him with a punch to the face. Again - these are merely nitpicks.
This is the issue with a lot of Galactus stories. Rather than this all-powerful force of nature, he's usually someone designed to get beaten up by other characters to make them look cool.
I felt like Sue was way too much of a driving force behind everything, basically moving the plot forward continuously and being in more positions of power than the other guys. Might as well have called it Sue Storm and the Three Stooges. The others had scenes, but they all felt sidelined and don't accomplish much.

I'm not sure how faithful to the comics books it is, but she wore the pants about the house. Reed does his Science Time and his little inventions, Johnny does some kind of modeling playboy shit, Ben does...something? Yet Sue's in a major diplomatic position where she steers public opinion.
My guess is that they want to do something similar to how the X-Men have Cyclops lead the team in the field while Professor X calls the shots, but they went too far in portraying Sue as the field leader.

I don't mind the idea of Sue being the muscle of the team while Reed's more the smart guy, but they don't really do much to explain why she's in charge other than making the other three dumber by comparison.
There was that rumor mill of the Fantastic Four failing and most people dying, and honestly? I would've liked that a lot more. Gives them a good anchor as to why they want to do right and protect Earth-616, and maybe Galactus could still be counted as a threat. But what we got? Felt like nothing, a weak entry in a long series of weak entries.
Why not make Galactus the next overarching threat for the next phase instead of Robert Downey Doomer?
Though I might be proven wrong about the film being a disaster, I truly wonder if this film will actually do good at the box office. I don't know it's budget but most of these marvel films have been so expensive that they can't make money
There's a good chance it will.

The issue with The Marvels, Brave New World, and Thunderbolts* was all the stuff audiences needed to watch to understand what the hell was happening.

Here, no homework is needed, and even casuals know who the Fantastic Four are, making it more appealing for new audiences.
 
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