Just Fantastic

Rating: 7/10 (30 October 2005)

I would like to start out by saying, I went in to this movie with the biggest doubts I have ever had, not only because of the horrible movie released in 1994, but because lately Marvels movies have been slipping. I hated Daredevil, Electra and Hulk, I hated Hulk more than anything on Earth.
Any way, within the first ten minutes my doubts were destroyed. This movie was more than "Fantastic". The casting in this movie was very well done, most of the CGI was great, and the inside jokes that were made between the characters helped to make this more of a movie for comic book fans than just another action movie for "the normals". The relationship between Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm was almost right out of the pages of the comic, and the interaction between Reed Richards and Sue Storm was well developed as well.
I felt Doom could have stood to be a little more intimidating, but Julian McMahon still did a terrific job. My other gripes are that the CGI used for Reed Richards seemed rushed and looked way to fake. Everything else in this movie looked so good that if you opened your mind to the realm of comic books it was believable, yet Reed's arm, especially in the scene where he reaches under the door, just looks dumb. My other complaint was that it was nothing more than an origin story. Both Spiderman and X-Men had character origins, but they fit in so much more, but this movie was all origin with a small fight at the end. Honestly, it seemed that they still had some fleshing out to do and may drag the origin into the second film.
At any rate, this film was very good and joins Spiderman X- Men and the Punisher in the plus column of Marvel films for me.