Another lost opportunity....

Rating: 7/10 (9 July 2005)

Okay, I saw this movie tonight and it was fairly enjoyable, but nowhere near great. (I'd like to give it a 6.5/10, but since we have to choose whole numbers, I went ahead and gave it a 7.) Marvel is blowing it big time. With every mediocre movie, they are further "expending" their most valuable characters. They've now used up X-Men, the Hulk, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Elektra, the Punisher, Man-Thing, Spider-Man, and more to come, like Ghost Rider. With the exceptions of X-Men and Spider-Man, the movies ranged from absolutely terrible (Man-Thing) to various shades of okay/decent (Punisher, Hulk, Daredevil, Elektra). Avi Arad of Marvel just doesn't seem to be getting it--once these characters are used, they're done for at least several years! Not every mediocre comic book movie gets revitalized like the Batman franchise. More likely, they'll fade away and be forgotten, and the more often it happens, the less Hollywood will want to create comic book movies. Marvel should know this! So why are they letting mediocre and little known directors/talent work on their their flagship characters? Where is Stone, Cameron, Howard, Spielberg, Singer (okay, he did do two X-Men movies) and the other A-list talent that should be spearheading the biggest comic book movies? And why the heck would Marvel put a great brand like Fantastic Four in the hands of a guy that did "Barbershop" and not much else? Sadly, I just don't get it.
So from all that, I'm sure you can tell I wasn't overly impressed. It was an okay action flick and decent special effects. The acting seemed wooden at times, and some scenes were either edited heavily or just didn't make much sense. The actors gave it a valiant try, but at least two of them weren't even close to up to snuff. The writing was cheesy and not nearly serious enough for the epic this movie should have been. And of course, we had the obligatory change of events from the comic to the screen. You know what I mean--when the Hollywood writer/director decides that the comic story was "silly" and adds his own ideas into the character's origin, thus alienating many comic readers by ignoring comic book cannon. This doesn't bother me IF the change is really necessary or adds to the story, but too often it's an arbitrary change (i.e. changing the Hulk's name from "David" to "Bruce" in the TV show) that really adds nothing to the story. Also, a few cheesy lines are fine, but this movie went overboard. My personal (un)favorite for "Absolute Worst Line in this Movie(tm)" was the Johnny Storm one-liner: "You're Hot", "Why thank you--so are you!" Ugh. How lame.
I do admit that Chris Evans, who I wasn't familiar with until now, did an excellent job as the Human Torch, but it wasn't enough to turn this movie around.
If I had to briefly describe the movie's faults, I'd say it's a combination of mediocre acting and mediocre writing/directing. Avi, please start demanding top talent for your movies. I promise you it will pay off!