Fantastic Four: A Fan's Review

Rating: 8/10 (20 September 2005)

Okay, the FF were the original Marvel super-team, and the most interesting, because unlike the X-men, they aren't hated and feared, and unlike the Avengers, they aren't really super-heroes. They're a family of super-powered people, but they don't go looking for evil, they explore uncharted dimensions and just run across evil giant space bugs and the like. They're Imaginauts. The movie doesn't reflect every core principle of the comics, but it gets several. Johnny's characterization in particular is dead-on.
All the characters are pretty true to their comic-book counterparts, with Doom being the exception. Symbolically he is still a king of sorts, but the businessman Doom will never compare to the Ruler of Latveria Doom, with an army of Doombots, a fervent populace who he protects fiercely, and more fiendish plots than Skeletor and Lex Luthor combined. His comics origin is quite tragic (mother's soul in hell, Doom's hell-machine destroys his face and his pride, his mask is placed on his face while the metal is still molten, lost his only love, etc...) and the Americanized version of Doom is lacking power because of that. Also, the real Doom never needed superpowers to threaten the FF.
In conclusion, the movie rocks because the characters and situations are true to the comics, only the design elements of the movie are completely its own. I think the movie could have done more, and had more action, but I'm happy with how it turned out. Then again, I enjoyed the Roger Corman version, for what it was.
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