It really was Fantastic… so shut up!

I normally don’t do this, but I feel the need to comment on the Fantastic Four movie, as I am kind of pissed off; but not for what you may think. I, like many contentious movie-goers, read the reviews last week for this incredibly hyped movie. I really, really wanted to go see it, and, while the reviews weren’t going to stop me, they would definitely give me an idea of what to expect. Well, I was shocked to find that the reviews were actually quite nasty, and in many instances, the reviews attacked the actors themselves. Now, I was thinking: This movie must just be a silly-fest of cliché’ nonsense and bad acting, right?

Well, I must say that wasn’t my first thought, but I began to wonder if it were true after checking out rottentomatoes.com (which gives an average of all the reviews submitted). I still went to see the movie, and viewed with trepidation, expecting the whole movie, for it to start getting sillier and to start really getting bad at any moment; but it didn’t. I thought that it was a pretty well executed comic book movie; which is where I think that MOST of these critics checked out. You must know and accept something very elemental when you go to see a movie adapted from a comic book, about people that have special powers: It is going to be campy, there is no getting around that. It is going to rely heavily on CGI (Hello!!! They have super powers). It is going to be a story where they fight (and defeat) a super-villain, who could probably kill them all if he wanted to. These are things that you have to accept in order to enjoy a movie like this, and I honestly believe that the critics were looking for something else, and frankly, it just wasn’t going to be there. It was definitely compared to Batman Begins, and Spiderman, but those comics even have a different tone than the Fantastic Four. I mean come on!!! They have the word Fantastic in their name! Can we get any more campy? (Well, the Fabulous Four, but I digress…)

So basically, I wanted to write this to let anyone out there that is a fan of comics know, that they should definitely go and see this. It was a perfect comic movie, and the only thing that was lacking, as James put it, was a little longer fight scene between the four and Dr. Doom. I will seriously be adding this one to my DVD collection. Flame ON!