Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

Fantastic Four was another film that could have been worse, but could also have been a lot better.

I’m with David Stratton in finding Johnny Storm “supremely irritating”. I assume we are meant to find his arrogance likeable and amusing – and I’ll admit he had a few funny lines – but I found him a pretty repellant personality. I think I’d have to lay the blame for this on the scriptwriters rather than the actor – I’m not sure anyone could have made the character, as written, appealing to me.

This isn’t quite the case with Reed Richards and Sue Storm. It seems that the scriptwriters decided to give them slightly different personalities from the original comic book characters. Fair enough – in fact, based on my limited knowledge of the comic, probably necessary. However, it seemed to be a rather token gesture, and I didn’t feel that either Ioan Gruffudd or Jessica Alba did anything to lift the characters beyond what was written on the page. As a result, they were both pleasant enough, but rather bland.

Ben Grimm was probably the most interesting of them – and certainly Michael Chiklis had more to work with than any of the other actors – but it still seemed to be a rather superficial presentation of a character with great tragic potential.

I guess it’s just another one to add to the growing list of films that could – and should -be about character, but are actually about special effects.