Fantastic Four

Flame On …

Its quite odd how some of the stories are set with many different characters. Four of those characters to make it to the big screen are simply names as Fantastic Four. This team consists of three males and a female.
Reed Richards: the leader of the four aka Mr Fantastic. He is able to streach his body to any length.
Sue Storm: the Mrs of Mr Fantastic or commonly known as the Invisible Woman. She is able to turn herself invisible, tangible objects and creating force fields as gigantic as she wants.
Johnny Storm: commonly known as the Human Torch and brother of Sue Storm. He is able to heat himself to the temperature of a supernova.
Ben Grimm: The Thing. The strongest stony looking things alive on earth.

That’s Fantastic Four. They were created by Stan Lee in November 1961 but Hollywood re-created them in 2005 giving them flash and blood second time. Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans star as the flesh and blood fantastic four with Von Doom played by Julian McMahon. The original story had been changed for the film version. Or it can be said that it was a story of an alternate earth with Fantastic Four. The original story did not have Von Doom with Reeds in the the spaceship but his own experiment that went wrong which left him scared.

The first installment as always was more of an introduction. The movie was well received by audience in all the parts it was released. The actors were all welcomed by Stan Lee him self. Actually Stan Lee was more impresses with the casting of Sue storm saying that there couldn’t have been a better choice for Sue. (oh yeah I remember the curves in those tights). Personally my thoughts also Jessica Alba was the best choice for Sue Storm. As for the other cast I feel that all were a good choice even when Ioan went for the casting for The Thing.

The special effects for the movie was mind blowing specially when Chris Evens (Johnny Storm Human/Torch) changes. The things was the closest they could go to making The Thing look like comic books otherwise they would have to resort to CGI like they did for Hulk (boy did they fuck it up).

Trivia: Human Torch when pursued by the heat seeking missile his lit up form was flipped. If you watch closely you will see that the number four on his chest is like a mirror image.


Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer

All the characters have reprised their roles this time around unlike some other movies. Personally I think that actors should reprise their roles the reason being that it give a sense of continuity to the whole franchise. Two new characters have been introduced in this movie, The Silver Surfer and Galactus. Special effect in the sequel was again at its best they not only made Human Touch but they did the Silver Surfer in the best of way. Like Chris Evens said when he saw Silver Surfer coming through the building (oh that’s cool). Victor Von Doom had a piece in this sequel also showing his deceitful side.

The movie had a good blend of humor with Chris Evens changing and looking like the thing and turning invisible. I never was a FF fan before watching the movie but I was a fan of the individual characters like the Human Touch and the Invisible Woman. The movie did quite good actually much better then the first installment. I guess the reason being that the effects were done at a more larger scale then its predecessor. All the actors played their part rather perfectly guess it was because they had been together in the previous movie. The story this time focused more on Silver Surfer trying to destroy earth and how the FF try and stop this by making the silver surfer fight on their side.

Before the movie was completed the company had decided to make a spin off of Silver surfer. The guy and his surf board all by themselves, nice. In my opinion they should be doing more of these movies. Budget is a constraint I know, but they can find financers that can come up with that sort of money to finance a franchise. Now lets just wait and see if the Silver Surfer takes flight, does the script bites the dust and not see the light of day or simply be made into a B rated movie. Stay tuned.