fantastic_four

I'm not sure a young Steven Spielberg would have done much better. Spielberg rose to fame on original works that don't carry the type of existing expectational baggage we're so vividly outlining in this thread that Trank skipped over to his own detriment in favor of modernizing the story.

This will probably tank Trank's big budget career for a while, but I hope it doesn't rule out people selecting him for original indie films. Listened to the third Kevin Smith interview with him today, and he's a pretty good guy. http://smodcast.com/episodes/josh-trank-part-3/

This is the only comic book movie where I'm aware that the director explicitly told the entire cast not to read the comics for the express purpose of making these characters different from the ones that Marvel created. Having said that, Trank himself has convinced me he was an FF fan before he was hired for the movie based upon his interviews with Kevin Smith the last few weeks.

Like I said I will be going to see this over the weekend. I liked ASM 2. ASM 2 did 53% positive at Rotten Tomatoes. It has to be better than that right? I liked ASM and ASM2, I just hated the idea of them rebooting. The fact that they rebooted relatively well drew me in, but if the FF film both sucks and is a cheap reboot attempt, screw 'em.

If the reviews are below 50%, I probably won't see this movie. I would, but I'm mostly pissed about another reboot. I hated it when Sony did it, and I hate Fox trying the same mess. Both companies were under the mistaken impression that younging up the cast would fix things when the truth is their own bad management decisions were to blame for the failures of the two FF films (hiring Tim Story) and Spider-Man 3 (taking control away from Sam Raimi and forcing him to pack three villains into the film). Tired of supporting these dumb, misguided marketing decisions.

What reason do these reviewers even have to not break review embargoes? Clearly some of them could care less.

You're too positive. You need to earn some street cred like this guy is doing:

The previous installments didn't do significantly better than $40 million, so it's a safe conservative call, the type you've got to make with so much money on the line. Part 1 made $45 million, 2 made $58 million, 3 made $48 million, and 4 made $13 million. Part 4 had a very limited release and probably would have made 55 to 60 million if released widely. Here's the Box Office Mojo list of Impossible Mission films that shows opening weekend performance: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/search/?q=mission%20impossible

That embargo was set for December 13, 2011, with the film having a December 20 release date. That type of embargo has a long history with good films; Avatar's embargo ended a week before release as well. The history of release-day-only or the-day-before-release-day-only is almost universally isolated to bombs. That's particularly true when the embargo gets set within a month or so of the release date, because it usually means the studio ran some screenings and got a lot of negative feedback. Having said all that, Universal just did this with Jurassic World, so maybe there's new thinking behind it.

The official story is that he chose to leave, and his own statement was that he left to do original characters. The rumor is that Disney kicked him due to problems they heard about while he was doing Fantastic Four and they allowed him to say he resigned to save face either for himself or for Fox's film since news of a firing would hurt the Fantastic Four box office. I don't know which is true, but it is surprising that he suddenly decided he wanted to do original characters after agreeing to do Star Wars. Maybe it's true, and he was so sick of people complaining about his changes to Fantastic Four that he did decide he didn't want to live up to existing expectations from fans anymore...certainly the criticism for him has been intense for most of the shoot.

Yeah, its always a fine line. I really liked the original X-men. It was early in the special effects revolution, so it couldn't just wow us with those (see IM 3). It needed a decent story, and it delivered. I love the scene at the beginning setting up Magneto's motivations. They made him a three dimensional character, and it made the movie much better. Trank talked about X-Men in this week's interview with Kevin Smith. He was describing how the original Spider-Man worked so well because the character is so similar to other characters that Sam Raimi has done, and that the X-Men worked so well for Bryan Singer because they're subject to the same type of social repression that gay people (like Singer) are. Trank then pointed out that he bonded in a similar way with the FF characters. Guess we'll see...

A note on review embargoes--they are, in general, a rarity, because when a studio thinks critics will like a film, they always want early reviews to build more buzz to get a big opening weekend. Having said that, there's a very recent film that had a review embargo that did monumentally well--Jurassic World. The embargo on that didn't lift until Wednesday of its release week, which is now the same day the FF embargo will lift. I remember thinking "uh-oh" when no reviews were in by Monday and Tuesday of Jurassic World's release week, and being very surprised and relieved when they came in and were so positive.

Been listening to part two of Kevin Smith's podcast interview with Josh Trank since it came out Wednesday. I'm not finished with it yet, but while smart and creative, Trank strikes me as egocentric enough to be someone who is probably difficult to work with. His comments about dropping out of the Star Wars spinoff he was set to direct because he would rather work with original characters jibes with that. Given that he made that Star Wars comment after finishing most of his work on Fantastic Four and given all the comments he's made where he clearly didn't understand the FF characters or simply didn't like the versions established in the comics, his expressed reason for quitting Star Wars coupled with the embargo and the fact that Fox is already looking for another Fantastic Four director doesn't speak well towards this film. At this point, I will be shocked--relieved and pleased as well, but definitely shocked--if this film reviews well. The link to the latest Kevin Smith interview with Trank is below. Has anybody seen Chronicle and liked it? I think I need to see that...the reviews on it look pretty good. http://smodcast.com/episodes/josh-trank-too/

Haters always post three times as much as lovers.

I heard they had a fully-casted Justice League film, but then someone cancelled it. Was that Geoff Johns? I'm not terribly familiar with him. This was supposed to be the new Wonder Woman in that proposed Justice League film--Megan Gale, a 5' 11" Australian model. The director was going to be George Miller, the writer/director of the hugely successful Mad Max film this summer. Miller liked Gale so much from his exposure to her on Justice League that he wrote a part into Mad Max for her. I like her look quite a bit more than Gal Godot's, but I know nothing about her acting. http://screenrant.com/justice-league-casts-wonder-woman-vic-1136/

The review embargo reduced my optimism significantly. It's good that they lifted it by a day, but I'm afraid they only did it due to a huge negative backlash. I have far less room for optimism than before this week.

Is there now an equivalent to Kevin Feige at DC keeping all that straight? It seemed like that was Christopher Nolan briefly, now I can only assume it's either Nolan, Snyder, or both of them.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Thing's Thing This thread has taken quite a homoerotic turn.

Not fast, because I've been loosely watching films and meta-ratings since they started. Nobody embargoes a film until release day unless they already know it sucks and they're trying to squeeze out a few extra million on opening weekend.

Hmm, I Googled it and looks like you're right. Hopefully this is Fox being as cautious as James Cameron was. But if it is, it'd be the exception, not the rule. I don't know what that picture means, but I'm about a million miles away from hoping Fantastic Four fails. Been hoping for the opposite and remained hopeful for otherwise up until Fox embargoed the reviews.

What would possess anyone to try to sit thru it again? The "HULK SMASH" scenes were amazing. I can't sit through the entire film, but the Hulk scenes made the movie worthwhile. I own and have several times re-watched that film, and every time I do it's not the whole film, it's the Hulk sequences. The rest of it was just OK for a one-time viewing...I wasn't bored, wasn't impressed, just absorbed being Hulk's girlfriend or Hulk's dad and creator just fine.

I still pick Sonny Landham from Predator. Oh, wait, he's 6' 3", so he'd of the OCD people who get caught up on minor character traits.

Hmm, I Googled it and looks like you're right. Hopefully this is Fox being as cautious as James Cameron was. But if it is, it'd be the exception, not the rule.

That's a very different situation, and I've seen it for many well-reviewed films. A few days before a film is released is enough time to read the review and then decide if you want to go...a day-of embargo doesn't give you that time. You go in blindly the first day if you have no reviews to base the decision on. It's a small thing relative to the entire set of people who go to a movie, but I assume it probably translates to millions of box office dollars since the crowds are so big the first few days.

Same. I generally enjoyed the first two films, although I never liked the idea of Tim Story directing them and didn't like the campy tone of either film. I'm aware of the weaknesses and stupid elements, but I like the characters and there was enough there for me to enjoy to overlook the stupid mess. I'm betting that'll be the case this time as well; the trailers suggest there will be. But holy mess, another reboot. But a crappy one this time.