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Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
345 Plays3 years ago
We're back with the second part of our Fantastic Double Feature! Kelen Conley is here again, and this week we're revisiting Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which is the best FF movie to date...although that's not saying much. We discuss the things that really work in this movie, how Doom is still the greatest weakness, and why the Galactus cloud actually made sense (for the time).
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Transcript
00:00:24
Speaker
Sir,
Richards' Downfall and Military Takeover
00:00:25
Speaker
I was holding his position north of here. Good. General, give us a one-mile perimeter. Forget it, Richards. You had your shot, and you blew it. This is a military operation now, so jam the signal, get out of the way, and let us do our jobs.
Richards' Academic Prowess
00:00:38
Speaker
You don't understand. No, you don't understand. So let me make it clear for you and your pack of freaks here, I'm the quarterback. You're on my team. Got it? But I guess you never played football in high school. Did you, Richards?
00:00:55
Speaker
No, you're right. I didn't. I stayed in and studied like a good little nerd. And 15 years later, I'm one of the greatest minds of the 21st century. I'm engaged to the hottest girl on the planet. And the big jock who played quarterback in high school, he's standing right in front of me, asking me for my help. And I say he's not gonna get a damn thing unless he does exactly what I tell him to.
00:01:24
Speaker
and starts treating my friends and me with some respect. Give him what he wants.
Introduction to Superhero Cinephiles
00:01:41
Speaker
I'm so hot for you right now. Me, too?
00:01:46
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine. And it's been a week for you guys, but it's been only about five minutes for us. Kellan Connelly is back. Kell, how you doing?
00:01:56
Speaker
I'm great, man. Glad to be back. Very glad to be back.
Spider-Gwen Poster and Movie Segue
00:02:00
Speaker
Glad you could find your way back here. I mean, I know it was a long trip to the bathroom, back to the seat. But I made it. I mean, awesome. But anyway, so I don't I in those five minutes, I assume there's nothing else that has caught your interest that we could really talk about. So I think we should just jump straight into the movie. Yeah. Yeah. We can totally get to get to this.
00:02:20
Speaker
I will say that I can see on the video, you've got that Spider-Gwen poster behind you that is really awesome. I do. Note that. Thank you very much. I got Spider-Man 2009 up there, too. Oh, I can't see that one. That one's just out of the cover range. Yeah, he's a little kid off. I may have to bring him down, maybe. OK. But yeah, I love that Spider-Gwen poster. Anyway, so that's the things that's caught my interest in the five minutes, is that poster. There we go.
'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer' Overview
00:02:44
Speaker
But anyway, today we are talking about the second of Tim Story's Fantastic Four movies, Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer from 2007, which this one, you know, we got basically the whole cast back, including, you know, everybody's favorite, Julian McMahon, his doom. But we also get some new people in this. We get Andre Brower as General Hager, Doug Jones playing the silver surfer.
00:03:13
Speaker
Lawrence Fishburne providing the voice and Bo Garrett as Frankie Ray, who in the comics becomes Nova, another heroine of Galactus. Very true, yes, yes, yes. So let's jump into that. What did you think of Rise of the Silver Surfer?
Interruption of Reed and Sue's Wedding
00:03:35
Speaker
I remember watching this movie, Perry, in the theater, and I was like,
00:03:41
Speaker
sitting there and then like the wedding got interrupted in the beginning and I was like I was like oh that's classic FF and then Reed and Sue were having problems because Sue wanted to have a fancy wedding everything and then Fantastic Four just kept getting in the way essentially because they're always saving the world at this point. They're the biggest superheroes, they're the only superheroes in this world. So they're constantly saving each other's butts or saving other people's butts rather.
00:04:07
Speaker
And then they introduced the silver surfer and they nailed the silver surfer. I was like, I was like, yo, they talk about the FX.
Silver Surfer's Visual Effects
00:04:16
Speaker
Let's jump right into that. The FX and the silver surfer is beautiful. He looks like he's glowing. The board is awesome. The whole there's not a moment when he's on a screen that he doesn't hold your entire attention. Doug Jones, that is.
00:04:29
Speaker
as a silver surfer. So that was very cool. I was like, yo, they're going to pull this off. They're going to pull off a silver surfer story. And then Doom showed back up and I was like, eh. And then suddenly Doom got cured, which we'll talk about. My face is normal. So you guys should trust me. And they're like, oh,
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great idea. And I was like, I was like, oh, that's a classic swerve or they're trusting the bad guy and the FF's gonna have to work their way around that. And then they were switching powers back and forth, which I thought was a very cool dynamic. Cause I never remember reading any issues where they changed powers. I'm sure they have because any issues was a fantastic forward. Of course they switched powers at some point, but I really liked that plot device in the film where the power cosmic had affected Johnny and then all of them were switching powers. So
Galactus' Cloud Controversy
00:05:13
Speaker
that was cool.
00:05:14
Speaker
And then we kept moving very long, and they're like, oh, there's this world eater that's coming. I was like, yo, they're going to introduce Galactus. They're going to do it. This is going to be so cool. We're going to see Galactus. I can't believe this. And then ultimately, when Surfer decided he was going to fight back against Galactus, and they took on Galactus, they took on a cloud.
00:05:35
Speaker
And we saw Galactus' head for a few minutes. I think a few minutes is maybe being generous. Seconds more like it. Sorry. Seconds. And then they beat the cloud. And then Reed and Sue got married. And then there were all the fantastic car was there, which is very cool. Fantastic car. Yeah.
00:05:53
Speaker
Um, and then that was roll credits. So rather than being disappointed in, in Dr. Doom, we're not as disappointed by him. This movie. Um, I was definitely disappointed with the delivery of Galactus. And all I can say is my friend profit looked at me and he said, dude, can't believe it made collect the fucking cloud.
Derek Ferguson's Review and Doom's Casting
00:06:15
Speaker
I was like, me neither, man. All right. So before I go into my thoughts, I did want to talk about what our departed buddy Derek said about this, because he, for anyone who doesn't know, before Derek started doing, before I wrote Derek into doing this show with me, he used, he did, he was mostly known for writing movie reviews online. And he wrote,
00:06:39
Speaker
great movie views. And I found this one. The site's still online, by the way, DerekLFerguson.wordpress.com. You can find a link at superherocinephiles.com under our works. But anyway, he wrote a review of Rise of the Silver Surfer back in 2011. And there are just these two paragraphs I wanted to quote here because I think they sum up a lot of my thoughts.
00:07:00
Speaker
Okay. Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer has something that for me places it head and shoulders above a lot of other superhero movies. At last we've got a superhero movie where the superheroes are actually having fun being superheroes. The Fantastic Four are media darlings. They live well. They obviously have money. They're respected by the public. There's not a whole lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and woe is me. Why was I cursed with these powers here?
00:07:24
Speaker
I think that the filmmakers honestly tried to bring to this movie that sense of wonder that comic books used to be about, and I think they pulled it off just fine. The story takes us all over the world. There are incredible gizmos and gadgets Mr. Fantastic pulls out of his hip pocket every five minutes. The family dynamics of the characters is given just as much time and attention as the menace of the world being eaten. Johnny gets an interesting character arc where by the end of the movie, he's grown up a little and has learned something about responsibility.
00:07:51
Speaker
The Silver Surfer is surprisingly faithful to the spirit of the comic book character. That's not to say the movie made me do cartwheels of joy in the aisles. And I just got a picture of Derek doing cartwheels. Me too. Me too. For anyone who doesn't know, Derek was a pretty big guy.
00:08:07
Speaker
That would have been fun to watch. That had been quite the feat. Yeah. He probably would not have gotten up for now. He probably could be off his floor.
Dr. Doom's Role and Resurrection Issues
00:08:15
Speaker
That's not to say much as I like Julian McMahon, I still say he's badly miscast as Dr. Doom. And there's actually no reason for Doom to be in this movie at all, except to have an obligatory fight scene at the end.
00:08:26
Speaker
But at least in this fight, I could tell what was happening, unlike any of the fights in Spider-Man 3. It was never explained to my satisfaction why or how Doom was resurrected and restored to normal. And even several of the characters in the movie demand an explanation from Doom. He just gives them a shitting grin and goes back to greasing the general. Ian Gruffett and Jessica Alba actually look as if they're really enjoying acting together, while Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis once again proved that they have actually read some of the comics because they hit exactly the right note in the relationship between Johnny and Ben.
00:08:54
Speaker
And even though much of the story elements were taken from the classic Galactus trilogy, it still ain't that story. All right, so those two paragraphs, I think, is a good summation of Derek's thought. And because he was such a big FFF, I thought it was important to give his words some note in this episode.
00:09:13
Speaker
And that's our whole episode, guys. That's it. That's it. We're done. Thanks for listening. No, I remember being really excited about this movie when I saw that first trailer and you remember the date. I don't think it was a full trailer. It was just that chase sequence. Yeah. The torch and the silver surfer.
00:09:32
Speaker
which remains one of the best chase sequences in any superhero movie. And talking about the effects on the surfer, and we were talking in the last movie too, the effects in this really hold up. They did a really great job with the effects. This
Silver Surfer Chase Scene Praise
00:09:48
Speaker
movie looks great.
00:09:49
Speaker
It looks great. Start to finish that chase scene. Like you said, it's it should be more iconic than what it is. But people are just so determined to to dismiss these films that that they don't go back and really look at them. These films have a lot of fun moments. And this one, especially this is the better film. This is the best Fantastic Four movie that's ever been produced. I agree with your tweet from earlier.
00:10:11
Speaker
And watching Johnny chase the silver surfer across that sky and Johnny ultimately like when his flame goes out and he starts falling like like watching. I mean, I know that Chris Evans was acting on a green screen, but watching the terror on his face as he starts to fall back towards Earth. Like I felt that that that was that was a crazy moment. And and honestly, you could tell also this is the first time Johnny had ever really been bested
00:10:41
Speaker
in that way. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It really humbled him. And so I really appreciated that. And then even though it was a cloud, like the Galactus fight was cool. We got a lot of the cool. You could really tell the difference between when Surfer had his surfboard and when he didn't have a surfboard, he was way more muted. He wasn't as silvery. So you could you could tell that. And then even when Doom had taken over the surfboard, became Surfer, Silver Surfer Doom.
00:11:10
Speaker
eye eye roll inside deeply. Even with him wielding the power cosmic for that little bit of movie that he had it, it still came across looking great. So kudos to the FX team on this movie. Well, one of the things I loved about the chase scene, and I forgot this moment was in the movie, but when they go in the tunnel and the surfer flies through the bus,
00:11:35
Speaker
Yes. Literally flies into the bus and like ranges the molecules around it and just goes straight through it. Right. That was so so. And then he and then he and then he just comes and he tilts underneath to look back through. He falls under the board so he can look back and then he goes back up and even Johnny's like, oh, that's so cool. Right. Right. Because it is.
Silver Surfer's Name and Board Modifications
00:11:56
Speaker
It is. Yeah. Never seen anything like it.
00:11:58
Speaker
Um, and, and again, kudos to Tim Story and the whole team. They brought the Silver Surfer to life. This was the first Herald of Galactus that we met, um, in the comic books. And he, I mean, he was this, he's like, I have to do this and I have to help him feed. And, and they, they really nailed everything from the Galactus trilogy up until the point where Galactus showed up. So one of the things that always
00:12:23
Speaker
uh that annoyed me about the the fandom and again this is a 60s thing right but the whole idea that the silver surfer calls himself the silver surfer and he's writing he is actually writing a surfboard right that's not the case in this movie right the surfboard it's just a disc it's just a long disc it doesn't have the little surfboard tail like in the comics it does not but he didn't modernize it just slightly
00:12:46
Speaker
And he doesn't call himself the silver surfer. Like Johnny's the one who gives him that name. He's like, he looked like some kind of silver surfer. And I know what he's going to name in things. Yeah. Um, yeah, I, I, um,
00:12:59
Speaker
I was going to say. It could be a 60s thing, of course, like you were saying, but they did modernize it by not making it, but by modernizing the board and making it more more disk like like you said. So it never really bothered me back then. And it didn't bother me either when he was calling himself. So that's what I was trying to say. Sorry. It didn't bother me when he would call himself third person back then because
00:13:24
Speaker
He was also very much a slave to Galactus as well. So he probably didn't even think to think of using those kind of those identifying words such as I or me or anything like that, because there wasn't any I or me. It was only everything was for Galactus. That was the servitude he was under. So I can see that. And I'm glad that they didn't do that as much as the movie, because it could have gotten confusing really fast. But I
Defending Cloud Galactus and Plot Balance
00:13:52
Speaker
can appreciate it both ways. Yeah.
00:13:54
Speaker
I also I will defend the cloud to an extent. OK. All right. Because in the cloud. So first off, this did happen in the comics, right? It was in the the ultimate extinction trilogy that Warren Ellis did. And in that Galactus was not a giant guy.
00:14:12
Speaker
a giant purple cosmic guy. He was like this swarm of super intelligent machines or something like that. And it did resemble a cloud. So, and at this time, like again, remember this is 2007. This is pre Avengers we're talking here. I know, we're five years away from Avengers. I think if you had had a giant purple guy with this big ass helmet and being like, I hunger. I think most regular people would have laughed their asses off.
00:14:43
Speaker
They would have. I don't think that the world was really ready for it at that time. So I will defend the idea of doing it as a cloud just on that basis. Like, I don't like it, but I understand why they did it. That being said, I still think that they tried to cram too much into this movie and they really should have saved the Galactus portion of it for another movie.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yes, this movie suffers the exact same way for the first movie. Yeah. Because again, they spent a lot of time showing off the Silver Surfer and look how cool Silver Surfer is. And then and then of course they're trying to chase down the Silver Surfer and we're trying to separate them from the board. And then they're like, oh, well, we have Doom sitting over here. Let's go ahead and we got to pay Julian McMahon money. So let's have him mosey back into the plot.
00:15:30
Speaker
And so that's gumming up the works. And then they get them separated from the board. And then Doom, of course, steals the board. And then it's like, oh, Julian McMahon is now Super Silver Surfer Doom. And we have to go fight him. And oh, by the way, let's kill Jessica Alba for a good 10 minutes.
00:15:46
Speaker
Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's let's kill Sue, which served no point because Silver server soon has got the board back. He's like. And it was it was it was nice touch in the moment. The first time I saw it, I was like, oh, good. She's not going to die, you know, because here I am thinking around going to get like another two or three Fantastic Four movies. Probably sounds like I was like, oh, so much for that. Yeah. I was like, oh, that's cool. And but every time I see it afterwards, I'm kind of like,
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, she really didn't need to die. I mean, I know that he cared for her because she reminded him of his people. Yeah. And in the comic books, of course, didn't he have a crush on her at one point? Like, or am I thinking about, I know Namor always liked her. I mean, you know, when you're talking about those early comics, was there any character who didn't have a crush on Sue?
00:16:36
Speaker
It's like every single supervillain wanted to make him make her his bride. I mean, she she was so submissive, Perry. I mean, how could how could a regular Joe pass up like there's even like a brief they even there's even like a brief kind of almost love triangle last thing like with between her. Ben and and and and no and read Ben Ben and read because like there's the first issue is like I'll show you what a real man is like, Susie, and you should realize you should be with me or something like that. He punches the tree. Yeah.
00:17:08
Speaker
You made everybody horny in those old comics if she really did and you're right cuz Ben would always make those offhand comments about Like love love I wasn't a monster. I did not show you a thing or two and she's like open. Where's read?
00:17:25
Speaker
You know. But so, yeah, there's I'm pretty sure surfer had some kind of feelings for the comic books. So it was nice to see that picked up one. But a whole lot of things happening. The power switching again.
00:17:40
Speaker
was cool and ultimately factored into the ending of the movie where we're towards took on all the powers. And they kind of did the the super scroll thing where the super scroll has like all their powers, except it was just Johnny using all the powers to unite and take out the take out the doom ultimately and Galactus.
00:18:03
Speaker
So again, a lot of good ideas and you're like, let's keep adding things in. And all of a sudden they were at, oh crap, we got to resolve this movie and get Reed and Sue married so they can run off to the next thing. We still got to squeeze all this in. So, so yes, I'm with you there. You know, the power, Johnny taking all the powers at the end there, I had an issue with it as I'm watching the movie last night because I'm thinking of myself,
Power-Switching Scene Inconsistencies
00:18:32
Speaker
I'm trying to figure out how the physics of it actually work, because all up and over this point, every time he touches another one of the team, their powers switch. Like, he doesn't gain their powers. So I felt like they played up this whole aspect of the power switching for laps, right? Like, you know, Sue gets letting on fire, Ben does it so that he can, you can turn normal and he can throw a fireball at Johnny and Johnny can turn into the thing.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah. And but then when that happened at the end, like he touches them all at the same time and suddenly all their powers flow into him and there's no switching going. Right. Like how did they figure out what was the trigger? Yeah. Was it because it was the the the serious situation? It's like, OK, guys, let's do this thing that we haven't tried the whole movie and we're just going to pour all of our powers into one of us. Right. Yeah. So it was a very convenient place. Yeah. That was that was an issue I had with with that.
00:19:24
Speaker
What else really kind of jumped out at me? God, Tomb is just so unnecessary in this movie, just completely unnecessary. I liked him more because he got to be regular Victor Moore. Like once he got Power Cosmic or before he got the Power Cosmic and he got, or I mean, once he got his face healed and he went and like, I can, I can help the Fantastic Four. And then they're all like, what are you doing? And like you said, he's like shitting grin. Help me, bitches. You know?
00:19:51
Speaker
I did appreciate that, but then the minute he got to steal that board and put that cloak back on, it's like, okay. You're going to get your ass beat again. I like too that they gave him an actual suit of armor in this movie. He's got the armor and it's got some tech functions. That was something that was definitely missing because one of the things I think people
00:20:14
Speaker
forget about Doom is the fact that the, that armor that he wears, that's not for show. Like that's like Iron Man level armor. Yeah. It's fully equipped with everything. It's got rocket boots, it's got finger guns. Of course he's always run around life model decoys of him, of his robot, of himself, Doom bots, constantly fooling people back in the day. And it's like, I got you Doom, Inspire Man web of robot. And he's like, ha ha, I'm standing over here.
00:20:40
Speaker
And then the Doom bots ended up being a convenient plot excuse for a convenient ride. He didn't die. Anytime Doom did something that a writer didn't like, they'd just be like, that was a Doom, that was a malfunctioning Doom bot.
00:20:52
Speaker
right? Or how about the time he jumped out of a plane to escape the Fantastic Four and Ben's like trying to reach him and he like he just completely hops out of play like there's and he had like no of course they thought he just jumped but but once he was far out of eye shot or eyesight he uh he sprung out a secret parachute so I did like the fact his armor was more functional and I'm going to say that was probably
00:21:14
Speaker
uh maybe a note that the studio took as far as um him actually having middle skin and the scarring and stuff they're like all right well we need to show julian mcman's face more and we kind of got to give him a real costume so so i which is a weird which is weird because then they forgot that note that note got that i guess that memo got lost when they made the josh tranq movie
00:21:35
Speaker
and all that stuff got burned. It's probably still sitting at Tim Story's house when he's working on Fantastic Four Three. Like, hey, can I borrow your notes? He's like, no. No, thank you. I think, too, this script, I think, also, just like the first one, it's not as bad in this one as it was in the first one, but I think Sue ends up getting shafted in the character department in here as well, because she's not quite as bratty as she was in the first one, but there's still a bit of that.
00:22:08
Speaker
She's getting like the
00:22:11
Speaker
when she gets angry at Reed for having the bachelor party. And then later she talks about her own bachelorette party. And I'm like, well, you just said that you had your own thing. So why are you getting mad at him? How is that even a thing, right? It's irrational. There's no point in it. But also like her getting so like, I get the fact that she's frustrated with him, but you know, it's not like he's sitting around playing video games, right? I mean, he's doing important shit. So I think he's part of your team and you guys routinely are saving the world from threats.
00:22:41
Speaker
So it didn't get that at all. Have you seen Superman
Sue Storm's Character Portrayal
00:22:44
Speaker
and Lois? I've not seen Superman and Lois. OK, so I tell the story all the time, but I'm going to keep saying it because I think it's it's one of the most mature ways to handle a superhero relationship. OK, so you've got in in the first season, Lois asked Clark to go to this city hall meeting to cover it for her because she can't be there.
00:23:05
Speaker
And he's going to go there. She tells him, like, I need you to be my voice there. I need you to speak up and talk about these issues. And he says, yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it. Something comes up as Superman. He has to go do Superman stuff. So he misses the meeting. Later, he comes back and he's like, look, I'm so sorry. And she says, look, I know you're Superman. I know you were doing something important. And I know it's illogical, but I'm still angry. And it was a very mature way to handle it. And I think,
00:23:34
Speaker
If they had handled it something like that, I would have understood it more. But as it stands, she just comes off as very petulant.
00:23:40
Speaker
Right. Right. And it seems like the biggest like her character, the whole movie is just like I got to get married to read. I got to get married to read. I got to get married to read. And that just seems to be her her primary focus, the entire film. And I get that you're what you were minutes away from being married in the first place. And I think that was like the third or there are several attempts. The fourth time, I think it was the fourth time. Yeah. So several times they say five times the charm.
00:24:08
Speaker
Yes, they do. So I get you've been trying to marry the man and you want to pin down Reed Richards because Lord knows he's a hot commodity on these streets. Well, I don't know. After that dance scene, man, I mean, hey, they were impressed. But but there was a lot of innuendo laid out there. And you're speaking up, speaking up. I didn't catch this until this last because I've seen this movie several times. I didn't catch this until last night. I think outside of the Deadpool movies,
00:24:36
Speaker
this movie has the dirtiest joke of any Marvel movie. Because there's that scene when Johnny and Ben are talking and Johnny's asking about his relationship with Alicia. And he's
Innuendo in Ben and Alicia's Relationship
00:24:47
Speaker
like, how do you guys, you know, and Ben says, that's none of your business. And Johnny says, okay, it's like, look, I'm just, I'm concerned because I don't want to wake up and find she's been killed in a rock slide. And I didn't realize it until now, but he's making a cum shot joke.
00:25:02
Speaker
He truly is. He truly is. Um, yeah, I've always laughed at that joke because obviously he's the thing and he's a rock slide. I was always thinking of it. Like, as in like him being like crushing her physically, like his body, but then I realized the lesson was like, Oh, wait, no, no. Now I realize what you say. Oh, wow. That, that, that, that joke is even more funnier now. That's incredible. That, that, Oh,
00:25:32
Speaker
Poor Alicia, we hardly knew ye. Shut up, Johnny. I'm trying to mourn over here. Oh, man. I think you're right, though. That's pretty filthy. Pretty filthy.
00:25:48
Speaker
And I love, I think they did a much, they got a much better handle on Reed in this movie as well. Like I think they had really, they'd really captured that whole, you know, absent-minded genius type of thing. And I think,
Johnny's Bachelor Party Prank on Reed
00:26:00
Speaker
and also I like to give him a moment with Johnny, right? I like that moment when he's talking, when him and Johnny are talking in the, in the bachelor building, he's telling Johnny about the anomaly and everything. And then Johnny uses that to blackmail him into having a bachelor party.
00:26:15
Speaker
Of course. Johnnie's always thinking on his feet. That's perfect for both. It perfectly describes both their characters, right? Reid gets all excited and jazzed up about this science stuff. He wants to tell somebody. Johnnie couldn't give less of a shit, but he sees a way to turn this to his advantage to party. Right. Of course. I thought that was a great way of handling that dynamic between the two of us.
00:26:37
Speaker
Right. And I like that moment, too.
Reed's Leadership and Team Chemistry
00:26:40
Speaker
They definitely handled Reed way better because, again, before Reed was the failed scientist who thought he had hurt his friends. And and then also he's trying to get back with all of a sudden his girlfriend is back with him, so to speak, because of this thing that happened.
00:26:57
Speaker
So there was a lot of moving pieces that never really fit together in the first movie to read. And this one fully formed, like you said, he's getting married to Sue. Don't got to worry about any of that drama outside of just a little bickering back and forth. He really gets to put on his show off a science of skills here. Like Derek said, he did pull out all kinds of gadgets. He was constantly
00:27:18
Speaker
Constantly with all I got this and I'm researching this and it was always like yo You can really tell that Reed is Reed is in the lab Yeah, Reed is doing work and that wasn't as evident in the first movie I know he was like I'm gonna try to cure Ben, but that was like the only thing he was doing right um in this film you could tell he's really in in the
00:27:36
Speaker
Two years I believe in between films I think they got in the movie. You can really tell how much he's grown into his role as the leader of the Fantastic Four, and as this is one of the most amazing minds on planet Earth essentially now, now that he's a world famous superhero, and he has all the funding you can ever need.
00:27:55
Speaker
Uh, so they, they really did go with, with, uh, read and, and I want to say back to Derek's review, Ian and, um, and Jessica, all of a do have more chemistry in the film than they did the first one. Cause again, she had so much little things to do and there was some words said here and there and it's like, okay, I kind of see she's going back to read and did it. But you, you could tell that there was chemistry this time. Maybe it was because of their second outing or second time on the set together or anything like that. Who knows?
00:28:25
Speaker
Who knows about table reads and everything like that. But you could tell they really worked at making their relationship seem like it was truly reading Sue. And it wasn't reading Sue as much Stan and Jack. It was reading Sue of John Byrne era in Claremont era.
00:28:40
Speaker
Now
Jessica Alba's Performance Criticism
00:28:41
Speaker
there's something I want to note too about Alba's acting because she got a lot of criticism for her performance in this movie. And that's not her fault because- Again, not her fault. Here's what she had said that the director had told her. He said, it looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty Jessica. Don't do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in.
00:29:04
Speaker
Bro, Tim Story said that to her. Yeah. Yeah. That's fucked up. It's not a good. Fucked up. Not a good look for you, Tim Story. Oh, can you can you look more pretty while you act? Yeah. Well, you cry. Yeah. Jesus. Can you look more pretty while you cry? What? Like why? Yeah. Yeah. I know why. I know why. But still. You don't talk to human beings like that. No. How much money you got behind this movie, man? Can you look like?
00:29:34
Speaker
That's gross. That's, yeah, it's fucking terrible. But you know what also I noticed too is they, cause you remember in the comics that there was that weird storyline where
00:29:44
Speaker
Alicia
Alicia and Johnny's Romantic Tension
00:29:45
Speaker
leaves Ben for Johnny and then it turns out she ends up being a scrawl. So they kind of, they hinted that a little bit in this. Did you notice that they're hinting at like some chemistry stuff with her and Johnny? I picked that up because again, I, when I came into the Fantastic Four comics, I think Johnny and Alicia were a thing at the time. And then all of a sudden the scroll was running around and they're like, oh yeah, everybody thought that was Alicia, but it was really the
00:30:11
Speaker
and I was like, okay, I'll decide. So whatever. It was amazing how much we let slide when we were kids reading these books. Of course, of course. So I did pick up those couple of hints things because that was always one of the weirdest things about the FF until they revealed ultimately what happened. I was like, wait, so she really left Ben to go be with Johnny and do her still. I know who wrote that story anyway. Do you remember our hands?
00:30:39
Speaker
I don't remember who wrote that story. I'm trying to think who was writing the, I want to say it was the Falco actually. Cause I really feel like the Falco, I was like early nineties. I think the FF was his book. Okay. One of his main books, like along with thunder strike and stuff like that. That sounds about right. Yeah. I think it was his tent pole book. So I want to say that was the Falco. It sounds about right. Um, yeah. Cause I remember like, I'd never read that story, but just hearing about it. I'm just like, why would anyone even think that was a good idea?
00:31:07
Speaker
I don't, I don't know. Again, it was probably one of those things where someone cast a stone to send Alicia into Johnny's arms and then they left the book. And then somebody else came in and like, Oh, I don't like this. Yeah. I want to explain this. And so they're like, I know she can be a scroll named Elijah or scroll named Elijah. Okay.
00:31:32
Speaker
They also improved the things prosthetics in this, like he's got more of a defined brow in this movie.
00:31:38
Speaker
He does, he does. And it's, they don't change too much from his original look, but they definitely upgraded him a little bit. It's some slight modifications that really work for the best. Yes. It also shows his growth in the last two years. Like if you want to go to a point where he's maybe having a few mutations as far as his look, because obviously in the comic books, he went through many mutations, uh, like a lot of mutations of fat. So.
00:32:06
Speaker
There's times he doesn't even look like a thing because he's he's so f-ed up. Shout out to John Byrne again for mess with my dude. But again, that that shows their willingness to with the effects and the effects, again, is another reason why these movies work for us or for me is because it just shows that they're willing to do what's necessary to put these characters on the screen and not get taken out of story because of bad effects.
Improved Prosthetics for Ben Grimm
00:32:33
Speaker
Yeah. And they also with Alba too, they gave her, she wore a wig in this movie because the,
00:32:40
Speaker
her hair had actually gotten really damaged because they had bleached it in the first movie and her hair got damaged when they did that. So I actually liked her hair better than this one. And now that makes sense. I thought it looked pretty good. Yeah. Never, never realized that she was actually wearing a wig. So yeah. Cause her hair, the first one was fine. And I've always just my general preference. I preferred her with darker hair. So her at first it was always like, Oh, like blonde, just gobbles is obviously she's fine.
00:33:07
Speaker
I mean, it's just going to cry pretty. Yeah, I'm not going to ask her cry pretty or anything. But yeah, I thought her hair definitely looked better. And now I know she had a wig on. That makes way more sense. Yeah. You know, while we're on the concept of her hair, I did want to call out. Do you remember what John Byrne said about Jessica Alba? No, I don't. OK, let me see if I can look this up.
00:33:30
Speaker
OK, because I'm assuming it was around the time of the movie. So it was the it was the first movie. Yeah, it was fucking terrible. So sounds like John Burke. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Talk about a book race. Comic book writers are a little problematic here and there. So here's what he said when the first images of.
00:33:48
Speaker
Alba as Sue were released. He wrote on his message board, personal prejudice, Hispanic and Latino women with blonde hair look like hookers to me, no matter how clean or cute they are. Somehow those skin tones that look so good with dark, dark hair just don't work for me with lighter shades. Like I said, personal prejudice.
00:34:07
Speaker
Holy fuck. Prejudice. Not personal opinion, personal prejudice. Jesus Christ. I remember that now. Oh, that's a terrible hot ass take. John Byrne, I hope you're, I don't even know if his message forward is still up, but sometimes the internet does not need your personal prejudice. Yeah. Well, I mean, like, I do remember, uh,
John Byrne's Controversial Comment on Alba
00:34:29
Speaker
I remember him also like getting angry when Christopher Reeve died and people were calling Christopher Reeve a hero and he's like, he wasn't a hero. Yeah. And then. Yeah. And then I remember Peter David wrote a great response. Like, you know, people will assign, you know, their own labels that apply to different people in their lives, like hero or I don't know, asshole. I love Peter David's trolling of John Byrne. Peter David is one of the great. He is. Yeah. Always is.
00:34:55
Speaker
Aside from even though we had issues with his Scarlet Spider work. What can you do? They can't all be winners. He's written a lot of comics. He's written so much good stuff. This is a digression, but I want to say it anyway, because unlike a lot of writers from his generation, he's actually managed to adapt with the times.
00:35:14
Speaker
He really has. He has because Frank Miller obviously refuses. And I don't know how he's doing health wise these days. I know he was kind of pretty bad off a few years ago. I think he's doing better now. But Frank Miller has like he stopped trying.
00:35:33
Speaker
Probably about 2000s, I'd say. But by the time Dark Knight- Dark Knight Strikes Again, yeah. Strikes Again came out. DK2, as they kept memorizing and advertising Wizard. Yeah, he definitely stopped trying. And I've actually read DK2 on multiple occasions, and I still can't make heads or tails. Have you read it? I put it to myself. I think, did you read DK3, The Master Race?
00:35:59
Speaker
No, I never read master race. That was actually not bad. That was actually pretty deep. I think a big part of it was because Brian Azarella was scripting, but it was right. It was, it was much better than I expected it to be. Um, but yeah, Miller has definitely declined Claremont and burn declined a lot too. Yes. Um, he wanted to rehash all their old ideas. Yeah. But, but David's able to really adapt and to change and to keep his stuff fresh. Like, I mean, his, his second X factor run was even better than his first.
00:36:29
Speaker
I agreed. And I think that has to do with him actually being a genuinely good person who's willing to work with people. That also helps a lot because I feel like almost every book that Burn left like X-Men, Fantastic Four, Superman, like all those big books that he had Wonder Woman, there was always when he left, there was like a big deal because there was like something was going wrong and he wasn't going to get his way on something finally after they gave him all this creative control. And it was like, you know what? I'm out the door.
00:36:59
Speaker
It's like, all right, John Byrne, don't let the door hit you or the good Lord. I think I think you know what it is. I think it's David isn't arrogant. Like he doesn't buy into his own hype. Like he's still he's he's still able to be humble enough and realize like I'm not I'm not perfect. I that's right. That's a quality that I think Miller and Claremont and Byrne and a lot of other guys have lost sight of. Of course, of course. McFarland never had that.
00:37:24
Speaker
McFarland's always been a humble guy. What are you talking about? And then the humblest man in comics. Oh, shoot. All right. But back to the comics. Yeah.
00:37:40
Speaker
What
Andre Brower's Influence on the Film
00:37:41
Speaker
are some of the things I want to mention? Oh, I want to talk about Andre Brouwer a little bit in this. OK. It's it's funny watching this after I've seen him in after Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Oh, my God. Who knew he had Brooklyn Nine-Nine had that character in him, man? Like, I mean, I think I'd seen before of him was always super serious and, you know, like, don't mess around with me. But then him and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, man, as as as Holt. Hmm.
00:38:06
Speaker
It really, to see him be as silly in an ensemble with the rest of them and going that incredible run with everybody else. I just love his range. But you know what's so great about him is that he's got all this range while basically having the same affectations. You know what I mean? Because he's still like this deadpan, super serious guy in both of them.
00:38:30
Speaker
But it's a completely different character. And he makes you believe that it's a completely different character in both cases. Yeah, man. He's a hell of an actor, a hell of an actor. I definitely loved him in the film. Obviously, he's like bought into the Julie McMahon or sorry, the Victor Van Dam, Victor Von Doom of it all. He's like, oh, OK, let's give him control of him and then read and see what I'm looking at. I'm like, are you are you fucking stupid? Like,
00:38:54
Speaker
Did you not see what he tried to do two years ago? And he's like, listen, listen to Victor. He's, he's back and his face is pretty. So listen to him and they're like, um, and thing and Johnny are having it. And so, so I hate to see him be so, again, moving the plot along and just being so dumb to give a Victor all that control, which obviously led to Victor being able to snatch the surfboard away, uh, the flying disc.
00:39:22
Speaker
But his presence in any film or television show he's on, he commands respect. So he just has a certain amount of gravitas to him. And he definitely brought in the film. And did you know that he's a comic fan?
00:39:39
Speaker
Oh, I did not. Yeah. In fact, he had he had got offered a guest gig on E.R. and he turned it down so that he could be in this because he loved the Fantastic Four growing up. Oh, man, that's awesome. That's awesome. See, we're all fantastic fans, Perry. We just we there's not a lot for us to celebrate right now. If it's all comic books, it's like we have our favorite comic book stories and we just kind of, you know, it's hard to bring up Fantastic Four when MCU's out here doing it.
00:40:07
Speaker
Like, hey, have you read the latest issue of Fantastic Four? Unless you're around some real comic book heads, they're not they're not going to be into it. But also his character, General Hager, that was do you know who that character was originally supposed to be? Thunderbolt? No, Nick Fury. Oh.
00:40:24
Speaker
Really? Yeah, I don't know if it was still gonna be Brower playing him, but yeah, the original intention was they wanted that to be Nick Fury. And in fact, Fox was trying to get kind of a cinematic universe started with the first one, because in the first movie, in a deleted scene, Reed shifts his face into Hugh Jackman's. Right, and Wolverine, when him and Sue were walking along the river. And yeah, and there was supposed to be this,
00:40:52
Speaker
And it was supposed to be like kind of a hint to eventually setting up the fact that the Fantastic Four and the X-Men movies are existing in the same universe. Which could have given us X-Men fans asking for if they had done it right, which they would not have done. Right. Which they would have done. Right. But apparently, and I don't know how true this is, it was IMDB trivia, but it said that Wolverine was actually supposed to have a cameo in Spider-Man 2 originally as well, but I never heard anything about it. Yeah. That's the first time, I don't know if that's just someone talking out their ass or what, but
00:41:18
Speaker
That's weird. I can't see him at all in that movie. I just re-watched Spider-Man 2 the other morning just on a whim. And I was watching, I was like, man, this movie still holds up so well. We covered it. A recent episode came out. Yeah. We talked about it. Oh, I listened to it. I think that's what made me want to watch it again. And yeah, I can't see where Ravi would have slapped him in there and have been cool. Although you listen to the episodes, you know that
00:41:47
Speaker
The Punisher was actually in there. Yes, yes, I didn't know that until actually the episode. Yeah, that was a surprising bit of trivia that I didn't know about, so that was cool. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of cool when they were thinking outside a box like that. Let's talk about the Silver Surfer a little bit then. What was your overall opinion of the Silver Surfer in this?
00:42:09
Speaker
I have
Doug Jones as Silver Surfer
00:42:10
Speaker
no problems with a silver surfer. If they had spun this off into a silver surfer film, I would have been there for it, had me a silver surfer shirt that I wore proudly for several years until I'd finally shrunk and it wasn't fitting anymore. But Doug Jones is incredible. And I already like Doug Jones from Hellboy. I really like his portrayal in Hellboy as what is the...
00:42:34
Speaker
Thank you as a loved him in that film. And then when I found out he was playing this and then seeing them pull it off, of course, I give him Lawrence Fishburne's voice, which helps a lot to have that that red, red pill, blue pill.
00:42:51
Speaker
It's funny because it's like, I was thinking last night, if you need someone who's going to be covered in a lot of makeup, you get Doug Jones. If you need someone who's going to be covered in a lot of CGI, you get Andy Serkis. Those are the two guys they went to for everything back in those days. Yes, it was. Yes, it was. 100%.
00:43:07
Speaker
um yeah like the the whole film the way he interacted with with johnny and with with the team the rest of the team you could really tell again i spoke of gravitas earlier you could really tell there was weight to this character there was just so much more lying there for fox to pick up and essentially throw at us and i think they that was their intention and it worked i
00:43:33
Speaker
The moment he came on screen until the last movie's on screen, all eyes was on Silver Surfer. This is truly his movie. That's why his name is on the title. As good as Ben's moments were and Human Torch's moments were. And of course, Sue and Reed's roles improving in their chemistry, improving on screen. This is Silver Surfer's movie. Rise of Silver Surfer, obviously. And he certainly froze to the occasion for me.
00:44:01
Speaker
I there I found no issues at all. Even even with. Even with the emotion he was able to display when he was they had him locked up on the surfboard, and he's just sitting there talking about when he's going through and stuff like that, I felt for him. I genuinely was was hooked on his story and I was I was really ready to see to see him kind of get his revenge to kind of fight back finally, which we did get, obviously.
00:44:31
Speaker
And I was really, I just thought they did a great job with them. And also to the point you made earlier about how he loses the kind of silver finish when he's separated from the board. I think that was also a really good choice because that allowed Jones to really kind of emote a lot more than he was able to with the CGI overhead. Yeah. Yeah. And that's exactly what it was.
00:44:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think that was a good decision because that really allowed him to really, that led his emotion and his body language really kind of come through when he's talking to Sue. Yeah, I just still see him sitting there with his head down, shoulders down, you know, and like feeling like he had just gotten scolded by the worst parent in the world, man. And obviously he didn't do nothing except what Galactus sent, what he was sent there to do, which is to help set up Earth to be destroyed, to be eaten.
00:45:20
Speaker
And I love that they did more with Johnny and Ben in this movie too.
00:45:26
Speaker
They did such a good job of really showing the complexity of their relationship. Like, yeah, they rip on each other. Yeah, they make fun of each other. But at the end, they really do love each other like brothers. Like that scene with the two of them in the bar, that was pitch perfect Johnny and Ben. Like if I'm gonna give someone a textbook on how to write a very simple primer on how to write Johnny and Ben's relationship, I give them that scene. Cause that is the perfect example of their relationship.
00:45:54
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Again, we've said this many times how well they nailed the relationship, but getting to see them not be superheroes in that moment and just really sit there and and have that conversation. It did show the depth of their friendship.
00:46:10
Speaker
Well, something that was nice about it, too, is it's a reversal of their typical roles, too, because usually it's Ben who's down on himself because his powers and all that. Right. And this time it's Johnny. And this time it's Johnny. And so we have Ben counseling him from a place of experience. And I thought that was a really cool aspect of it, too.
00:46:29
Speaker
Right. And any time that you're, again, a lot of the film is about changing powers, but you also got to see them change roles as well. So that seemed worked really well for me, too. I did like to see that. And to see that as annoying as he is, Ben does look at Johnny as a little brother. Yeah. And to see Ben be able to dole out some wisdom, that was very cool.
00:46:55
Speaker
And I also like that they leaned into the celebrity aspect. I love that. And I like that they show in small ways that Ben has become very comfortable with who he is. Like you were saying before, like in the first movie, just like in the early comics, he's very much down on himself. I'm this man, this monster type of thing. But over the time in the comic books, he's come to accept who he is. And it feels a little bit tacked on at the end of the first movie when he says like, no, I'm fine the way I am.
00:47:22
Speaker
It felt a little bit tacked on. It felt like they didn't do enough exploration of that growth. But I like that that growth continues into this movie and that he's, you know, he's very fine with who he is. He's comfortable in his own skin now. I love to see him when they're in the club and he's just at the bar. He's like, I need the biggest picture with the biggest handle you can find. He's just kind of like dancing.
00:47:41
Speaker
Right. He's like, he's like dancing in his little button down shirt. Yes. Yeah, man. Because that's been in his element. Again, the moments the team gets to put their hair down is some of the best moments for fantastic in the fans as for anyway, because, of course, you open up a fantastic four book, you turn on the movies, you expect them to be fighting some some threat. But a lot of the times when they they're just in the Baxter building and interacting with each other
00:48:09
Speaker
A lot of the times, those are the best parts because you get to truly see why they're the first family of Marvel and how they work. And when the movie gets to do that as well, they absolutely nailed it. But then it's like, oh, we got to get back to them. We got to get back to the fight scene. Got to push the plot. Come on, guys. Let's go. Keep it. Keep it moving. So it was few and far in between, unfortunately. But when they were in those little moments, they absolutely got it. Right. Whenever they had those moments, they absolutely nailed that 100 percent. Yeah.
00:48:38
Speaker
Yeah, I could not agree more. Yeah. Something else I wanted to mention. Where is it? Is there anything else you want to mention while I'm trying to think of what I was going to say?
00:48:51
Speaker
Oh, well, we are very briefly touching the plot where, um, where they kill Sue for a few minutes. I mean, that, that really didn't do it. And she dies and reads arms as it says on Wikipedia. And of course, um, I mean, that was, that was her death scene.
00:49:13
Speaker
Like I said, I was worried the first time. I was like, are they going to kill Sue? That's kind of crazy. Are they going to kill Sue? But then every time I watch it afterwards and I know she's going to be revived, it's just kind of like I'm counting down the minutes. So she's revived and it feels really empty. A lot of empty calories there. So I don't love that. I do love the wedding at the end.
00:49:34
Speaker
Um, I love how they quickly got married and then something was happening and they had to take off again. And of course you mentioned it was their fifth attempt at getting married. So I'm glad they finally got the nuptials in the fantastic car, the fantastic car. When they, when that came out and then they broke, they broke the pieces and they went their different directions again.
00:49:57
Speaker
I, I, I, my fantastic four teeth came from those early issues. And funny, funny thing, I'm going to mention this about Sue. They introduced fantastic for the fantastic car, and then it will go off in four different directions.
00:50:14
Speaker
And those early issues they would do like pinups, where they would draw torch they draw Ben they draw fan, Mr. Fantastic. They drew Sue right Perry. And then there was a little note saying, notice the detail on, on the invisible girls.
00:50:32
Speaker
control column showing that she, her, her controls are just as complicated as the boys, because apparently they wanted to point out that she was just the voice of flying, of flying these. Well, I mean,
00:50:47
Speaker
Fantastic. They had to have that note in there because if you remember the issue, she's written like she's brain damaged. Right. And they even put in like, they colored it like red and blue and green. So you could really see that she had a bunch of knobs up there and she, and it was hard. It was hard work for her to fly that car. She wasn't getting off easy. No, sir. One thing about the fantastic car, and this is just like a small thing, but yeah.
00:51:15
Speaker
Like in the comics, right? Each person has their own car, right? They didn't have that. Like because the surfer is basically riding shotgun with Sue. And so instead of breaking up into four cars, it only breaks up into three cars.
00:51:33
Speaker
That that's true. But it didn't. But John was Johnny. No, he was he was flying flying. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So so maybe that's why they only had that. Yeah, that was why. That was something I didn't like about it. Yeah. Because because in the comic books, they literally.
00:51:51
Speaker
They all went there a little separate ways. I think they were a scour in the city for Namor or something, I think maybe after Namor took off. So, yeah, but I like seeing that because again, that was the FF that I grew up on. So I was really thought that was cool. Well, even me is like only being, you know, not really being a fan of the comics, but still knowing enough about them. I even thought that was a cool moment. And when I saw this movie the first time, it's like, oh, sweet, the fantastic car. That's awesome.
00:52:19
Speaker
Yeah, I would not have the same enthusiasm if the Spider-mobile ever shows up, though. I don't think anyone would have. Like, oh, God. I will if they treat it the way that Spider-Man treated in the comic books, where he's like, what the fuck is this thing? This is ridiculous. He wrecked the son of a bitch. He couldn't drop anyway.
00:52:38
Speaker
And then I think they got it fixed and I think it got messed up again. Yeah. I do remember that in some old comics in the seventies when he was driving it and he just complaining about it the whole time. He's like, why am I driving this thing?
00:52:53
Speaker
Can you imagine seeing Spider-Man in the Spider-Man movie? Like, come on. Like, bro, are you on a web fluid? Like, he's like, inflation sucks. It's so weird when they think about these. Like, I remember the Superpowers toy lines. They had like Superman had like a flying car or something. Like, he's Superman. Why does he need a flying car? Why does he need a flying car? So he can sell more toys. That's all in it.
00:53:20
Speaker
Oh, so I remember what I wanted to talk about. Okay. And this is kind of a small thing, but I think one of the things I've always liked about the Fantastic Four is that their
00:53:32
Speaker
It's not like as a superhero team, primarily, they're a team of explorers. That's their whole thing. Right. One of the things I didn't like here, and this is, I know this is a small nitpick and I know everyone who's listening is like, oh, come on, Perry, this is too much. But I did think it was, I did, this did stick out to me was when she goes to read and she says, the city's trying to, you know, bill us for this armored, for this car we destroyed during this armored car robbery type of thing. And I'm like,
00:53:56
Speaker
Fantastic Four shouldn't be stopping armored car robberies. They should be doing weird and exciting shit. So that was kind of mundane for me.
00:54:04
Speaker
No, no, I get it. And I agree with you. But again, the only reason it works, there's no other superheroes around. Yeah. So yeah. So that that's where they get stuck with that bill. Yeah. But no, I agree that all they're not street level people. That's Daredevil. That's Spider-Man who would handle that kind of stuff. So I can totally see your point. And I don't think it's so much of a nitpick. And in the MCU, if they're doing that kind of stuff, it's like, oh, come on, that really makes no sense.
00:54:34
Speaker
but it was a throwaway line and
00:54:38
Speaker
that they should not be doing those kinds of things. Cause like you said, their ventures, they explore, they go into the negative zone. Their, their read obviously is always trying to find new signs of breakthroughs and takes the whole family with them. Well, I mean, I think you could have easily done that same scene with that line. It's just, you replace it with armored car robbery with something a little bit more fantastic, right? Like, you know, like, Oh, so the city's after us because of that, um, you know, that interdimensional breach that happened and, and there's, and something like that. Right.
00:55:04
Speaker
Yes. That would make way more sense. So you fixed it. Yeah. And it's just like one line of dialogue and that would have fixed the whole thing. Let's see.
00:55:15
Speaker
I think that's pretty much everything I wanted to mention. Is there anything else I'm leaving out? No, the only thing is why did the power cosmic wake up, Victor? Can you explain that to me? And I don't understand what that guy was doing with the buzzsaw or like how when Doom comes to the Silver Surfer, like the Silver Surfer blasts him and Doom gets cured? What the heck?
00:55:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like, like, what is it about doom in the power cosmic? Yeah. I don't I'm not here for any of that. And you're really telling me that doom was still frozen until the all those things start to happen around the planet. All of a sudden, it's like, oh, it's time for me to wake up, have me a morning coffee and then go destroy the Fantastic Four.
00:56:07
Speaker
Come on, man. So, yeah, I definitely think Julian McMahon had a two-film deal and they were like, we'll get you back in here. Don't worry. And it was what it was. Yeah. But I did appreciate this Doom a little better than first Doom, but he was a little bit better. But yeah, completely unnecessary. 100% unnecessary addition to this movie. And it just, again, this movie, if you're going to do a movie where Doom's going after the Silver Surfer, fine.
00:56:34
Speaker
that should then be the climax. Don't then have Galactus pop up in the last 10 minutes. You're gonna have Galactus pop up at the end, then you have Galactus pop up in the end as a cliffhanger, and then boom, third movie is gonna be like the coming of Galactus or something.
00:56:51
Speaker
Right. And then it could be literally the whole film just dealing with Galactus by itself. And again, you got to remember it's 2007, though. So same year that Ramey wanted to only do a Sandman movie and then he got stuck within him. Yeah. So I would not be surprised if let's give the creators a little bit of credit here. Maybe you're like, all right, we're going to have Doom and Silver Surfer face off. And they're like,
00:57:15
Speaker
Yeah, but let's go and get Galactus in there. Like, well, Galactus, we're going to let's go and get Galactus in there. Like, oh, I mean, I guess we'll put Galactus in the movie. Fine. And when it and then, of course, it got poor reception. Yeah. No one really it did not get high approval ratings or a lot of critics didn't like it. That's what I'm trying to say. So slowly, the third movie kind of fell out of favor. But I'm going to say I really hope
00:57:45
Speaker
that there was plans to give Galactus more of his own feature there was in fact there was plans there were this movie was the idea was two movies were going to come out after this movie one was going to be a a third Fantastic Four movie which Tim Story has said he wanted to go to Wakanda and he wanted to have uh Jimon Hanzo as the Black Panther
00:58:05
Speaker
That was one thing that was what he really wanted to do in the third movie. And then there was also there was going to be a Silver Surfer movie with Doug Jones reprising his role as Silver Surfer, but he was going to do The Voice this time, too. And then they were going to at this point, they said they did plan to have Galactus in his actual form be in the movie.
00:58:24
Speaker
I remember that now, okay? And of course, all that just fell by the way side. Yeah, that fell by the way side. If I'm not mistaken, and I could be wrong about this, cause you know, it's all this development hell type stuff, but I believe that the Silver Surfer movie actually survived longer than the third Fantastic Four movie did. Cause I think there was still an idea kind of like with Daredevil and Electra where it's like, well, maybe we can still salvage this franchise with another character, with the spinoff.
00:58:51
Speaker
Okay. So I thought I remember that there was going to be a Silver Surfer movie and it was hanging around pretty much into the late 2000s, I think. So I don't know how much I would have loved for
00:59:08
Speaker
obviously with no idea of what we were getting in 2018. I don't know how much I would love to have Black Panther introduced in the third Fantastic Four movie, but of course I wouldn't have anything to compare it to so I might have loved it just like I like these films a lot. But nothing will come close to what we actually I mean yeah I think ultimately we got the better end of it because we got you know Chadwick Boseman but at the same time
00:59:32
Speaker
Hanzo would have been a great pick for the Black Panther back in those days. He would have been. He was definitely a high commodity actor. He again talked about range. He has plenty of range. He even voiced the trial on the animated series that BET did.
00:59:49
Speaker
He he did. Yeah, he did. OK, I did. I did not remember that because I watched that and I completely it's been a long time. I'm just going to double check, but I'm pretty sure that, yeah, he he did the voice. Then, yeah, he knows the character. Yeah. Yeah. Better voice. Yeah. OK. Yeah, I completely forgot that. So so so maybe it could have been good. Maybe it could have been. We sit here talking about the Fantastic Four trilogy, Perry. I don't know. Yeah.
01:00:15
Speaker
I think, and I think, yeah, I think he wanted, I mean, there are two different things I've heard. I've heard that he wanted to do Wakanda, but I also heard that he wanted to do the puppet master too. Oh yes. How you translate the puppet master to film, I don't know. I think that's kind of, I think that's probably why they had the Wakanda stuff in it too, because I don't think it would have been enough for the studio to be like, oh, that's, yeah, that's a little bit too, that's not enough stuff for the third movie.
01:00:42
Speaker
It also would have been kind of a letdown, too. I think if you want something so small after shitting the bed on Galactus, basically. So it's like, yeah, we gave you five minutes of Galactus. Now we're going to have the puppet master. Yeah, that's a little bit of a reach. And I was just thinking, thinking about the timeline. This this came out in 2007. Yeah. Little did we know that a year later we were going to get something like Iron Man. So that just shows shows
01:01:12
Speaker
how ballsy Paramount and Marvel Studios was in 2008 to really, again, everybody's like so, they've seen Robert Downey Jr. and Iron Man in so many films now, everybody's like, oh, he was great and everything, it's always so great. Not a lot of people were super excited about him in 2008 when Iron Man came out. And not a lot of people thought Iron Man would work either. Fox was actually going after him to play a role in the first Fantastic Four movie.
01:01:42
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah. Do we know what role? Yes, we do. Do you want to take any guesses? Doom? Yep. They wanted him to play Doom. I was sitting here trying to think of who I would cast in the MCU. And I was like, it's too bad that Robert Downey Jr. already was Tony Stark because he would be a fantastic Dr. Doom. That's a good segue. So I asked you last time if you have any ideas for who you'd want to
01:02:09
Speaker
play the EFF in the new movie? I only got one person, and it's the most important person to me, because he's my favorite, which is the thing. My selection, and I don't know if he's too old or not, but it's going to be CGI, makeup, whatever. But I think he would have the presence to pull it off. I really think Dean Norris would be great as the thing from Breaking Bad. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:02:35
Speaker
Hank Schrader. I think, I mean, he talks a little like this, you know, like that, but, you know, a little, a little deep, deep in the voice, a little bit, a little bit of a, more of a New York accent, maybe. I think, I think his voice is perfect, but I think if you're going to be doing a pre, if you're going to be showing him as Ben, I don't think he works as Ben. I think he's perfect. He looks too old. He's too old to be like a contemporary of Reed, I think.
01:03:01
Speaker
Yeah, but I do think if you have him do the voice and you have someone else play Ben in the pre-transpiration, I think that would be really cool. Yeah, because I hear I can just from watch as much Breaking Bad and all the all the shows, I always heard I was like, you know, you'd be really good at being a thing. I think I think I'd like to hear him do that. And he was the first one to pop in my head. And I was trying to rack my brain in and you pop back up on the camera and I was like, OK, let's get back to work here.
01:03:30
Speaker
You know what? I know the internet loved what John Krasinski has read. What was your thoughts on him and Dr. Strange? I was very surprised because I avoided spoilers, so go me. Oh, God, you got lucky. I was like, oh, did it? That sucks.
01:03:49
Speaker
I was like, it's Jim. And then I was like, I was like, Oh, uh, and I was like, Oh, he's got, he's got that, he's got the beard read going on. Okay. Okay. And I was like, he's got the president. He got the silver streaks, everything. I'm like, I liked it a lot. But then of course, and one of my grapes about, um, multiverse of madness was, it was like, you've got these cameos and you're like, Oh, yo, these are so cool. And then.
01:04:14
Speaker
Everybody was dead within 15 minutes. Yeah. Disney Plus, if you haven't seen it, I'm sorry. But so so that was a little disappointing. But I was like, yo, he's kind of perfect for the role. He's a little older. So I don't know if he would work in the actual actual as Mr. Fantastic. But I thought in the multiverse concept, I love seeing him. I thought it was he was fine for for what he did in multiverse. I'm not sure if I want him to be the regular read.
01:04:41
Speaker
Right. Right. But I thought he did. I thought it was fine for what he was doing in that movie. One name that was tossed out that was pretty brilliant, I thought was William Jackson Harper from The Good Place.
01:04:57
Speaker
Oh my God, I'm rewatching A Good Place right now, actually. I'm in season two again. And I love his performance as Cheetie, man. He's such a nerdy, obviously, so nerdy that he ended up in the bad place. Spoilers again, it's on Netflix. But he's just so nerdy, and if he really wanted to go that way, he would be perfect, because he could come off as brainy. His chemistry with,
01:05:23
Speaker
with Kristen Bell. In fact, I was thinking Kristen Bell as Sue would also be a good pick, too. Yeah, I would not be mad at seeing them reunite. I think that could be a lot of fun, because Kristen Bell, obviously, she's done her fair share of character type roles with Veronica Mars and stuff like that. Then what, do we get Jason to come in as the human torch, Johnny? What's up, dudes? Bortles!
01:05:52
Speaker
Oh, and then we get Jamila Jamil as the thing. You could do that because she's playing Titania. She's doing Titania, GL. Yeah. So we could just have her be Titania in Fantastic Four. Every Good Place reunion.
01:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to actually. But actually, you know what, though? But speaking of good place, now that I've said that, I think Adam Scott could also make an interesting read as well. Oh, my God. He's such a perfect asshole. Every time he's on he's on anything and he's he gets to be that smarky little asshole, like aside from Parks, because in Parks, obviously, he was amazing. Yeah. Whenever he gets to be that little smarky, you know, at all, especially like from Step Brothers.
01:06:36
Speaker
When he gets to be that guy, that actually kind of speaks a lot of doom to me, too. I could see him doing a little doom, but if you want to keep him on the lighter side, he would be a perfect read. I think if you combined his characters from Parks and Rec with The Good Place, like you had that both The Good Side and The Dark Side, I think you can make a really interesting, arrogant read.
01:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like kind of like ultimate fantastic for Reed was before, obviously, he went he broke bad. Yeah, I went full circle there. So he could be good, too. I really like Adam Scott. He's one of those characters, again, that shows up and it's like, you don't know which way he's going to go. He's not necessarily going to be bad, not necessarily going to be good, doesn't go both ways. But a lot of times he ends up being a big old. So what about doom? Who do you think should play doom?
01:07:29
Speaker
Oh, that was that was a tough one because my mind went immediately to Robert Downey Jr. And then I was trying to rack my brains about got about actors who could possibly fill those shoes because we haven't seen it done right yet. So you really want to make sure you get the casting right. Do you do you have any ideas off top? You know, my my perfect pick would have been
01:07:53
Speaker
Mads Mikkelsen, but he was in Doctor Strange, so I don't know. Although I'm looking at this article and they've got some, this is a Screen Rant article. I just typed in Google, who should play Doctor Doom? And one article they have, some names they tossed out, Killian Murphy, Viggo Mortensen, and Adam Driver are probably the ones that are the most interesting choices to
Introduction to 'The Prophecy' Movie
01:08:16
Speaker
me. Especially Mortensen, because have you ever seen the prophecy?
01:08:20
Speaker
I've not seen a prophecy. Oh, God, you got to watch the prophecy. It's OK. It's this really it's this movie. It was in the early 90s mid mid early mid 90s and it has.
01:08:31
Speaker
Christopher Walken plays a psychotic angel. The whole idea behind the movie is that after Lucifer and the angel and his rebellion was cast out, there was a second war in heaven led by Christopher Walken's character, Gabriel. And now this war is precision to present day because the war still exists. Any human who dies can't go to heaven.
01:08:54
Speaker
right? Heaven's closed off all humanity. Okay. It's, it's got Elias Koteas from a Casey Jones. Yeah. And it's got Virginia Madsen's in it. And also, and Viggo Mortensen plays Lucifer in it. And he is fucking chilling. He's awesome. Is he? Yeah. Well, I mean, I do. I like, do like some videos. I'll be okay with that. Check out that
Tom Ellis as Potential Doctor Doom
01:09:18
Speaker
movie. But also I just, now I was talking about Lucifer. It also made me think of Tom Ellis from the Lucifer TV show.
01:09:24
Speaker
I actually I've seen Lucifer, but I actually watched him on a show they had right before Lucifer, the one that was on USA. I don't know if you ever caught it. It was like one one season. It got canceled. I think it was called Rush, maybe. OK. No, I don't know. I really liked him in that he actually I. Yeah. Yeah. Let me let me I got a look at this picture real quick, because I think I'm thinking about the right guy.
01:09:51
Speaker
Oh yeah, I think he should be doomed. Tom Ellis would be would be my pick for doom because just from me watching him on that other show, because like I said, I've seen a few episodes of Lucifer, but seeing him on Rush and he was like this good and bad doctor kind of thing and seeing him balance that line between doing horrible shit and good stuff is more horrible shit than anything. I think he would be a real good doom and he's he's got that pretty look so we get scarred up. He'll be even more pissed off.
01:10:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think that would be a really interesting choice. I like that.
'Rise of the Silver Surfer' Review
01:10:26
Speaker
So yeah, that's about all I got to say about Rise of the Silver Surfer. Again, it's the best of the Fantastic Four movies we've gotten so far. Give us Fantastic Four 3. I don't know if I go that far. No, I know.
01:10:45
Speaker
I was just going to say, I just love the FF so much that I can't help but enjoy these movies. No, the train film is absolute trash. So I do have some respect for myself, people. But but these two films, especially when they came out in an era of of here's a comic movie, will you like it or not? And
01:11:06
Speaker
I just happened to grab hold of both of them. And Silver Surfer is quite the ride. Fantastic Four is it is a pony ride, a quarter pony ride, but it's worth a watch as well. Yeah. So definitely recommend Rise of Silver Surfer. Fantastic Four. You can you can take it or leave it. Yeah. But I just love them because it was a pretty accurate portrayal of what I always thought the FF to be when they were in the right moments. Yeah. Not so much.
01:11:34
Speaker
They they really stuck to the tone of the comics, I thought. And that that's one of the things that overall, I think they got far more right than wrong with these movies. Yes. The movies are definitely flawed. Don't get me wrong. There are lots of flaws. And, you know, if you you can go back and listen to this podcast again, you can hear me talk about them. But you should listen to it multiple times. There you go. The numbers run those numbers up. But yeah, more more good than bad in these movies, especially the second one.
01:12:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Couldn't agree more, but I'm really glad you let me come on here and talk about them. Oh, I was always, I do it. All right. All right. Covered it.
Impact of Fantastic Four Movies
01:12:12
Speaker
That's why I was like, have you done fantastic four movies? You're like 10 story. I was like, yes. You're like, no, I'm like, no, I'm glad, I'm glad you suggest those. Cause those were.
01:12:21
Speaker
You know, there's some big holes in the in the movies that we've covered on the show, like, you know, where you got like, you know, got like the ones everybody expects us to have covered and then something that people would probably expect us to have covered, but we don't like a lot of the X-Men films. Spider-Man 2 up until recently. The Dark Knight still hasn't been on the show. So but the Fantastic Four movies was another one of those kind of visible holes because these were pretty
01:12:48
Speaker
kind of by virtue by the fact there wasn't a whole lot else being released at the time, but they were pretty big superhero movies when they came out at the time.
Future Movie Coverage Plans
01:12:54
Speaker
Yeah, they were, they were a big deal and they, the first one worked and they got a sequel. So it worked. It worked enough. Let's put it that way. Worked enough. Yeah. Fair enough. I'll agree to that. Cause they got, cause they got, cause they got a, and I'm not talking about like my personal perspective. I'm just talking about from the studio standpoint, because that first movie did get,
01:13:15
Speaker
you know, raked over the coals and critics and it had predicted, but it didn't like that one. No. And it still, it had made just enough, but it had made enough money to justify a sequel.
01:13:24
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So yeah, it was a totally different time. And like I said, we were a year away from Iron Man. What did we know? But there was a lot of different comic book films, superhero films being thrown out there. So I love being able to come over here and talk about some of my favorites. And I'm going to dig through the archives and see what else I can do because I could talk about Dark Knight ad nauseam. But I'm sure there's some other things that I might be able to help you fill in those gaps with.
01:13:54
Speaker
OK, awesome. I'll let you know, sir. Yeah. Well, you know, well, you know what? Tossing this out there, there's still the Michael Bay and the Turtles movies. We haven't covered those yet. Sorry, can't do it. Although we do have the CGI one from the early 2000s.
01:14:14
Speaker
If you're doing 2007, I'm in. OK, so we'll have to we'll talk about that one. Then we'll we'll we'll get that one on the calendar here. All right. All right. But I love the 2007 Michael Bay one, the first one I had on Blu-ray and I watched it once and I was like, this ain't the same. I never never messed with the second one. Yeah. You know, I heard the second one's apparently better. I mean, yeah, but he said, I mean,
01:14:41
Speaker
It's better in the sense that a rotten steak is better than a rancid steak. So it's better in that
Guest's Social Media and Podcasts
01:14:51
Speaker
sense. But speaking about Michael Bay, have you done any transformers? No, we haven't done any of those.
01:14:59
Speaker
Okay. Cause I, cause I've, I've kind of been wanting to do a little bit on the, on the, at least the first three transformers, maybe I've not seen the last two that came out. Um, but we could totally talk about how I think, uh, dark of the moon is the best movie in the franchise at some point too. So 2007 turtles and the first three transformers, we'll have to do that. Okay. Well, yeah, we'll, uh, we'll see about getting those set up off mic, but until then tell people where they can find you.
01:15:26
Speaker
They can find me on the show, it's on my transformer. Hyphen universe.com is where you'll find all my podcasts and I got YouTube channels. Well, it's just hyphen universe. You can subscribe, check out my videos and all that stuff. You can be part of the 63 subscribers. And also you can find me on social medias at the hyphen on Twitter, the be hyphen on Instagram and hyphen universe on Facebook. Let me know what's up, please. I appreciate any of that.
01:15:54
Speaker
And as for us, SuperheroesCinephiles.com is the website, SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram. And remember, if you sign up for the Patreon, you get these episodes a week in advance. And you also get the companion podcast, Superheroes Cinephiles Book Club, where we talk about comics and all that kind of fun stuff. Kel, thanks again for coming on. Always a good time. Thanks for having me. I love filling
Show Wrap Up and Patreon Mention
01:16:16
Speaker
in, filling in for the big guy, man. Anytime, anytime, man. I'm sure he'd be very happy to know that you're filling in on occasion here.
01:16:21
Speaker
He better be. I listen to a lot of Billy Ocean, Derek. And I think of you. I'm like, oh, like every time. No, actually, I every time I hear Billy Ocean, I think of you, Derek, in the time that you danced at that show. And you said you showed me by this, I kill you. And then I posted it after you pass. So I'm sorry, not sorry, but you're having a great time. So you better move aside for any lightning bolts coming down.
01:16:46
Speaker
I know he might go Doomfingers on me. Who knows? You're coming up here with me, buddy. All right. That does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. Thanks so much for listening, and we will talk to you next time.
01:17:00
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points.
01:17:21
Speaker
you're interested in reading some comments but don't know where you should start. Plus you'll get access to all episodes of the main show a week before everyone else. On all of this, for as little as just a dollar a month, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash SuperCinemaPod and you can sign up at any subscription amount to get started. Thanks so much for your support and please don't forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:18:04
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.