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Saturday, August 06, 2005
Ask now what the Fantastic Four can do for you...
How about I point you to Michael Chabon's 1995 proposal for a Fantastic Four film? I think that sounds good (found from the Marvel Masterworks board).
My favorite part of Chabon's outline is that the film is a period piece of the early-60's. With all these Marvel films you would think that somebody would figure out to celebrate the era that Marvel flourished in, that being the Kennedy 60's. In Comic Book Confidential Stan Lee said that the perceived positivity of Kennedy and his "Camelot" were a big inspiration when he, Kirby and others were putting together the Marvel universe. The fact that the books that make up so many Essential volumes are now period pieces are a big part of the charm for me (who can resist Spidey making reference to J. Edgar Hoover and Rock Hudson, especially reading those books today?). To try to bring that out in a film adaptation could really work and make the film a lot of fun.
Let's face it, the Fantastic Four are very much of that era. They would really benefit from a movie that was set in "[a] Technicolor, bossa nova, Douglas Sirk world." I know Peyton Reed was once attached to direct the FF movie and I was hoping he would bring some of that Down With Love magic to the franchise. Unfortunately it didn't work out and instead we got boring action scenes and extreme sports. The Tim Story movie was uninteresting.
Chabon also chooses not to spend a lot of time with the origin story, another right turn I don't see a lot of superhero movies taking. Wouldn't it be great if we just got colorful costumes and exciting powers within the first ten minutes of a film? I think that would be better than spending a half-hour to an hour getting information out of the way, especially in the Fantastic Four's case where the origin story is "pretty goofy." I don't think it's a big mystery that Spider-Man 2 and X-2 are both considered better than their respective predecessors, the pace and feel are both improved because there's no need to dwell on how the characters got their powers (read: there never was).
As I've made clear I'd really like to see a movie based on an old comic property that crackled with the same personality and life of those bygone back issues. At the very least it would be a fun experiment.
Permanent Link: 2:28 PM |
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