Snake vs The Fallible Four
I sit at my desk a bewildered individual.
Click here to watch the trailer for Fantastic Four, and then click here to watch the trailer for Sky High, and then I'd like you to answer a very simple question for me:
Why in the name of all that is unholy does DISNEY appear to have made a better superhero movie than MARVEL?!?!?
Seriously, this is the kind of shit that just shouldn't happen. This is like...I don't even know what. This is like if IBM suddenly decided they wanted to start making their own peanut butter and you laugh and say, "IBM you silly silly corporate giant, what do you think you're doing?" and then taste it only to discover that it kicks Skippy's creamy (or chunky) delicious ass.
I mean, just look at those trailers. True, Sky High is clearly skewed towards the younger audience while the Craptastic Four seems a bit darker and marketed to adults, but even still, Disney seems to have captured the energy and the tone of burgeoning superheroes discovering their powers and deciding how best to use them to help others far better than Tim "Barbershop" Story's increasingly putrid trainwreck of a film. I mean, come on now, the Fantastic Four are quite literally the First Family of comic book heroes. Each character represents a specific emotion and approach to what it means to be a hero, including Dr. Doom, whose makeup job is laughably bad. (Am I the only one who hates seeing villians stuck behind these giant immobile plastic masks that prevent them from having any kind of facial expressions ala Dr. Doom and Green Goblin? I'll forgive Scarecrow in the upcoming Batman because they seem to be going for a highly realistic tone as opposed to these other comic book movies which involve superpowers of some sort.)
However, I think there's a larger question begging to be asked here: "Does this little excercise in 'compare and contrast' signal the downfall of Marvel or the redemption of Disney?" I think the jury is still out on Disney. The various managerial shake-ups of the previous year or so have clearly been good for the company overall, and if they're smart they'll jump back on the Pixar wagon real quick. Marvel on the other hand, well...yes they've got the Spiderman and X-Men franchises pumping away and making some serious bank, but we also have to consider Daredevil...and The Punisher...and Blade Trinity...and Elektra...and Man-Thing. Granted, these are all kind of second-tier heroes (Punisher's a toss-up I think). However, Fantastic Four is as top-rate as they come. It should be a no-brainer. Unfortunately they seem to have taken that phrase literally. And with Warner Bros/DC getting ready to jumpstart Batman AND Superman, two marquee titles, within the next year, Marvel had better start watching their ass, because after countless disasters, (Can we officially name Catwoman as the worst comic film of at least the last decade?) Warner/DC seems to have remembered how to treat their top shelf comic properties. Hell, I have a feeling that I enjoyed Constantine more than I'm gonna enjoy the Blasphemous Four. Granted, Marvel's got some great stuff they're moving on, stuff like Iron Man and Captain America (along with more questionable stuff like Ghost Rider and Luke Cage and almost surefire crap like Sub-Mariner and Deathlok) but if they're gonna take these great characters and stories and give them the "Fantastic Four Treatment", then, to quote one of the great thinkers of our time, "I might just sob like a woman."
Anyway, the shit parade continues, and the more and more I see of the Sucktastic Four, the more and more I am convinced that this is going to end in disaster. (I'm also pretty certain they'll take the overtly stupid tactic of killing off Dr. Doom by the end of the movie, another comic-film convention I'm getting pretty damn sick of.)
That being said, I'll still be there opening weekend to shell out my $10.50+ and weep into my large buttered popcorn.
Let the mayhem begin...
Click here to watch the trailer for Fantastic Four, and then click here to watch the trailer for Sky High, and then I'd like you to answer a very simple question for me:
Why in the name of all that is unholy does DISNEY appear to have made a better superhero movie than MARVEL?!?!?
Seriously, this is the kind of shit that just shouldn't happen. This is like...I don't even know what. This is like if IBM suddenly decided they wanted to start making their own peanut butter and you laugh and say, "IBM you silly silly corporate giant, what do you think you're doing?" and then taste it only to discover that it kicks Skippy's creamy (or chunky) delicious ass.
I mean, just look at those trailers. True, Sky High is clearly skewed towards the younger audience while the Craptastic Four seems a bit darker and marketed to adults, but even still, Disney seems to have captured the energy and the tone of burgeoning superheroes discovering their powers and deciding how best to use them to help others far better than Tim "Barbershop" Story's increasingly putrid trainwreck of a film. I mean, come on now, the Fantastic Four are quite literally the First Family of comic book heroes. Each character represents a specific emotion and approach to what it means to be a hero, including Dr. Doom, whose makeup job is laughably bad. (Am I the only one who hates seeing villians stuck behind these giant immobile plastic masks that prevent them from having any kind of facial expressions ala Dr. Doom and Green Goblin? I'll forgive Scarecrow in the upcoming Batman because they seem to be going for a highly realistic tone as opposed to these other comic book movies which involve superpowers of some sort.)
However, I think there's a larger question begging to be asked here: "Does this little excercise in 'compare and contrast' signal the downfall of Marvel or the redemption of Disney?" I think the jury is still out on Disney. The various managerial shake-ups of the previous year or so have clearly been good for the company overall, and if they're smart they'll jump back on the Pixar wagon real quick. Marvel on the other hand, well...yes they've got the Spiderman and X-Men franchises pumping away and making some serious bank, but we also have to consider Daredevil...and The Punisher...and Blade Trinity...and Elektra...and Man-Thing. Granted, these are all kind of second-tier heroes (Punisher's a toss-up I think). However, Fantastic Four is as top-rate as they come. It should be a no-brainer. Unfortunately they seem to have taken that phrase literally. And with Warner Bros/DC getting ready to jumpstart Batman AND Superman, two marquee titles, within the next year, Marvel had better start watching their ass, because after countless disasters, (Can we officially name Catwoman as the worst comic film of at least the last decade?) Warner/DC seems to have remembered how to treat their top shelf comic properties. Hell, I have a feeling that I enjoyed Constantine more than I'm gonna enjoy the Blasphemous Four. Granted, Marvel's got some great stuff they're moving on, stuff like Iron Man and Captain America (along with more questionable stuff like Ghost Rider and Luke Cage and almost surefire crap like Sub-Mariner and Deathlok) but if they're gonna take these great characters and stories and give them the "Fantastic Four Treatment", then, to quote one of the great thinkers of our time, "I might just sob like a woman."
Anyway, the shit parade continues, and the more and more I see of the Sucktastic Four, the more and more I am convinced that this is going to end in disaster. (I'm also pretty certain they'll take the overtly stupid tactic of killing off Dr. Doom by the end of the movie, another comic-film convention I'm getting pretty damn sick of.)
That being said, I'll still be there opening weekend to shell out my $10.50+ and weep into my large buttered popcorn.
Let the mayhem begin...
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