I'm a little tired, but here it goes: The "Fantastic Four" should (or could) have been the quirky, cheesy, one-liner laden blockbuster of the summer in the vein of "The Avengers", detached from compressed storylines, unimaginative plotting, and poorly-researched characterization.

Thoughts?

What akes you say that?

@Avenging-X-Bolt: The initial run on the Fantastic Four was just cut from the same cloth as "The Avengers": farfetched, yet unquestionable stories featuring humorous quibbling, rare moments of dark introspection, super-science wizardry, mind-expanding locales, and ACTION. The Fantastic Four films never took Marvel's First Family anywhere outside of New York after their accident, devoting more time to cutesy in-fighting than realizing fully-formed plots and characters (especially the villains).

Doctor Doom arguably possesses the most compelling origin and motive in comic book history, but the responsible studio decided to cast him as an unimposing, grandeur-less industrialist. No Latveria, no Doombots, no techno-magicks, just electricity and a muffled accent.

Silver Surfer had the right actors in his corner (Doug Jones in full silver body paint; Laurence Fishburne behind a vocal booth), but the idea of the board as his power source, in my opinion, weakened "Doom acquiring the Power Cosmic".

Also, Ioan Gruffard portrayed Mr. Fantastic as this stereotypically weak, timid scientist; that always bothered me.

Movies like the X-Men were the original comic to film blockbusters that were positively accepted by non comic fans.......the formula was popular and sustained throughout most comic films, as comic films tried to be more plausible and realistic
 
For the Fantastic Four....this does not work, they should have went with a more goofy, campy presentation similar to what Spider-Man did...without question what the Avengers did
 
So I agree...

I wouldn't say that.

The Incredibles is what the Fantastic Four should've been.

Ah... Maybe FF will get the justice it deserves. And that includes Silver Surfer.

Yes.

/thread

@VampireSelektor said:

Doctor Doom arguably possesses the most compelling origin and motive in comic book history,

This I have to call out. What's the big whoop about Doom's origin? He's butthurt cause his science project blew up in his face... boohoo. Get over it. You've built time machines, you really can't fix up your own face?

@Gambit1024 said:

The Incredibles is what the Fantastic Four should've been.

Agreed.

You could over simplify every decent origin story by taking out the contextual and emotional stuff that made it good in the first place. "The joker fell into some chemicals after a guy in a bat suit scared him off a ledge". Or "Lex Luthor doesn't like aliens, big whoop". If you had mentioned that Victor utilized magic in his college experiment to contact the spirit of his dead gypsy mother, only to be proven wrong that it would work by an intellectual rival he believed to be his inferior, then you would be hard pressed to trivialize what a great origin that is. On top of that, I always thought it was extremely well developed and tragic how after all the pain he experienced growing up, it was his narcissism that ultimately transformed him into Doom. Most of his problems after childhood are directly his fault, but for all his power and intellect he still can't face it. He's convinced himself that all the blame lay squarely on the shoulders of a guy he barely knew, just because he believed himself infallible.

All of this before the main characters had even gotten their powers. I'd say that takes the cake on origin stories.

Well my comment was over two years ago, I don't even remember writing it :P very interesting summation though.

I disagree. The Avengers was a movie about heroes coming together as a team. But the Fantastic 4 aren't really a team so much as they are a family. They should already be together.

@amazingwebhead: He was referring to the tone, which was better suited for F4 than the actual F4 films.

@maccyd: My mistake