Superman and The Fantastic Four: Fresh faces, fresh starts.

Riot’s (Final?) Reviews:

Riot’s taking a break y’all. Too much going on right now. Haven’t decided yet if/when I’ll be coming back. May not. A thousand thanks to everyone who has stuck with me and I’m grateful to everyone who used some of their precious time to listen to my silly opinions. This has been fun. Signing off with a double feature/kind of a Riot’s Rant as well, discussing The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Superman, is superhero fatigue becoming real for me, and which studio has the better chance of turning things around; Marvel or DC. Enjoy!

Superman: Since this is already the elder of the two films, I’ll start here. There was/still is an enormous amount of hype surrounding this movie with James Gunn taking over creative control, and what it all means to the future of the DCU. And the sentiment I got leaving the theater was: welp, they really James Gunned Superman. That may sound negative and it just might be in some ways, but after spending time ruminating on the film I found myself coming to the conclusion that I could see all of the reasons people would love Superman, but I wasn’t really one of them. Here’s the great elements as I saw them. 1) The casting is far better than I expected. While I whole-heartedly contend that there is no greater Superman than Henry Cavill, David Corenswet really makes a strong case for himself. Particularly in his interactions/relationship with Lois (Rachel Brosnahan). Their dialogue, especially during the advertised interview scene, felt natural and dynamic at the same time, which was a shame because they definitely needed more screen time together. Nicholas Hoult gave us the best Luthor since Michael Rosenbaum and the audience was treated to really great performances from Nathan Fillionand Edi Gathegi. (I would include Isabela Merced here too but she was barely in it, costume looked spot on though). 2) The special effects (including the frequently mocked, during pre-release, flight scenes) looked pretty solid throughout. The effects looked particularly good during the kaiju battle and started wearing around the edges once the meta-human fights got going. 3) The humor was pretty solid. This is where Gunn’s fingerprints are all over the project. Was it as funny as say any of the GOTG films? I’d say no, but I definitely laughed a lot. 4) Krypto was a cute addition.

Things got bad pretty quickly for me unfortunately. Writers of late have this really bad habit of directly contradicting themselves early on and out loud. Ex: If you’re going to bother having one robot say they are emotionless entities that only function to serve, don’t immediately have a second robot fangirl over Superman for a cheap laugh. If you tell the audience that an outer-dimensional river could rip humans apart, don’t have a pair of them fighting/splashing around in that exact river mere moments later. The “plot” of the story is a giant mess of fractured pieces that has no distinguishable through line and is far too often pushed forward by bailouts from Krypto. I am not even certain there is a single battle that isn’t fundamentally altered by his presence. The movie might as well have been called Krypto: The Superdog, that’s how egregious it is. Admittedly, my movie going experience was slightly ruined by a woman four seats over who would swoon and “aaaaawww” at…every…single…minor…appearance of the Super pooch. Gunn seemingly couldn’t help but cram every piece of fan service that he could into the film, but it made everything extremely disjointed and under-developed. I found this particularly frustrating with Green Lantern (Fillion) who was arguably the best character that was severely underutilized. Gunn partly makes up for this with a solid amount of attention and detail given to Mr. Terrific (Gathegi) but the whole project reeks of biting off more than they can chew. Also, I wasn’t very keen on the direct rip off of The Boys (comic not T.V. show) conclusion. It’s predictability really hurt the whole project for me, not to mention the asinine involvement of the supervillain, The Engineer, how the entire final battle played out, and the total disregard for anything even resembling physics.

The big talk/controversy around the film post-release was Gunn’s revision of Superman’s origin story. Personally, I didn’t hate it. It was a new angle and served as a different catalyst for things to implode on Superman. Luthor moving to psychological warfare is a perfectly fine adjustment and because Clark is given the opportunity to overcome the new stigma, it sets up an incredible closing scene that is both heartwarming and a good message about virtue, morals, and the role parents play in their children’s development. My issue with it is that Gunn (intentionally or not) paints an extremely bleak and negative picture of society and its ability to be manipulated. If his intentions were pure in an attempt to shine a spotlight about the dangers of social media and emotional manipulation, then I might be more willing to forgive it, but considering his comments during press tours, I’m not so sure. Because Luthor’s motivations devolve quickly into an emotionally stunted child of sorts (the veneer of brilliance wears of a little too quickly for my taste) I got the same feeling of someone (Gunn) throwing a tantrum about being a victim of the “horde of brainless monkeys who manipulate the algorithm.” Damn near everything Luthor does or is able to accomplish in the film felt a lot like the way the new writers in Star Wars were treating the force, “I can do this. Just because.”

Regardless of how I felt about the film, its garnering pretty decent online reviews and like mentioned before, I can see why. I just couldn’t see past my own issues with the chaotic plot, it’s carelessness with maintaining cohesion, and the inordinate amount of time wasted on its weaknesses vs its strengths. As a final note, Gunn’s new interpretation of what Kryptonite does to Superman was just…ugh.

Riot’s Rating: 6.8/10

The Fantastic Four: First Steps: I want to lead out this review with an apology to my friend, Rich: I was wrong, it is possible to make a decent Fantastic Four movie. That being said, let’s start with the negatives as far as I saw them. 1) The full movie doesn’t give you a lot more than the trailer does and while the teasers/trailers did a lot to get people excited about the film, Marvel maybe gave away just too much. 2) There are character elements that just didn’t come off correctly, mostly regarding Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal). Like many people out there, I am feeling the Pedro fatigue, but credit where it’s due, he’s a pretty good actor. His portrayal of Reed as a timid, unsure of himself nerd felt more like who Pascal actually is as a person rather than a character named Mr. Fantastic. Even in his moments of brilliance, his inability to take charge I think is demeaning to the character. 3) Ben Grimm (Ebon-Moss Bachrach) is criminally under-utilized. They spent so much time nailing his physical look they forgot what a player The Thing actually is in Marvel. 4) It could be argued that the plot is a little too simplistic. I’ll make an argument why I don’t think it’s entirely a bad thing, but it wouldn’t be incorrect to take that stance. 5) There are some misses in the CGI. The creators made the correct choice to balance that out with excellent practical effects/scenery work, but things like the CGI’d baby or their ship warping through space emphasize some of the visual issues. 6) Taking a pregnant woman into space is asinine, regardless of superpowers.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps does so much right that it makes the negatives look nitpicky. First, the casting was incredibly strong. I had my concerns about every Fantastic Four member except for Vanessa Kirby and she embodied the Sue Reed character exactly as I always imagined from the comics. I had my issues with Pascal like I mentioned and Bachrach was so good that I was frustrated he wasn’t used more. The biggest shock came from Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm. Granted, I do not watch Stranger Things, but until this point I had yet to see Quinn in something that really brought out his range. Being traumatized by his role in Warfare doesn’t count, but man was that brutal. His performance as Johnny (along with some justice to the character thanks to the writing) was so much more balanced than the womanizing, frat bro he is usually depicted as. He maintained some of those elements to be sure, but allowing the character more depth, more knowledge, more function in the team was an excellent choice and Quinn was up to the challenge. Second, the antagonists of Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) and Galactus (Ralph Ineson)  (while a little underdeveloped story-wise) were perfectly cast as far as I’m concerned. Certainly, they were both bolstered by awe-inspiring CGI work. Galactus was given so much detail in character design that it was easy to ignore any issues with scaling consistency (which there were some) and the creators made the brilliant move to have Garner actually “surfing” through space, a visual effect that pays off in both visuals and character continuity. Her actions at the end also accomplish this, but I won’t spoil it. Shalla-Bal looked particularly good in the close up interactions with Johnny.

As I mentioned before, the practical effects and incredible set design were off the charts in quality. The retro-futuristic take on New York and Earth 828 were about as clean as you could make them. The in-your-face bright colors give off that nostalgia factor audiences can’t seem to get enough of and it also lent to the world building being accomplished at the same time. Building a practical robot from scratch (H.E.R.B.I.E.) paid off in a big way even if he wasn’t in as many scenes as I was expecting. Not saying they needed more of him, it was the right amount. The soundtrack and mixing were pretty fantastic. It’s been a while since audiences got a theme song for a team that was this iconic. Matching the tone of the rest of the film, it had all of the charm of a retro world and the sharp quality of futuristic elements. This version of the team kept things relatively simple and grounded, easing the audience into the family dynamic and leaning into the organic chemistry between its characters. Its greatest weakness may have merely been an over reliance on montages, but they were entertaining and got to the point, not just relying on aimless slapstick humor that doesn’t work in its chosen genre.

Riot’s Rating: 8.6/10

Marvel vs. DC and Superhero Fatigue: In a recent interview, James Gunn pushed back on the idea of superhero fatigue, basically stating that people aren’t tired of them, they’re tired of low quality movies. To his credit, I readily agree with that statement and have been saying similar things along those lines for a good while now. The problem with Gunn’s statement is, it appears he said it with the arrogance of the belief that he doesn’t make bad superhero films. When it comes to the debate on which of the two universes is going to be able to pull out of the downward spiral, I would offer that it’s exactly Gunn’s attitude that will doom the DCU…if he’s not careful. Superman, to me, reeks of someone that isn’t being careful with the responsibility  that’s been given to them. It’s spastic and undisciplined and already sets up a major problem for its creative world in that mainly, there is no way the current Batman fits inside his new narrative world established in Superman. The grittiness of Pattinson’s Batman and the goofiness of Gunn’s Superman is like oil and water stylistically and you don’t have to look any further than the Supergirl cameo to understand that goofy is here to stay.

Marvel is its own worst enemy in a slightly different way in that it still hasn’t seemed to learn the lesson that it’s okay to take time to release new content. That being said, it seems clear that they took the right approach to cultivating interest in the new Fantastic Four. While both Superman and F4 have self-contained storylines (Marvel just did it better though), F4 is the only of the two that feels like an actual starting point, a true phase one type of story. It had a proper Marvel style credit scene, offering a legitimate taste of what’s to come. What worries me is the projected timeline as it currently stands and what I would consider is the lack of time to properly flesh out all the events that would lead to something like a true Dr. Doom or Secret War story. First Steps has the markings of creators that looked at the original IP films and actually stopped to sincerely ask themselves the question of “Where did we/they go wrong?” On a worrisome note, Marvel has also proven themselves incapable of handling the multi-verse storyline in a concise way. Perhaps abandoning Kang will help reign them in, but I kind of doubt it. Going into F4, I found it refreshing that there didn’t seem to be any “homework” necessary as a prerequisite to watching. Then one of the creators had to ruin everything and release a list of stuff you’re “supposed to watch.” Hopefully most people didn’t listen to that. The good news for both Marvel and DC is that there is plenty of time to sort things out and I’d argue they’re both off to a solid start. If I’m giving the edge though, it’s going to Marvel and it would do them a great service (in my opinion) to give up on the television shows and put extra care into the films that are on deck. DC, if they’re convinced that everything needs to be James Gunned to be successful, I think they’ll dig their own grave.

Thanks for everything! See y’all at the movies!