Maybe a Touch More Yeast..?Plenty kicking around my head to write about this weekend, but I'm going to go with the most recent and very briefest of them as the weekend runs out. Spoilers will abound, so if you didn't yet see it and are looking forward to, then skip this piece.
Nick was dealing with some problems that kept him inside and away from the heat, so Travis went with me this Father's Day - once I'd taken a good shot at catching up as much as reasonably possible on sleep - to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
It was... a safe, predictable bit of entertainment. Things worked as they needed to and didn't when that was needed. A sacrifice (two, I suppose) made that no one over the age of 8 believed would truly stand as a sacrifice. Sue was petty and bitchy early in the film and then came to her senses by the end once matters were put into greater perspective for her. An end to the threat was arrived at with an ease and speed that was, more than anything else, convenient.
Speaking of Sue Storm/Richards, hey, can that Jessica Alba act? No, seriously. Can she? I suppose she can, but of all the people in the film it was really her scenes that shook me out of the story and back into my seat.
At a mere 89 minutes the film definitely gave the impression that several scenes hit the cutting room floor. They may have had something more planned for Captain Frankie Raye - who comics fans would recognize as a girlfriend of Johnnie's who ended up becoming a replacement herald for Galactus (as Nova) - or it could conceivably be part of a sub-plot set-up for FF 3 or even the loosely-slated Silver Surfer film... but otherwise she wasn't much more than a prop and/or minor distraction in this film.
Andre Braugher's performance as General Hager, someone with a middlin' grudge against Reed over an earlier project, was turned in well even though the character only really rose above the level of a talented cog in the plot machine for a moment when Reed stood up to him in the Black Forest. It isn't Braugher's fault, it's simply the spare way in which he was written. (I'll note that Braugher has a part coming up this November in a Stephen King adaptation I have some minor hope for -- The Mist -- mainly because transferring the short story to a screenplay seemed like a sure-shot, no-brainer back when I read it years ago. Certainly there's no guarantee that screenwriter/director Frank Darabont won't drop the ball. But... that's for late November.)
Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) struck me as much more solid and entertaining in this film than he was in the first one. Getting away from the artificially linked elements of the origin and the love triangle -- dead weight in the first film -- definitely helped. Also notable is that they managed to pull off Doom's usurpation of the Surfer's powers and board (under heavily-revised circumstances, a version of what we saw back in Fantastic Four #s 57-60) pretty nicely, including some cool effects as Doom used the power at his control. That he didn't look like a fool on the surfboard was a big plus -- it could have so easily gotten groans and laughs had they lingered on shots or not known when to come in close and when to pull back and radically change the view.The scene where Johnny took on all four members' powers, getting us as close as we may ever get to seeing the Super Skrull in action, was fun and visually interesting, too. That it happened to work the way it did was just one of those matters of convenience that probably only a grouch would point out and gripe about...
Stan Lee's cameo (and, as with his in Spider-man 3, these are getting a little longer) was intentionally reminiscent of his at the end of the Fantastic Four Annual #3, when Reed & Sue tied the knot in comics... under considerably different circumstances. In the original it was Stan and artist/co-creator Jack Kirby who were bounced.
Despite what some of the above might indicate I'm not really negative about the film -- it did what I suppose it needed to do. In was, through much of it, to superhero films what a bowl of oatmeal with a drizzle of maple syrup would be to breakfast.
The debut of the Fantasti-Car (a title they happily seemed to side-step) and the sanity of not revisiting their origin sequence or any other scenes from the first film were all appreciated.I was pleased to learn a while back that Galactus was to be presented as an amorphous, almost amoeboid, cosmic cloud rather than a giant with a huge tuning fork on his head.
A big factor in my general sense of emotional flatness for the film is that most of the visual best of the film -- and, as with the first film, it really is primarily an effects movie -- were shown in the series of trailers seen in the months and weeks leading up to its release. There was plenty that had gotten appreciative goosebumps out of the eternal kid inside, but most of the goosebump action was played out weeks and more earlier. Also, while the sequel certainly flowed better overall than the first film, one of the saving graces of the first film was in the interplay between the characters, some lines here and there that emphasized that these people were important to each other - especially to those of us who know the characters - and not as much of that came through as strongly in this sequel.
Or, perhaps I was simply in less than the ideal mood for the movie. I'll have to wait for it to hit DVD before I'll give it a second look and see how it bears up then.
Making an estimated $57.4 million this opening weekend (all domestic, with no foreign box office noted), with a production budget of $130 million, it took the #1 spot at the box office by a huge margin and appears to be on its way to making its money back and perhaps then some while in release. The usual, roughly 50% drop off between opening and second weekends has me expecting it'll have to crawl over the finish line as we move into July. Some foreign box office has to come in somewhere, though, and then there's the DVDs, etc.
{Edit} I'll also note that Tony Collett, and The Bunnyman managed to get out to see it this weekend.
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Speaking of which, all of us over/down here hope that yours is treating you better lately, and that maybe you've come through recent storms into a relatively clear patch... for however long it may last.
Grrrrr... another fabulous opportunity to give us some sort of Autostealth special power, shot to hell.
The wording of the special power is "After resolving an action in which he uses one of these powers, deal Moon Knight 1 unavoidable damage," so he would be safe from taking the click until the action - be it a move or an attack - is completed. No worries there.
It's a piece I'm on the fence on until I can see the complete dial. He starts with 8 Speed with Stealth, 10 Attack with Super Strength, and I believe a 2 Damage. The hope is that he's a steadier version of what we saw in Critical Mass - maybe at the expense of a click of life - and that the self-abuse nature of the special power (essentially his pushing himself beyond his immediate physical limits) is canceling out most of its cost -- similar to what we saw in Wiccan and the Ultimate Iron Man pieces.
Nine days until the set hits the streets, with the Critical Hit, Inquest and WWE sneak peeks (Molecule Man was shown at the convention, along with the sculpts and cards of what's been previewed so far) done, I'm still unsure as to how much more they'll show us. They still have a full reveal on Moon Knight to do, along with dials and cards for Giant Man, Wasp, Captain America and Ultimate Hulk. Toss in the remaining details on Molecule Man and they could give us six reveals in seven weekdays. How far after the set's release it'll be before they post the full gallery, well, like everything else... we'll see.