Last summer featured "Spider-Man 2," the latest in a long line of (sorta) successful Marvel movies, vs. DC's return to the big screen (after their 1997 one-two-suck-punch of "Batman & Robin" and "Steel"), "Catwoman." It's pretty safe to say that "Spider-Man 2" won.

This summer's comic battle royale is "Batman Begins" vs. "Fantastic Four" and, as a die-hard Marvel fan, I'm sad to say that DC wins. "Fantastic Four" aint' so fantastic.

To be honest, "FF" doesn't suck. It's completely passable as C-Level summer entertainment and gets away with providing chuckles instead of action (it's directed by the guy who did "Barbershop," after all). The acting is crazy spotty, with the entire cast being both annoyingly bad to A-OK. Chiklis' the Thing is the best part of the movie. The costume looks real and his emoting through it is astounding. What's Jessica Alba's problem?

It's not as bad as "Daredevil," but it's close. My main problem with both "DD" and "FF" are the movies' lack of importance. The world isn't in jeopardy and the villian's big plan is to kill the FF. This is DR. DOOM! Marvel's premier-bad guy! All he can muster for a plan is to kill the FF? Come on! The "climactic" battle is the kind of battle that usually occurs in the first 30 minutes of a comic movie. You know, the one that gets us set up for the huge finale.

I'm just so disappointed that all these great Marvel characters are getting wasted on these bad movies. Daredevil could have been a flat-out awesome movie if they didn't get the "Simon Birch" guy to direct it and ignored all Affleck-related people (Jennifer Garner included...I love her as Sydney Bristow, Elektra notsomuch). The Hulk could have and should have been a crazy action romp instead of a psychological profile. And now we have Marvel's first family treated like second class citizens behind "The Incredibles."

So the summer score is tied, Marvel: 1, DC: 1. Next summer has "Superman Returns" squaring off against "X-Men 3" and the way "X3" is looking, DC's going to pull ahead. Oh, and Nic Cage's "Ghost Rider" is coming out next summer, directed by the "Simon Birch" guy.

Whooptie-doo.

Geez.

But, dude, they're getting a tall, skinny dude to play Juggernaut, Frazier to play the furry blue guy, and the guy who wrote Last Action Hero to write it. They can't lose!

I'm pleased with Kelsey Grammar as Beast. If the Juggernaut is anything more than an extended cameo, I'll be pretty upset. He has no place in a Dark Phoenix/Phoenix story. Of course the story may not be about the Phoenix which would...be...retarded. Aside from my stupid dislike of people having my name, I'm lukewarm about Brett Ratner for director. He's shown more respect for the characters and mythology than Matthew Vaughan did, but Ratner also wants Stacy X (a mutant prostitute with pheromone powers whose tenure with the X-Men lasted only a year and a half) in the movie. Played by Venus or Serena Williams. Ugh. Angel and Gambit have yet to be cast and Maggie Grace (Dead Boone's snobby sister on "Lost") dropped out of playing Kitty Pryde.

Worst news, Alan Cumming quit. No Nightcrawler. But if this movie sucks, I'd rather not have him in it.

(Edited by DigsySlattery at 12:15 pm on Jul. 9, 2005)

If Digsy didn't like Fantastic 4, then I think I'll just wait and rent it in about 6 weeks.

And my hopes for X3 have diminished considerably ever since I found out that Bryan Singer had left it. I have my doubts about a new Superman movie though, and the whole comic book film genre for that matter.

I was just looking at the trivia for Superman Returns at IMDB.com. I didn't realize that Ratner and Singer basically traded directing duties for X-Men 3 and Superman Returns. That's really odd. I wish Singer would have just kept with what he knew. I really like the trend these days of conceptualizing entire trilogies before starting the first film. Too bad they couldn't keep it together.

I also see they're using some stock footage of Marlon Brando as Supe's dad. Awesome!

I agree that losing Nightcrawler sucks, but we'll definitely get Angel and Gambit for this one, right? Also, I see Hugh Jackman will return. I think that could have singlehandedly ruined the chances of a third movie.

Alan Cumming is the only cast member not returning. There was a lot of debate over whether or not Halle would lower herself to do X3. James Marsden and the kid who plays Iceman's involvement/possible involvement in "Superman Returns" almost made Fox cut them from "X3" in some sort of weird Singer boycott. Luckily they changed their minds.

Angel is definitely in "X3" and Nick Stahl (from "Sin City" and "T3") is most likely going to play him. Gambit still hasn't been cast and his role has been said to be a cameo. That sucks.

Oddly enough I haven't read any fan responses to "FF" that are overly negative. The critics hate it, of course, but the comic community seems to enjoy the "FF."

(Edited by DigsySlattery at 11:13 am on Jul. 11, 2005)

digsy...we need to to talk....

Crap, for a minute there I was thinking of the guy who played Dwight (Clive Owen), not Yellow Bastard. I think the former would have been a better choice. He was a badass.

So, are we talking Angel or Archangel? I assume they won't be covering the 4 Horsemen of Apocalypse story, right? That would be awesome if they did.

i did the same.

though Clive Owen would be a pretty awesome Gambit, come to think of it... eh?

I went into F4 with low expectations based on reviews from critics and friends, but I was pretty entertained. It's a total, "hey it's the summer so let's shut our brains off and be entertained" sort of movie, but knowing that, it worked for me. And really, I could just watch Jessica Alba stand there for an hour and feel as though my $8.50 was justified.

Indeed!

I'd imagine it'll be Angel. Apocalypse seems a tad too over the top for the movie universe. I like Archangel more as a character. Angel was already on suicide watch because his wings had to be amputated, and then Apocalypse comes along and turns him into a blue-skinned death machine with razor wings. He wasn't a happy camper for a while...until he got hot and heavy with Psylocke.

I'd like to see Psylocke in the movies. She's been an X-Man for 20 years and has never gotten any mainstream exposure outside of one episode of the cartoon and a couple video games.

Gambit's a hard character to cast. Clive Owen would be pretty cool. There were rumors that Josh Holloway (Sawyer from "Lost") was going to play him, which I could see. I think both he and Clive Owen are a tad too buff for Gambit. Johnny Depp could do wonders with Gambit, but he'd probably want him to have a skeezy ponytail and a gold tooth or something equally weird.

I thought he was pretty average. Maybe it's just because he was in the same movie as Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke's characters.

After researching this on the internet, I may have judged harshly.





He bears a stronger resemblance to Joe Maduriera's Gambit (the picture above is Salvador Larroca), but he's still a better choice than I thought.

I'm bored.


(Edited by DigsySlattery at 1:24 pm on Jul. 12, 2005)

You gotta admit his glowing red eyes automatically make him a strong contender for the part.

Will you nerds just shut the hell up?!??! You are disturbing my database entries of my Star Wars figures, cross referenced to GI Joe 12" and 4" figures and their corelation to the '77 Topps baseball card set. Sheeesh.

Hey, I have a database for my comic collection! Every issue, date, price, writer, artists, my personal rating and any important events all included! We should arrange a play date.

Thursday work for you? It's truly the only day I look forward to.

Good for me. My new employment at Books-a-Million has guaranteed a lot of nerdy reading material for us to geek out over.

I saw Fantastic Four yesterday. I will preface my comments with what I said when I compared X2 and the Matrix Reloaded a long time ago.


I think Fantastic Four was OK. It could have been better, and it could have been awesome. I was reminded of what I wrote a while ago because it of course sets us up for the inevitable sequel. I think the sequel has the chance of being really good. All of the dynamics for the different characters are in place. The cast is actually good (I kept thinking throughout that the Fire Man character is played in a very believable fashion). Jessica Alba is indeed muy attractive, and I think there may have been some acting in there, but I'm not really sure. Stretch Armstrong could be replaced and I wouldn't have noticed. Maybe John Stewart will play him in the sequel. Anyway, we're set up for a great story with some mutant fighting and epic proportions and maybe even a boob slip in the sequel. It's just that all the exposition gets in the way with the first one. It of course could have been done differently, but oh well.

There was one thing they did right: Michael Chiklis (I don't know why, but I always liked "The Commish")/Ben Brimm/The Thing made this move into something. I felt sorry for him, I liked him, and I was waiting for him to use all that strength. Too bad we don't care about any of the other characters. They did a good job developing them (with the exception of Stretch Armstrong, who just sits there and looks stupid while every other character in the story tells us how smart he is), but they did not make us care about any of them.

Oh yeah, Marvel needs to get over this whole stupid crap of taking their villains and just putting them in a mask with no moving mouth to complete their comic book persona. Green Goblin was one thing, but Dr. Doom's body was turning into an organic metallic allow. How hard would it have been to have just made him a new face?

They left so much cool stuff possible that they could have done, but they chose not to do most of it. So here's to F4-2, coming to theaters near all of us in 2008.

(Edited by YaDaDaDa at 8:07 am on Jul. 15, 2005)