¶ Intro / Opening
Weird and Wade.
Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Them Alone's weekly round up. I'm Father Alone and sitting this episode out is miss Ripley Jean. She's mythed that I wouldn't sneak her into the movie theater because this week we are taking a look at a film that you can only see in cinemas. Go see it in cinemas. Go see everything in cinemas. Everything. Yeah, that's right, before we get to those four of the
Fantastic Persuasion. It was Comic Con weekend, and as such there were news and trailers of plenty, So let's do a quick breakdown and recap and such before I turn it over to the regular show, which is a crossover with the Culture Cast and the Projection Booth. We got
¶ Comic-Con Trailers and News
a new trailer for Tron Aries, the latest disappointment in the Tron franchise. Let's lose Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde and add Jared Lido. What could go wrong? In the plus column, it's got Evan Peters. It's about time he hit the big screen. Speaking of which, why hasn't there been a Jimmy Cagney biopic starring Evan Peters? It's right there anyway, Instead of going into the fascinating world of the computer, the programs are going to come into our world,
this time, still on the bleeding edge of innovation. There over at the Tron movies. Actually in the arena of film soundtracks, they seem to be three for three when Carlost Daft Punk and now nine Inch Nails. That's right, the actual band nine Inch Nail, and so far it sounds spectacular. We got new footage of the Alien Earth television series from Noah Hally, the guy behind the Fargo television series. Lots of excellent whalan utanni goodness, with a
shock white haired Timothy Oliphant being super weird. Also, I saw some pulse rifles. I cannot be more excited for the show, especially what with the upcoming Predator flick. Speaking of that, I did not watch the new Predator Badlands trailer. I'm doing my best to learn no more than I already do, which includes a wayland Utwanni android. But if you're as excited as I am about the new movie and want a refresher, tune in Friday for Yaucha Fest. That's where HP and I are looking back at the
Predator series in all of its glory and awfulness. Probably the most exciting news to come out of Comic Con is that Coyote Versus Acme, a film that Cinema Goooul David Zazlev had consigned to Attax right off Hell, is getting an official release and an official theatrical release in that August the twenty eighth. I told you to go
to the cinemas. This should be amazing, a live action animation courtroom drama with Wileie Coyote, the greatest of the Looney Tunes characters, suing the company that sold him all those faulty roadrunner catching devices. Will Forte is the star perfect and that's everything that interested me in Comic Con this year. Slow year, baby, Okay, I'm going to turn you over to the main show now, but before that, we have a new sponsor. It's the Latinaverian Tourist Board.
We're going to run that ad and after you'll hear all about fantastic four First Steps. See you all Friday.
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¶ Fantastic Four: First Steps
Welcome to a special crossover episode between the Projection Booth, your Culture Cast and Midnight Viewing. I'm your host, Mike whitehow on me? Once again is the host of the Culture Cast. Mister Chris Stashu, Well, one of my.
Favorite characters from Superhero dumb in general, it's Babylon time.
Also, all the way from midnight viewing is Father Malone.
Gentlemen, I invite you to die with your own On.
This episode, we are looking at the twenty twenty five film Fantastic four First Steps, which is actually the fifth ree tread in this franchise where we're looking at for superpowered beings who protect the Earth or Earth A two eight, this time from Galactus, who is not a big gas cloud. That's good. There's not a lot of origin story, but it's more of a look at the fourth year going into the fifth year of the team's existence. And we
will be spoiling this discussion like crazy. So if you haven't seen Fantastic four First Steps, turn off the podcast. Come back after you've gone to see them. All right, Chris, what did you think of Fantastic four First Steps? So, and what's your history of Fantastic four. I'm very curious about that. We talked about that on the Superman episode, so a couple weeks later, what's your history of Fantastic four?
So, the thing is one of my favorite superhero characters period, just something about him, And like the portrayal in the comic books, I really enjoy the portrayal in the movies. I think has been the version that's been more spot on in most of them. Has been the thing, at least in those Yowen Grufford, Chris Evans, Jessica Alba, Fantastic
Four movies which I saw. I have seen every Fantastic Four movie that has been released in theaters, including Fan for Stick, which not many people saw that shit in theaters. There was a reason for that.
Yeah, you see, because I'm a sucker.
Now no, no, no, You're a masochist. That's the word I would use. I you know. And this is one other thing. And Father Malone I think mentioned this when we were recording Maybe or Off podcast. Not only is the thing one of my favorite superhero characters Read Richards as the Maker is my favorite comic book villain I think period in terms of Marvel, he is. It's literally what if Reid Richards was just like, I'm the world, I'm the universe, the smartest man, and I could do
whatever the fuck I want. And he's just like practicing genocide and he becomes so smart and his gets so much knowledge into his head that his brain and skull essentially become like an ancient alien skull. His essentially head becomes like conical, his brain grows so much.
Well, let's not forget during Civil War whose side he was on.
Yeah, that's true. I think if you're gonna do a Fantastic for movie, this is the right place to start. However, and I'm saying that in terms of the setting, I think in a lot of ways this is marvel going. Man, wouldn't it been nice if we had done a period piece with the Fantastic Four in two thousand and nine or ten. Look, we'll have that discussion about all that, I'm sure at some point in this episode. But for me, I liked the setting. I liked the world that this
movie took place in. However, this movie was an hour and fifty five minutes, and there are parts of this movie that drug and the plot of the movie and the way that the conflict resolves, and a lot of the Deus X Teleporter bridges is just there's some stuff that doesn't seem as well integrated into the story as
I was hoping they would be. And there are parts of this that I'm like I'm glad that we're doing this version of the characters, and there are other things where I'm like, I'm a little disappointed that we're doing these versions of the characters. And by the end of the movie, once we see where they end up going with everything, I think I'm hopeful for where the second or third steps go. If that's in fact what the movies are beyond this one. Who knows if they keep
the Spider Man naming conventions. I mean, I know John Watts was originally going to direct these movies, so I kind of wonder if there was a little there is going to be a little bit of the Spider Man naming conventions. But all that to say, I think for the most part it's one of the better Marvel movies we've had in a while. It shows a lot of reserve where other Marvel movies of its similar ilk have not, including something as recently as Thunderbolts. But I think at
times it maybe plays it a tad too safe. And look, it's twenty twenty five. We know where the MCU is effectively headed. In the next couple of years. We're effectively at almost at year twenty of this. I'm assuming by year twenty of this, we will have a whole new thing with all new things of people, which is kind
of what they've talked about and they've alluded to. And now seeing that thing at the end of the movie is just like it sets in that Oh my god, we're like right back here in like twenty and eighteen nineteen again effectively. So I enjoyed it. But I think there's plenty for us to talk about in terms of the shortcomings of the movie. But I think overall, best Marvel movie in a while. Yeah, best Marvel movie in
the last five years. I don't know about that. There have been a lot of decent Marvel movies, if not great Marvel movies that have come out in the last five years. But in terms of this, to answer the initial question, Mike, in terms of seeming a Fantastic four thing and my history with it, this is the best Fantastic four movie I've ever seen in theaters. So that's the distinction that it has over the other three times I've been in the theater watching these same characters do similar things.
So and father them alonew about yourself, you know, growing
¶ Movie's Strengths and Weaknesses
up in the seventies, I read a lot of Marvel as a kid up until about teenage of them, when I decided that horror comics were the way to go, and I didn't have any fealty to any comic book company after that, but definitely Marvel as a young kid, and Fantastic Four has sort of made for children almost And when I was reading comics in the seventies, I was effectively just reading the original run from the sixties, So it was all of this kind of material that
ends up in this movie, which is bright and shiny and cosmic. Now, I never really had much use for the Fantastic Four. I always loved their peripheral characters. I think they have some of the best villains in Marvel. One of them is on display here for the first time Moleman and who I just I love as a character, Harvey Elder. But more than that is Galactis. But more than Galactis is the character norn Rad, the Silver Surfer, who is one of my maybe top five Marvel characters
of all time. Just the existentialness of that character, the dilemma that he finds himself in, which is fully on display here, which I really appreciated. The first Fantastic Four movie, I saw was in ninety seven when I got a bootleg of the Corman produced flick, which we just reviewed over on my show just a few days ago. And then obviously the Yowen Griffiths That's how you pronounced that it's Welsh friend Griffiths. Those two movies, those were garbage.
Even worse than that was the Josh Shrank Thing, which who on fucking planet thinks a dark and twisted versions of Fantastic for his Way to Go? It is literally the shiniest and brightest of the Marvel titles. So I had no expectations for this movie. All the trailers I saw I did not respond to at all. I didn't know, I didn't quite understand the Pedro Pascal casting, and I mean the rest of the cast seemed good to me, nevertheless,
so my expectations were zero. This to me was one of the best superhero movies I've ever seen, honestly, not only the best film for Marvel since Endgame, but one of the best overall. I mean, whatever praise I heaped upon Superman for making a cinematic comic book, this one puts that to shame. This is a fully realized world with all of the pieces fitting together very subtly in
some places. I loved. We always talk when we're talking about tell us some in the dark side, we always talk about the economy of those scripts that you said it, Chris, this is this movie is two hours. This movie it moves so fast.
Maybe one hour and fifty five minutes. It's wild. It's a less than two hour Marvel movie in twenty twenty five, like.
This movie starts four years in, catches up fucking immediately to where we are and gives us an incredible fucking dilemma and actually pulled off the fucking impossible in that it made Sue Storm one of the most powerful and interesting characters, whereas she has always been the most underwritten and boring Marvel characters. I loved the movie. I actually have seen it twice. I saw it last night and this morning I went and saw it again.
But did you buy the eighty dollars popcorn BOOKT two?
One for display, oh.
My, one for eating, one for eating large, if not oversized, comical portions of cereal out of no just for.
Eating all of the popcorn on planet Earth, and one sitting I hunger.
What about you, Mike White, what's your experience in history with the fan four sticks.
So I think Fantastic four might have been one of the first comics that I read. I remember specifically, my folks had a rental property and they were doing a lot of fixing it up before we could have Rentersts move in. I don't even remember how that happened, but I remember sitting around and reading an issue of the Fantastic Four, and I swear it was right around the time of the I Ran on the Iran hostage crisis, because I remember there was a parody song of Barbara Ran, the old surf.
Song Bomb Iran, Bomb Iran.
Yes, and that was playing on Dick Purtin and I was listening to that and reading this comic book. So very strange memory of that, but yeah, they were some of the first folks that I read as far as comic superheroes, And like you said about them alone, they're perfect for kids. And it's just this kind of candy colored world that they lived in, at least back in the sixties. And I love this retrofuturism vibe that they have with this where things are analog but they really
shouldn't be. Things like Herbie with the tape deck in his head and how he's got different programs on tapes and everything. And when you see the Fantastic Car zooming through the city, you get to see like a robot dog walker or these little tiny cars that they have,
and I'm just like, I love this world. I really like this Earth A two eight that they have where it feels like because of the Fantastic Four coming to be, or maybe just because of the way that the world played out, things are running differently, and we don't have transistors, we don't have the smaller technology. We still are using blackboards and things that are very analog, and I really
like that. I like the look of this, and god, it is so different thinking about that Josh Trenk version where so much of it just took place in a fucking warehouse and it was just dark all the time, and this we're out in the daylight. I mean, even the stuff of Harvey Moulman is pretty bright. Once we get down into the subterranean world that he lives in, there's some light in there. It's not just dark, dark, dark the entire time. And then having Paul what's his name,
Paul Walker, Walter Hawser, Oh, he is so great. I love so much he is so and then.
At Johnny, I didn't address you.
It was so nice having more Sue Storm in here, because I really feel like, at least those Tim Story movies were so much about Johnny and the Thing, and we've got a pretty good amount of the thing in here. I mean, it's tough. You've got four very strong characters and you're trying to balance all of them, and I think they do a good job. I really. If anything, I think read Richards might be a little bit opaque as far as his motivations and things, but I think
that's that works well with him. It's almost like he's on the spectrum or something, and I'm really okay with that. And I'll tell you I just before we started recording, just realized that Johnny Storm is Eddie from Stranger Things. Could not put my finger on where I knew him from. Really don't get a good beat on Johnny Storm in this one other than he's a pretty smart guy, but he hasn't given the credit that he's due. And that he actually figures out that whole alien language. I'm pretty
happy about that. I thought that was pretty great.
He is a one point eighty from Chris Evans's Johnny Storm, which is perfectly fine though, because again again when people get bent out of shape about portrayals in the movies, my response tends to be, at this point in my life, you've read comic books at any point, there's no one
there are singular standard bearers of the characters. If we're talking about like the singular Earth of the comic books in the Marvel comics, because like in the Marvel movies, there is one more or less decided upon Earth that most, if not a lot, of the things take place on.
But there's plenty of variations on this character. Joseph Quinn's character is very different in a I would say an updated way, because I'm not sure that kind of character would really fly, Like I think he'd be way too easy to write in a way that the audience wouldn't want anything to do with him, and they'd be kind of put off by him.
The Johnny Storm, the Chris Evans Johnny Storm was insufferable, but it was Chris Evans, so we put up with it. If you continued that character with anyone else, it would be just it would you would you would want to murder him basically right exactly.
I mean, and look at what happened to his character and what Wolverine and Deadpool. I mean perfect that they traded in that, like they made it a point to be like, yeah, this guy's kind of fucking turd too, but again, like it works for that movie's benefit. Here it's this is a softer, more gentle for a gentler time.
I like this portrayal of Johnny Storm because yeah, he's always portrayed as sort of the hot head, sort of showboat of the four, but you know, ultimately what he represents is the sort of teenager of the family, and there are other aspects to him. I loved that he figures out the translation of zen LA's language, the Zenla language in this and but at the same time he
is really annoying, you know what I mean. It's funny and it's played for laps and everything, but if you were living with that guy, you would want to punch him all the time.
Oh yeah, Well, I'm just glad that the thing isn't such a sad sack.
Oh my god, I don't know if they give me read look at me, I'm so ugly.
Oh god. The only person that thinks I'm cute is a blind lady? Oh god, I.
Mean the way it was written back in the day. It's the way it was written back in the day. There's no way a woman would find this man attractive. Fuck you, he would, she wouldn't. He's literally a superhero. Bozo's it's self explanatory. Well, you're you gonna tell me it's because Natasha Leone has a really deep voice. That that's why. It's actually the other way around, Ben Grimm. When she opens her mouth, he goes, oh, I don't want to hear that voice.
She's so cute.
Oh my god, she rained in all her regular Natasha Leone here like that. It's not the sort of broad from Brooklyn. It's different character.
My god, n to play less to type than she normally does, let's put that way.
And I love that he's like the one of the few that I know of Jewish superheroes, and that he's very proud of his heritage, the whole thing, growing up on Yancey Street. But it's not like they're overplaying that either. It's not at least, Oh, I remember when I was growing up over here.
Blah blah blah.
It's instead of yeah, I grew up over there. Okay, nice small thing, and to give him the little taste of he's a really good cook and that's his science. Johanna can figure out the languages, and Red can do all of these calculations. But here's been in the kitchen cooking with Herbie.
And he's a fucking hell of a pilot. And yes, what you're talking about, and how he's always been portrayed before is the sad, sack lonely guy who's just lovelauren. We get that in one scene. Speaking of the economy of the script, it's him watching himself on television and seeing what he used to look like, and they just cut to and what's amazing to me in this was it's a shot of a cgi face in a reflection of a window with a television on it, and you
can see all the emotion. You see how sad he is about this, because that's when he looks over Natas Leon and decides to walk away. So that's I got all of that. Didn't need him crying about it for obscene after seeing I.
Think, and this is again me just speaking broadly, because in the cases of something like Fantastic four or Superman or Spider Man or Batman. We have had so many retreads of this that we can go, well, they did it better and they didn't have to do it, and I don't feel obligated. Fantastic four once again proves that the audience at this point, mind you, maybe not fifteen twenty years ago. And I understand why they have now proved. I think once again, the audience are not fucking stupid.
The audience knows the audience can do a little legwork on their own. And even if we don't have forty five minutes of the movie for setup of the origin story, which it's there is like a fair amount of setup in this movie, but it's not origin story set up, at least not of a certain kind. It's an orgin story of a different kind.
Frankly, they give us that fucking like little documentary. It's brilliant.
In this day and age, it's like, instead of showing us the whole damn thing, just give us the just give it the both points, give us the cliff Notes version for fuck's sake, and it works just as well, because once again, if you're able to do it economically, you get away with it. Spider Man did it rather well. Superman did it rather well, This did it rather well, and they all kind of trafficked in the same thing.
Like it's not that we don't get the backstory. The backstories just peppered in throughout the movie, and so it kind of works better. It doesn't feel so stilted in terms of the flow.
I think did it the best and kind of started off this idea of we don't have to show everything. Is that Edward Norton Hulk where it was just like the opening credits, We're going to show you the whole thing very quickly and then we carry on with the movie. We don't have to do the origin story every frickin' time. I mean, how many times do we have to see Peter Parker get bit by an radio active spider? I mean, I'm glad that those home movies that they had just went away from all that stuff.
How many times have we been to fucking crime alley for God's sake. What I liked about this opening in this that little documentary where they give us the origin without giving us the origin, is that that we're at no point do we get to go out into space and see the cosmic rays hit them and watch this and that habit. Instead we watch them take off and then we see a ship crash and then the Thing's hand punch its way out of the craft. That's all
we needed for the origin there. The other thing I loved about the opening is, like you said, it's sort
of bullet points. We get like the greatest hits of what they've been doing for the past four years, like the major missions where the Thing is like hauling a burning tanker by its anchor chain into a harbor, and then Johnny Storm is putting out a fire at an electrical plant, And all I could think was, like, any one of these sequences would be the giant end set piece on any of the other Fantastic Four movies up until here, and they're just like burning through them at
the beginning. The other thing I noticed in that the power plant sequence, when there's a crew on the ground who like salute him, thanks Johnny Storm. The two guys in front, the one saluting him and the one standing next to him. That's Jay Underwood and the fellow who played the Thing in the nineteen ninety four version, and then Alex Hyde White and I think Jessica Stop, I think her name was those two are reporters later in
the movie. So that was a cool thing that they didn't need to do, and they fucking did it, and it made me very happy. I mean, I just watched the other one the other day, so it was a little obvious to me.
But Michael Bailey Smith played Ben Grimm and I only know that because he was the guy who played gigantic Freddy Krueger in Elm Street five. Remember when it's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, royd it out Freddy Krueger. So I think for me, and look, I'm a little biased because I do like even Moss Backrack in other things. Obviously the bear and the cooking thing with me was like, okay, like you're kind of trafficking in a little bit of what he's really known for now. But he's really good
as the thing. But I think to the point that's already been made, I think Vanessa Kirby walks away with
this movie and she's amazing. I like that. Again, as someone who's a fan of the comic books and the more recent stuff, definitely like the character of Malice is something that is a big part of her character, especially in the comic books and I know that she is has made it clear that is something that she wanted to bring to the character, and as someone who again is a fan of that character in the comics, it's a pipe dream to think that we'll ever get that
in the movies. But at least she acknowledges and understands that that's an aspect of a character that isn't just its own separate thing. And she's kind of trafficking that because she doesn't really take anybody shit in this movie, which I appreciate. She has a lot of agency everyone. I mean, she is the founder of the Future Foundation.
Yep, which is like so important in my line, negotiated the treaty with the moment exactly she I don't trust anyone up above ground except for Sue exactly.
Everybody has to clear the room before he'll even have a conversation, right. And it's not one of those I think you're cute, Sue, so I'm going to talk with you, because we've seen that in other movies before too, where it's just the other guys. Is a worn dog for the hot superhero and sound for Fox's sake, and they don't strip her down to her bra and underwear in this movie, either just to show us that she's sexy or just fully naked, like oh no, yeah, covering the bits. Yeah yeah.
A rather again, a rather like tame movie. In a lot of ways. I like that the movie opens with Sue Storm and read Richard's having just like a genuine conversation and it and just the two of them talking about like just life, and there's this kind of the pretext of the moment before she tells them she's pregnant. But I mean, I don't like what a refreshing change from pretty much everything Marvel has been doing up until.
This point, and which make for any for a fantastic for movie. We finally have characters that are seem to genuinely like each other and have feel like relationships, yeah, and feel like a family. And then I'm completely invested in they seem to have skipped all of the origin story bullshit, and this actually does feel lived in, which is so important now and.
It's almost like, go ahead ahead, Well, I was gonna say, they have to be a family, they have to be a unit because they are put into jeopardy with this whole thing of Galactus wanting that baby, and if they weren't a tight family unit, there would be fracks among them.
And as far as I saw in the movie, there's nobody casting doubt other than Reid Richards because, like I said, he's this fucking mad genius where it's just the needs of the one, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few kind of thing. And I'm just like, Okay, Spock, Yeah, I gotcha, But he's not going to give up his child either. They have to be that tight unit. If it was fucking hot head Chris Evans or Michael Chickliss or oh god, any of the Miles Teller like, I
wouldn't believe that they're Michael B. Jordan. Oh, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.
What a what a nice time that Michael B. Jordan has had getting far away from that fucking awful movie, because man to be kill Monger, to be brought back in that second Black Panther movie, because you were, because they because you were so good in the first one, they brought you back in the second one.
Like Kilmager is one of the best characters that they've had, one of the best villains that the Marvel Universe has ever had.
That he dies. This is the second character that even Ben Backrack has played in Marvel that's been really good. He was micro on the Punisher series.
That's right, Oh, that's right.
Yeah, he has the thing, plays the character. It's it's in my mind it's really understated, but I think it needs to be because I almost feel like everybody gets out of the way of Vanessa Kirby. But I think that's important because it's so clear given that again, it's and the plot of the movie is not made apparent
in the preview, but once gets right, I agree. I agree, once the movie gets rolling, it really is Galactus sees Franklin Richards the son of Sue and read as his replacement, which I mean in the comic books, he's he is a cosmic being. It is made very clear that in the in this MCU they're going in some direction similar to the way he's been portrayed before, but there's none of that in the trailers. And so when you find out that it's Galactus wanting the child and all of that,
I don't know. I think to both of your points, like it had to almost be Sustorm's movie because it's again it's so focused on the child and the fact that they're all family and believable family is the reason this works. Like you said, Father Malonely, you have to be a family unit of people. That's otherwise this movie fails. Like put two seconds out of the gate.
This whole movie is about defending your children.
I mean, yeah.
It very much reminded me of if anyone watched the television series torch Wood, which is a spinoff series of Doctor Who. Their third season was a five episode arc called Children of Earth where an alien intelligence shows up and secretly amongst the government demands ten percent of the children of Earth that they're going to use for whatever purposes they're going to. What they believe is they boil them down for recreational chemicals basically, or they're going to
destroy everyone on Earth. And it is harrowing and awful and left me dazed that series. So the fact that they kind of sneak it into this light entertainment here, this threat of we're going to destroy your world unless you give us that kid, and they deal with it because the people on Earth are fucking angry about it. Maybe you should give them your kids. We'd like to live. It's one child verse. It is the needs of the many versus the needs of the one.
And it's the first time seemingly anyone on this planet has had an issue with the Fantastic Four.
Also exactly, they all love them, and it's so important that we set up that montage at the beginning with everyone, thank you Fantastic four and those little dots creating the Big Four for that television special.
Everyone who has a little flag yeah or that little.
That obnoxious guys say the line say the line. I'm like, yeah, this is kind of nice.
I like that there's a difference between cartoon Fantastic Four and real life Fantastic Four. And Ben's just Nope, that's not what I say.
Okay, my favorite I mentioned my favorite character that appears in this thing. It's the Silver Surfer. And because this is Earth eight one eight, we're in a different universe. What we're given is Sheella Ball, who is noorin Rad's wife on Zen Law. So in the original conception of the character, and we got a version of it in that Rise of the Silver Surfer movie with Doug Jones playing the character with Laurence Fishburne doing the voice nor
in Rad is. The plot is that Galactus shows up to his planet says I'm going to eat your planet unless you become my herald, and he says, okay, I'll do it and leaves his wife and child and then lines up being safe. They've just flopped that here and made his wife the character who is now the herald of Galactus, and they eliminate noorin Rad from the plot here. So this is a fully different universe of the Silver Surfer.
But I got to say, at twenty minutes into this movie, the Silver Surfer shows up and her opening shot, it was fucking breathtaking. The realization of this character, like compared to that earlier version of it, or any of the earlier tests of any sort of chrome character I've ever seen, just like this is bread taking. And not only just that sort of opening scene, but like we get cosmic surfing in this movie that I oh my god, God, thank god, man, I left my body. Man when she
they're in that nebula and she's like surfing along. Oh boy, I wanted to watch the movie again right now for that fucking scene.
Man.
I never in a million years would have thought they would actually show that. It feels so weird in the mcu now to be seeing things that, yeah, she's a silver surfer, and she's not just called that. She has a surfboard, not just for a reason like she does it because there are times where she has to do that, like it's just it is a form of conveyance.
But oh yeah, you get her on that board. Yes, if she's on that board, you're fucked man.
Yeah.
And I love the mirroring of the scene of her coming to Earth and warning us versus later on when they've got all of the recordings, the voice recordings from her home planet. I love that that both of those are taking place in that time of square area, which is where like the whole end of the movie happens and everything. I thought that was really nice, just very very smart filmmaking. And of course there are nods to
other things that we've seen. I love the little thing with the Latveria plaque but nobody's there, that country's missing from the big foundation, or that they called the ship the Excelsior. I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's great. That's how stan Lee used to sign off every like stand
soapbox and everything. I thought that was so nice that they weren't just like hammering us with stuff and just giving us enough of those little fan moments, like that they have the mole Man, but they actually bring him back into the movie later on. I was like, Oh, wow, that's actually really smart. Or just that little throwaway moment of the green creature that's coming up through the city streets, I'm like, oh, there's the cover of the first Fantastic Four.
That's so nice. And I love that they do those little things without just oh, well, look in the background and if you see this and this, and Okay, yeah, I was definitely looking in the background, just taking in all of those moments, but it was just because the city was so cool looking and just so much fun to kind of see, like, how does this world work? I guess if you like Canada Dry, you are really in business, because they've got Canada Dry advertising all over.
The place and seven up the whole the splash pages kind of thing that they keep doing in the movie anytime they slow action down to give us a tableau. Earlier in any Marvel film, sort of prior to something of like Avengers, it's almost like in the middle of some big action moment and they basically do a freeze frame to let us Okay, here's a comic book panel
for you. Here here, it's anytime the movie slows down, so you get these sort of poetic moments with the Silver Surfer when Johnny grabs her surfboard for the first time and they're floating together and it's it's so gorgeous. And then later when she's sort of having her crisis of conscience, she sort of floats up and it's just hanging in front of the moon. I was like, this is fucking beautiful. And it didn't feel like they stopped to do it. It felt like organic to the plot.
I fucking love this movie.
I loved when she shows up for the first time and you get all of the people's reactions, and you get those two guys in an office building and they do a reverse shot over their shoulder. You see her in the background and it's Timely Comics and you can see pages out of comic books and stuff, and like, oh, that's nice. We're not going for the obvious. We're not saying, oh, this is a Marvel Comics office. No, this is Timely Comics,
which will eventually evolve. But this is so nice that we just get a little nod to these guys working overnight coloring their comic books and setting up for the next issue as we have the new Silver Surfer outside.
And I looked at the names of the people involved with the film in terms of the screen writing, and so there are four names that are listed. There's Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer.
There's one more for story, right, yeah.
There is one more for story. Cat would so the two names I mentioned at the top, Josh Free and Eric Pearson. Eric Pearson worked on and co wrote Thunderbolts, and then Black Widow and Thor Ragnarok and Agent Carter, and there are a couple uncredited rewrites on certain things like Spider Man Homecoming or Quantum Mania. And then Josh Friedman. He this is his first, Like Marvel, he worked on something that I really hadn't enjoyed. He worked on Terminator.
The Sarah Connor chronicles that, yes, the series is way better than had any write to be. That kind of has been unfortunately forgotten in all the other Terminator bad things. As maybe one of the few good things the Terminator actually did.
After part two. I think it's the only worthy thing other than the video game.
I'm inclined to agree with you. But all that to say, I'm really glad that Marvel is working with people that they have not worked with before in these things, but also still having people that they're continuing to work with in those rooms as well, because I think it's helping balance out the problems that we've been having with a lot of these Marvel movies, which is they just get stuck in these ruts of doing the same thing, not because it's easy, but because it's just kind of the
way Marvel does things. This I think maybe all would agree with me. This is almost a typical of a Marvel movie at this point in a lot of ways. There's what three action scenes in this movie, maybe four, and they're pretty economical too for the most part, and they work rather well and they're good additions to what's going on, but they're not necessarily the focus, because the focus is it's a character drama almost like really it's
a family piece. And I don't know, like I've been kind of preaching about this and bitching about this since Captain America came out, But if you know what the source material style you want to go for is lean into it and they leaned really hard into it here
and it worked like Gangbusters, clearly. And I'm glad because maybe Marvel will continue to be creative and work themselves out of these ruts that they work themselves into, because yeah, this is a lot of this movie just feels atypical of what we've been seeing of Marvel recently.
I think it's good that they're working with the same people in some cases here because or promoting people from within. Because Matt Shackman, he shepherded all of WandaVision. He directed every single one of those and what created that show, and I'm sure was the showrunner overall, so he got to learn how to tell a story in ten episodes or twelve episodes. So he's the perfect guy to tell it in two hours because he can cut off all of the fat and get it all down to its
essential components. And I'd also like to point out that if you read the comics at all, Franklin Reid, his first governess was Agatha Harkness.
Nice. Nice.
Yeah. If I had one complain about the movie, though, it would be that it's it feels rushed sometimes. I know that's very opposite of what you were saying. Chris where you're like, I'm a little bored in parts. But for me, a lot of times it felt like and sometimes I'm okay with this as far as it feels like almost the beginnings and endings are cut off a little bit of each scene just to move it along a little bit more. But I was like, I kind
of like to see a little bit more. But I think that's just because I was enjoying the world so much and enjoying these characters, And if anything, I would have liked to have spent more time with these characters. I would have liked to have known them a little bit more. But it tells a story in less than two hours, which is pretty freaking remarkable, especially because when I booked the tickets for the theater, it was two
and a half hours that they allotted for it. And I guess a lot of that was the pre show.
So it took twenty minutes of trailers, baby, and then ten minutes there they're fucking commercials, exactly.
Two trailers in front of our movie, and that was it. Really two wow wow, And they were both Disney things. Huh we have Avatar and aries trying Oh okay, well, yeah, I mean.
I had both of those, Yeah, and then we had gosh, the New Aeronofsky, The Knew Paul Thomas Anderson and something else. But all three of those it was like, I don't want us see these, which was surprising that I would say that about a Paul Thomas Anderson film.
Oh, Mike, I know, I know.
Leo wins me over sometimes.
Leona Apple warned you.
She tried the action scenes in the movie, by the way, some of them the sort of main The initial one really is Galactus. It's when they jet off to Galactus for the first time, so leading up to the action sequence, which is the escape from Galactus. The sense of scale and the sense of awe leading up to and including when Galactus finally fucking leans down and you get the sense of how fucking huge he is and how tiny we are is something I haven't experienced, I don't think in any Marble film.
No, that's I was gonna say, Man, Like, of all the things that this movie does right is they don't fuck up Galactus and man talk about the MCU going as far as to stop doing the big villain characters for some of their characters initially because they don't want to blow them like they did with Red Skull, and I mean Red Skull is obviously, in my mind like the worst one.
Well that's because they fucking brought him back as some mystic celestials kill everybody.
Well, I mean he's transcended that though, And to be fair, now, you could just bring in Red Skull from Earth wherever.
Fucking stop it.
Hey, don't look at me. I'm not the one who decided multiverses were an easy way to fink.
The war can't come fucking fast enough.
I know, I'm And that's the thing. I'm so glad that this movie wasn't a like retcon horseshit machine, because that's what it would have been. If that's what it would have been. If they had not figured out the multiverse scenario that we're in now, it would have been like the Fantastic Four existed and we didn't know anything about it, and why haven't they been mentioned? This movie would have just been the Eternals, because isn't that The problem the Eternals had was like where the fuck were
you guys this whole time? And you can't I mean, you can't do the I'm not saying you can't do the Fantastic Four without the retro futurism.
But well, you could have done like they've done with the earlier versions of Shield. They have Pank Pim and they had Agent Carter and so so they could have said no. Yeah, in the nineteen sixties, the Fantastic Four went up and they got their powers, and they did a couple of secret missions. Firth and they went up for some other mission and they disappeared. That's how they could just sort of redcon that. But having them be in their own univers is fucking perfect.
Here.
I like them there. Here's the thing. My fear going into this movie was this was going to end in tragedy, that Galactus was going to win and they were going to have to escape and they would be the only ones escaping from their universe into ours, and then I was just gonna feel bad for them for the rest of the fucking run of the Fantastic Four in the MCU, because they would be like Superman or fucking any of these people like you know, four for Christ's sake.
I get the distinct feeling that the way that this plays out is Franklin Richards puts them in the MCU universe unintentionally through some sort of because again, like that's the power level of that character, as he can bend like space and time. And so now, because again to your point, Father Blow, we talked about this at the
end of the Thunderbolt episode. I was under the impression, I think we all were that the Thunderbolts movie and the post credit scene implied that Galactus eight Earth right Earth eight to eight, and that's, you know what, Good
on them for practicing restraint and not doing that. However, I also feel like that's because of the other thing that happened last year, about a year ago now, which is the casting of one Robert Downey Junior as Iron Man replacement Doctor Doom, which I'm assuming is the case in this universe. In this universe, there's not an iron Man, there's a fucking Victor von Doom who's essentially gonna just be dark iron Man, which I mean, again, you have Tony Stark, the actor who played him in that role,
So it makes perfect sense in my mind. Anyways, and clearly, I mean, if they had destroyed Earth, then it would have been where is this doctor Doom coming from? But now it's like he's this universe is doctor Doom.
Right, well, they could have just pulled him from some other universe. And by the way, more than ever, I'm unhappy with the Robert Downey Junior casting as Victor von Doom given what we got in this movie. Yeah, the level of imagination and the perfect spot on casting like across the board, like who these people could have cast for doctor Doom given a wide open net, Like I maybe it'll be good. I don't know. I just think it's a huge mistake.
It I think is the biggest issue I have with this movie, because the lat veria like random mentions and stuff do feel a little like.
No, I'm fine with this, this is this is a Galactus story that says that's my point. That's about the in there.
Focus on that, focus on that because doctor Dum is such a big threat. Don't hint at it because it reminds me, like you said, Father Malone, of the Robert Downey Junior thing, which I agree with you wholeheartedly. A year ago, I was maybe like just more shocked than anything else, and now I'm just kind of like it is kind of subsumed everything as the thing that is kind of like all anyone is focusing on It's like, it's.
Like when the Hulk lands at the Santonius or whatever they doctor strangest place and the nose is coming. Now we're all sitting around here going, Robert Downey Junior is coming back.
Right, and we know it like we know it. Imagine if we hadn't known it and they had revealed it at the end of this movie. Oh God, yes, dude, we would have all collectively lost. And you know what, I don't understand why they passed up that opportunity, because, you know what, it's great to do it at the Hall in fucking San Diego right now. It's I mean, Comic CON's going on, was this past week type thing.
But you're telling me that you would rather have that one video of people reacting to Robert Downey Junior than it being played over and over and over in movie theaters from here until Eternity as the one of the greatest twists in cinema just to see. Could you imagine how many people would have just gone ape shit if they had seen that on screen. That's what could have happened. I don't know why the answer wasn't just will reveal
who doctor Doom is in Fantastic Four. You will see who he is at the end of the movie, Like, why spoil it, because, like you said, father, Like, even if it hadn't been Robert Downey Jr. Whoever it would have been, would have just been like amazingly insane because we know that that's the villain of the next two movies.
They need to have revealed. They need to have revealed anything here. They could have just done what they did and have the hair walk back into the room and see this green cloaked figure and you'd be like, oh fuck, and then that's the end of the movie. By the way, speaking of the end of the movie, uh, it's a happy ending. They pushed Galactus into this black hole and send him into another universe. Did the Fantastic Four, by any chance doom us here on Earth? Because that's kind of how it feels.
But they didn'tush him into another universe. They pushed him to the other side of their universe, right without his spaceship.
Like the Delta quatern or something.
Yeah, so it'll take him millions of years to get
¶ Narrative Conceits and Happy Endings
to us, which I mean, Look, there's a couple narrative conceits in this movie that I feel like are kind of hokey, like the we're gonna all save our energy together, okay movie, we're gonna turn off the world power grid.
You did see the world that they live in, right. I never always gonna say it, but they're all under one banner and the only country not participating in Slatveria.
I get that. I get it, I get it. I was gonna say the movie gets around, it's narrative conceited. That's fine, but again to your point, father Malone, it's a happy ending movie, which I was not expecting when the lactus is involved.
I honestly thought when the power grids started to go down, when they were trying to do the whole we're gonna move Earth out of the way thing instead of move Galactus out of the way, when those grids started going down, I was thinking, oh shit, was that Latvaria just refusing to be part of this and turning off their grid? And I thought we were going to go in a whole other direction. All of the SUDA.
I thought the same thing because they kept showing the map and I was like, it starts in eastern Europe and I was like, wait a second, is that No, it wasn't like.
Yeah, yeah, and then I was like, oh, okay, no,
¶ Silver Surfer's Power
it's just the Silver Surfer having incredible powers, which is so nice to see just how powerful she is, because that's what the Silver Surfer can do. It's none of this bullshit just oh I can be so easily defeated. It takes a fucking lot to defeat this person. And she ultimately in conjunction with Sue and they get everybody else on board and stuff, but ultimately it is her.
It is a Silver Surfer that defeats Galactus, which is just absolutely appropriate that she gets her revenge for her own planet.
It's great. It's the two mothers who defeat Galactus.
Yes, right, yes, And how great is Ralph inison? Is Galactus?
Fantastic?
And then it was a practical effect, like they built a suit for this man and he was like in a Galactas suit. Good on them for doing that, even because it yields dividends. Really, I love the way he looks in this movie, like he's to Mike's point earlier about the fucking floating cloud, which they because they couldn't commit to just a giant dude floating through space in a big.
Would look silly. You can't do it. It be silly.
It would he could be inside of a spaceship again, like who cares? Right, Like just again they think that audiences used to want to go watch comic book movies that made comic books boring. And it's like, we read comic books because they're exciting and fun and over the top and bombastic, but then also they can be all kinds of other things, but don't try to take what makes comic books out of them and set them in
the real world. And it has to be real and reality like why And it was so refreshing to watch the MCU just go yeah, like at some point we are going to stop trying to make everything in real life and just accept that this guy's just building a suit of armor and he can fly around in it, and we have a god and all of those things can interact science basically like they do in the comics,
and that's not a problem for the audience. And this movie really is like the one of the better examples of like the audience is on board from the first moment we're watching the movie, and by minute fifty when a guy in a giant space chair jumps down and starts antagonizing our heroes. Everybody's like this, cool, we're on board. You already got me through the door, and I'm on
board with you. And that's again tell Us in two thousand and eight about this movie being like this, and I don't think I think our brains would have collectively melted.
I loved when Galactus just the I mentioned the sense of scale when they're on his ship, but the whole sequence at the end when he's chomping around the city
is so incredible. Man, just watching him turn in a building behind him you can see all the glass shatter on a skyscraper, or him balancing himself on buildings, speaking of buildings in the earth in the opening scene, not to keep jumping around, but in the opening when we get the mole Man's first exploits where he takes the pan Am building and drops it into the ground again another sequence that would have been the big payoff of any other action movie like that was fucking fantastic and
felt fun and not horribly destructive, whereas here at the end where Galactus is going crazy, just the sense of destruction was unlike anything we've seen in some time, and felt more personal than we've seen in some time. I know I always say about superhero movies since day one, we don't need them to save the world. It can be a personal story, like it can just be a couple of characters versus a couple of other characters, and
we'll fucking go with it. But in this case, if you're gonna have them save the world, here's the way to fucking do it. Have a fucking giant celestial character tramping around and you're flailing trying to stop him.
Yeah.
I love the look. Again, going back to that and thinking about even their handler, who's played by Sarah Niles,
I think she's a great character. I kind of wish I would have seen a little bit more of her, but her with her blue coat that she always wears like she's part of the team, and then even in their big un type building, like all the chairs are blue, and I just love that the blue carries through with everything, just to We've seen Theirs in the past movies and they've never been this bright a shade of blue before.
We've never had a bright and shiny world in which they live, and with this retro futurism, it just gives everything this kind of candy colored sheen to it and I love it. I just it's a feast for the eyes, which a lot of these movies think about. I'm talking about you, Quantumnium, talking about you, thor Love and Thunder. A lot of these just look like shit, and this one looked really good.
The sense of style that they allow Matt Shackman to have is shocking.
It really is.
Like I keep harping, I imagine if they had been letting everybody do this from the get go. I know why they didn't, we all get it, but just imagine.
I don't know in a lot of ways, like Father Malone already mentioned it, but I think it kind of bears a little bit of talking about now, Like imagine now knowing what you've seen, is James Gunn what you can do in response to the MCU with the DCU, and that the audiences are now more receptive to just doing whatever the fuck you want because we're just gonna
tell the stories that people want to see. And if it Robert Pattinson's Batman is not ever with the Nicholas Holts Lex Luthor, So what that doesn't mean you don't get Robey Patten.
Separate, You know what? I I don't want that. I don't want that Pattinson Batman running into mixed mister mix like right, or bat.
Might or any of that. Yeah, and James Gunn's stuff allows for that, And that's the thing that is the bummer here. And I think it's the transition point in my mind of what does this look like when they interact with the characters from.
The ncu' wait actually awesome.
Because half of it's just gonna be like, why do you look like this? What is with your outfits like and your uniforms and your sense of style? And because again that's the thing. At the end of the Thunderbolts we saw them reacting to the ship, not to the ship itself, but the fact that there was a ship in their orbit. Part of it would be like, what the fuck does why does the ship look like that?
Because again it looks so markedly different than anything we've seen in any of the MCU, even the most Again, to point out something that I think this movie does better than Black Panther, to speak to the retrofuturism that they actually do in this Unlike Black Panther here it works really well. But yeah, you have to essentially create an entire new universe around this, because there's no way right now with the MCU the way it is to
do it any other way. So to your point, by them alone, Like, I can't wait to see where they go with it. But they have to address it because there's no way that they don't like it's so stark a contrast between Earth eight to eight and Earth six to six.
Oh, I'm sure they'll definitely address it. I'm sure it'll be a source of comedy in future movies. And what I liked here is that it seems like since studios started taking superhero movies seriously, there has been a push to get as far from comic book accurate costumes as possible, starting with the X Men. Let's put them all in black leather. Okay, sure, that makes it somehow more relatable to the real world, I guess, so to have them lean so fucking heavy into the original look of the
Fantastic Four. But what I discovered here is because I watched the ninety four version, and they replicate the costumes of the comic book almost exactly in that as well. The difference one, yeah, the difference is of course that these are heavily stitched and designed, and there's an eye towards a real world version of those costumes. So you can do anything, and we'll fucking go with I mean, now, after fucking Deadpool and Wolverine, when we've got a comic
accurate remy Lebau. These days, you can pretty much get away with anything.
But I'm surprised you mentioned the good old Channing Tatum and not that Wolverine like screen accurate or the comic book.
Which one the tiny one in the bar one yellow?
The tiny one is the best one. The yellow one.
Yeah, the tiny one's amazing.
Yeah, No, the yellow one. I mean we finally get the Wolverine with the with the vertical.
Oh yeah, no, certainly, yeah, Oh yeah, Batman facing each other, I think, yeah, that's true.
And when you put that fucking mask on, like everyone in the fucking theater cheered, and it's such a one hundred and eighty degrees from before like it, we cannot ever show him in this. This is no one will ever accept this. It's too ridiculous.
Well, they're faking jokes about it in the first one, what do you expect? Yellow spind.
I like, I like that the thing has an eyebrow, Ridge in this.
Yes, Yeah, he's really really good.
This is the This is the best version of the thing that's been ever, ever been put to film. But I like Michael Chickliss as an actor. I think what he was doing exactly what he was asked for. And that's not a bad thing for that. I mean, not a bad thing for him as an actor. But those movies, I mean, Father Milone, you already referenced it like he's just a sad sack of shit those whole movies. It's kind of one note. But Plus plays that note really well though, Like to his credit, I.
Think the prosthetic work in that is is really really good, except they needed to have done something like Peter Jackson photographically, you know what I mean, sizing him in some way to make it more like he he looks like he's he looks like a little he looks like a human being underneath all of that rock. This looks like a rock man.
Right, And that's the Yeah, it's surprising how well the thing works because it's the one thing that I feel like they haven't been able to get right in any of these movies.
Ninety four version. I do want to give the ninety four version it to do because Steve Johnson suit in that for they had a million dollar budget in that movie, which means he maybe got fifty sixty thousand dollars and he made that one suit. It's fucking incredible. If he had been given a couple of million dollars, we would have had a practical suit in ninety four that would talk and fucking move and fucking clobber and time all day.
Hey man, those turtle suits in the nineties are a good example that you could have done it if you actually had the wherewithal to do it. I mean, those turtle suits I think are still in my mind like the best animatronics ever made because those they carry those movies say, which will about those movies, but those are four people in fucking full lass puppet suits like giving it they're all and yeah, I think that is the bummer is The thing about that original Korman movie is
just it's a big what if. I mean, look, the Captain America from the nineties similarly.
Like Captain America, come on over here.
Came out and it's bad. Fantastic four movie at least would have had some charm. And that's the thing, Like I the thing that the Fan four Stick movie didn't have that those first two had, where they were at least like mildly charming. Chris Evans is kind of charming, Michael Chick is kind of charming. Like they're all kind of charming like that Fan Forour Stick just was like, let's be serious and they take all the fun and
the charm out of it. We've kind of talked about him a little bit, but I think it's speaking of charm. I think for me, like Pedro Pascal, this is I'm good now, Like I don't need you to be in everything anymore.
And this is like the thing where I'm like you, like I really liked him, honestly, I know.
I like that's the thing, Like he's really good and this is I'm saying, like peak Pedro Pascal. But dude, like I don't what else can you be in at this point because you've now been like in everything in a degree that like no one else can even replicate. Like he's he's like a singular Star Wars character for them, too, more important than fucking Luke and Han Solo Mandalorian is. Some people's like the Star Wars they only care about which it's that's fucking Pedro Pascal.
He's been around for quite a while now, and I've seen him in tons and tons of things, but I've only recently warmed Pedro Pascal. So this is the perfect movie for me to finally embrace him because I loved his Read Richards. We got the actual perfect Read Richards in that Doctor Strange. In the multiverse of madness. No one could portray the smug, fucking assholary that is Read Richards like John Krasinskily.
Thank god, thank god. I do not like John Krasinsky at all. He's such a smug guy, right like, he plays it so well.
I despise him.
Yeah, I was so glad that they kept the stretching to a minimum and that they didn't do just stretch for stretch sake, like those weird things like I like when he used his arm to go up on the blackboard. I was like, oh, okay, that works, and I.
Like that the blackboard was also it looked mid century modern that it came up in peaks, but it also made sense because he could stretch up that far exactly.
But then in the big action scene at the end when he's going around and he's stretching all over the place like that looks all right, but it's keep that shit to a minimum. We don't really need to see it because it goes no matter what, no matter how they do it, it's always going to be uncanny because we just don't move that way, so it's always going to be weird. So I think they do his best of a job as I can by keeping it to a small percentage of it. And I liked when Galaxis
was stretching him out. Oh my god, I the pain on his face. I thought that was really great. I think the one missed moment for this is when Sue is laying on the street, possibly dead. She should have woken up and said, I really want to try some shwarma. I think that would have been a perfect way to end the film.
All I could think was, man, read Richards is not putting his back into that CPR. He's doing what come on, man, dude, that's your wife brother. Oh yeah, but deusex Franklin Richard's Baby's baby.
Yeah, and that's when that baby looks awful. A few times in there when the baby looks out. There's a few times well, especially like when he's trying to get to his mother.
I'm just like, oh, cg. Baby, It's like, you're scaring Meg, but.
Baby head, Hey, that baby has the power cosmic, all right, it does.
It does have the power cosmic. It can bring people back to life. It can.
You know what's funny is in the in the comics, Schalliball one time appeared as a silver Surfer because Galactus, in the form of Franklin Richards.
Made her Obama Michelle shall Obala Michell Obama.
Good god, oh my god.
You know what?
That was the other thing that was nice because this movie is set in like retrofuturism. Like I I I went into this movie, is like I kind of forgot that there was a real world outside. And that is again I think Father Malone you would agree clearly having seen it twice now, like there's something to be said for that given that, like we literally two weekends ago talked about Superman not doing that Superman literally just being like, let's steer into this shit with the rage baiting troll
of Lex Luthor. There's none of that here and again, and you we've already talked about it a little bit. In this universe, it is a much better world, clearly than our own. Can you imagine what twenty twenty five would look like if this was the universe that we lived in. Just again, the world coming together to turn all of our electricity off other than these one group of assholes in Latvaria, what would that look like?
That's yeah, though, the whole thing of and they've even started Galactus cults. I was like, oh fuck that that strikes.
Down the deaf cults. They're coming.
Oh, boy o, boy o boy.
I wept many times during this movie. I know I'm a sentimental old man and everything, but there were moments of actual, fucking, pure emotion. This movie features a birth in space. I've never seen that in a movie, and it is emotional and appropriate, and it comes in the middle like of an action sequence. I don't know, gentlemen, this movie.
Made for Father alone.
It really was. And here's the thing. Like I said, I'm not the biggest Fantastic Four fan, I can take or leave them. The fact that they were going to have Silver Surfer in this had my money, and the fact that we were getting screen accurate Galactus and everyone involved. Obviously I was going to go see this movie, but I had no expectations whatsoever. And it really won me over. It really reinvigorated my interest in the Marvel sort of universe.
I can't wait to fucking finish this goddamn saga, the multiverse saga. We got three more, is it? Now? We've got Spider Man and the two Avengers movies and then we're done, and then we can fucking move on to our next frontier. And it can't come soon enough because if this is where we're going, I'm so excited.
¶ The Future of the MCU and DCU
Does that mean that Marvel is now just gonna do this is its own thing, like that the Fantastic Four just gonna have two sequels and or as many as this time allows, and it'll just be in their universe. That's my hope.
We could be so lucky.
I mean again, like if you go to other multiversal things that have been done, one of them, speaking of DC, is Injustice the video game. In the video game, in the first one, it's like a multiversal crossover that causes the issues, but in the second game has nothing to do with that, and it's just taking place in that universe that was dealing with multiversal stuff in the first game, but now it's just dealing with things in that universe. They're different than the universe you're used to. But we
don't go and have alternate universe Batman brought in. I mean, we don't have any of that. Again, It's just that's whatever is taking place in this universe is that is that version of the game. And that's what I would like to see with the MCU after this. If the Fantastic Four do exist beyond this, I hope it's just in their own universe doing their own fucking thing.
The hell did you just say?
It made sense to me? Anyways, I would like if these movies stay in their own lane moving forward and don't get bogged down in the MCU of it all, because I think the MCU could do like the DCU is going to do and allow things to just be
their own things. And there's nothing wrong with that, because I don't think Father Malone, your favorite Superheroes, Captain America, Captain America, Sam Wilson would not work on Earth eight to eight the end, right, It wouldn't work, and I don't want to see it, and I would prefer to just have this be its own thing moving forward. After whatever they decide to do with Doomsday and everything else.
Yeah, I agree with you. If they go back to Earth A two eight and they just chill because they are, as far as I can see, the Earth's only real protectors. Keep keep them with that Earth, Let them stay there, let them have their thing, Let them move against other
villains if they need to. I am curious. I'm excited to see the deleted scenes with John Malcove, which I think that would be pretty cool seeing him, and from the just the tiniest images that I've seen, I don't know if he's in jail during it or what's going on. But we get the red apes. I'm not familiar with that character, so it seems so cheesy to have these red apes going around. But I'm like, yeah, that's the Fantastic four.
I love it. Oh yeah, man, fantastic He's got his army of apes. Yes, really fun and the fact that it was going to be Malkovich. But I feel like we kind of got robbed of a few movies of just the sort of wacky adventures that's fantastic for.
Yeah, he was on the poster, not his face, but his name, so I was just like, oh, well, I wouldn't for a while because I try to stay away from this stuff as much as possible. I was like, well, I wonder if he's voicing Galactis, that would be interesting. Yeah, this is this big cloud with John Malkovich's voice coming out of it.
You Pig Fox Philip Seymour Hoffman, who's essentially just also just kind of doing John malcovitch'svoice of.
He's got the same accent he had from what was that The Rounders, right, And there's a little bit of moment of comedy in here right at the end to lighten it up with them trying to put the baby seat in, And I was like, that actually works for me. Had that been at the beginning of the movie, I don't know if I would have taken it. But by the end, I have such good will for these characters that I just like, yeah, this is it and that they need to use fucking teamwork to make it work.
This movie makes the unthinkable real and it gives Ben Grimm facial hair that doesn't look ridiculous.
Oh my god, it was awesome.
I know.
I was like, man, that's so cool.
He walks into that temple with the hat and everything. I was like, yeah, man, he looks like a Rabbi, He's.
Like, he looks great.
Yeah.
I will say I wish that they had given the it's clobbering time moment a little bit more of like a pause, or maybe my movie theater just wasn't loud enough, like the mixing wasn't loud enough, but it kind of got lost in the explosion punching Galactus in the sight of the face of it all, and it's also.
In the moment where Galactus is stretching Reid Richards, which is very harrowing, and then they cut away to this sort of raw, raw moment and it's it is, Yeah.
It's jarring because, like I did see in one of the final trailers for the movie, they showed the lead up to that scene in that, but they don't show that It's clobbering time payoff. And I was like, man, I can't wait to see what it's like in the movie. And then when I saw the movie, was like, man, I almost wish they had just done that fucking Captain
America thing where it's like Avengers dot dot dot. I wish they had just done that, given it for a moment and maybe Avengers Doomsday or something where we actually have him say it, because if this was going to be it, I don't know. You didn't give the moment enough time to breathe, which is a weird thing to say for a rockman screaming at a giant space god.
And the next time and the next time he says it, I want him to say it very quietly and mean right.
Oh yeah, Clovering.
Time just whacked the shit out of Doctor Doom like upper cut him. Yeah. Yeah, man, The Thing is a character that I don't know, like you could give him his own You could give him his own thing, like you can give any of these characters their own thing. That's maybe another direction to go to split them off and do their own thing as well.
I used to read that The Thing had at least one spinoff series that I read all of that, and it was almost a little not quite Planet Hulk esque, but it was him on another planet kind of doing his own thing. Because it just felt like such an outsider and I was like, Okay, yeah, this works. I love that series.
Yeah man, and please, I know we're getting anurin Rad Silver Surfer. From what I hear, they're doing it as like they did the Werewolf by Night. They're going to do it as a like a special and please, for the love of God, because we can do any kind of story we want. Give us existential nurin Rad, give please, just half an hour of him just surfing the fucking universe is fine.
Well, that's the other question, right, Like is this the Galactus from this movie? Is that the only Galactus?
No?
Right, but again, like they say that Galactus is a multiversal thing.
In this well then he very well may be. But fact, I don't know how they'll resolve that with Nora and Rad.
That's my point, Like, I'd be very curious if they how they resolved that, because if this is Earth eight to eight silver Surfer, that's one thing. But if this is all of this universe of anything's Galactus, then there could only ever be the Silver.
So that's why I'm thinking, like whatever plan they had to knock Galactus to the other side of their universe, they opened a black hole, they'd have no fucking idea where he went right, right, Yeah, I.
Mean again, like that to your point, like maybe they did just send him to Earth sixty six.
I guess, because look, all the action takes place on our Earth in the Marvel universe, so they can have their fun over there, but all the shit's gonna end up here eventually, right right, Well, yeah.
That any of the serious stuff anything with this where the stakes need to be resolved, like are going to have to take place on Earth six to six.
So, as far as I can tell, the next Marvel movie that TV show, but the next More movie is that Spider Man movie, which is set to come out July thirty first, twenty twenty six, just fucking wild. And then it's six months later Avengers Doomsday, and then a year later Secret Wars.
We've gone into the scarce, the feast and famine times. We're in the famine times with Marvel again.
This is hey, man, if we got to wait and we get movies like this, fucking take a year, take two years, do you I know?
I'm I was gonna say as a video gamer, this is a thing that we deal with like a lot of like oversaturation of things like and Marvel. I think Marvel and Disney and Star Wars reached an oversaturation point during probably the would we all say, what early pandemic years twenty one twenty two. I think everybody was getting burned out in that kind of maybe once that.
Fucking Boba Fet thing was up, the talents from Boba Fet by then, I think it was like that was all over that, all of the fucking sequels.
And for me with Marvel, it was like stuff like Moon Night, like I do too, but it doesn't have any stakes with anything. It doesn't seem like it's ever gonna mask.
Those were all over long. They all should have been two hour movies. Well, those series were nothing but diluting everything that was going on with Marvel.
Well that's the thing, like you just said with the Werewolf by Night thing, like I didn't need a full fucking series of that. That was exactly enough. Yeah, man, perfect enough.
And I, by the way, recommend they have that in color. If you can watch that in color, watch it in color. It's a thousand times better.
I was gonna say. Speaking of Michael Giacchino, Wow, talking about doing some heavy lifting in this movie and the Fantastic Four theme, like the motif is great. I don't know, like they He's a great He obviously did great with Werewolf by Night. But I mean Michael Giaccino just talk about I wouldn't say modern day John Williams, but definitely someone who's has that that level of I don't know, grandeur when it comes to working in the film landscape because it gives this movie like a sense of g
o vent it needed. And again, like we've already mentioned the Fantastic Four, is this only Earth's Defender? Like that, there needs to be some real weight given to these characters and what they're dealing with because it's there, the four of them in between destruction.
Plus it's got a lot of frolicsome early sixties kind of lounge music kind of themes going on.
Well, it was nice too that as far as I could tell, the songs weren't Earth songs, that they were like Earth songs but a little bit different because it's a whole different Earth. And I was like, okay, well that's nice. It's kind of that like Fringe when they would go to the alternate universe and they would see like different cars, like different It was the Eric Stoltz version of Back to the Future. Like those differences were there,
which I liked. And it wasn't like punching you in the face with things, So it wasn't like we had to have a music video where it was kind of like the Beatles but not quite them. It's okay, please. Like, even though this universe, this world, this eight two eight could have led itself to really gimmicky, garbage type stuff,
they stayed away from it. They didn't even focus on the cartoon that much, just a couple of moments during the movie, and then having the cartoon intro at the end I thought was really a smart thing and also harkened back to the end of the One Spider Man movie where they were no way helme I think, where they're all pointing at each other and I think one of the one of the Sony animation ones where.
The animated one does yeah, twenty.
Ninety nine version of Spider Man coming in. Yeah, that was nice, and I thought that was a very nice way to end it.
I'm glad that this movie didn't dip, like it's toe
too much into comedy. I mean, it's I would say it's about as comedic as any Marvel film is, but I would say it's less so in my like mind, like there are moments of comedy, but there aren't those like it's seeming like we're thankfully getting away from those Josh Weedon moments that this like MCU was plagued by for what a decade after event like it was Cracker, but it was also but it was also like serious beat, serious beat joke to undercut the two serious beats because
we could never be serious and this movie doesn't do that. Thunderbolts doesn't really do that either. I went and rewatched Thunderbolts as well, like I did too.
By the way, my estimation has grown, my criticisms remain. I think it's clunky and really poorly paced. But oh but yeah, the ending is fucking riotously good.
Yeah, it's it is way I like to your point, Like, I think it's way better than it had any right to be. And I have really re enjoyed, like I've enjoyed rewatching it like two or three times.
Even that's a good team. I really enjoy them.
Yeah, and same here. Like as much as maybe Pedro Prescal for me, doesn't do all the heavy lifting, he's almost the Leonardo of the group. There always has to be one character that can stand to be underwritten a little bit, but doesn't always have to be. But Pedro Pscal is great. But for me, I think all of this movie really does benefit from the four leads just being so great together in a way that the Thunderbolts were, and I'm hopeful that with more team based.
Let's do that. Yeah, keep keep giving us teams, for christ ake, give us the fucking Midnight Suns. They're sitting right there.
I know. And I'm hopeful for the x Men, like I'm hopeful for whatever we get of the X Men. This makes me so unbelievably hopeful for whatever we get as their version of the X Men, because it'll probably be a mix of whatever they're doing with Doomsday and whatever they're doing beyond that. But I'm hopeful that it's great because they've been kind of nailing it with these big hero teams recently, and the chemistry is really where
this kind of comes down to. And the actors right now, they must just be champion at the bit to work with Marvel. If you're in a team setting, because you get to work with these great actors and feed off of one another, it must be great.
So you're saying that Pedro Pascal is good, but he can be better. That was a wonder Woman nineteen eighty four.
Oh God, Jesus, Mike, why the movie that made Pedro Prescal Never want to shave his face again, apparently, is what he has said. I hated the way I looked about facial hair. If your hair looked like that, I believe it.
¶ Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Anything else we want to say, fellas, go.
See this movie. I love Superman, but this is better than Superman. See both of these like this. You just said it, Chris hopeful for the future of superhero movies. I thought it was all over, and finally it seems people are figuring out that you got to give us a good story and take your time and make the characters enjoyable and make everything pay off and maybe in still a sense of awe and wonder that we all go to the fucking movies for in the first place.
As much as Deadpool Wolverine last year didn't nail it, the thing that movie nailed was that fucking team up at the end. That was the best part of that whole movie. That's that's the best team up I think in any of those Deadpool movies, because you're like, Okay, there's a sense of those characters, there's a sense of how Deadpool interacts with them. There's a sense of how they interact with Deadpool. They're all kind of different, but they are all on a similar wavelength, and that works
really well. And I can't help but wonder how much of that positive energy and chemistry of those teams work their ways into the other scripts and the things that were being worked on around the same time being filmed and going into production, like this movie was, and Thunderbolts really and just that Deadpool Wolverine movie, just everything. But the team up at the end is kind of eh. But you know what if that sets the tone for
some of these things moving forward. Great, because there's about to be a really big team up thing, and I hope it's half as good as that original Avengers big ass team up was with Endgame, because our Infinity War, because that's a pretty high barred across at this point. So but these are some good team up, teamed team films, So I can only hope that beyond this, It'll bet.
There's nothing but potential. From everything that's come up until now, all of the films have been long, they've been all disappointing in one way or another. But now we know who those characters are, we're established with them. If we can get them into a situation that is half as good as Infinity War, where I think we're golden.
For the first time in a long time. There's a good Marvel and a good DC movie in the movie theaters that you could go watch on a Saturday back to back and not have a bad time with either.
And by the way, it was never one versus the other. As comic book fans, we love both of them like we want them both to succeed.
Right, And if you don't feel that way, then get the fuck out of here, because that's only good for us that they're both successful. Not I mean it's good for them too, obviously financially, but as consumers them being good at the same time actually makes both of them better in the long run, because if you're just resting on your laurels, one of the other ones can be complacent.
Cough cough, Marvel. It's not like Marvel saw DC and when we're just gonna elevate ourselves further than them, they looked at him and went, these guys just keep shooting themselves in the foot over and over again. It's making it. It's like racing a one legged.
Man like you.
You're ahead all the whole time, and Marvel got so complacent that they're having to redo everything but I'm so excited to see what that is at this point because the way they treat the audiences is so markedly different from ten years ago, let alone two thousand and eight. So yeah, hopeful is hopeful for the first time with Marvel is wild? Marvel is one thing, but DC is a no. Collectively is this is a first I think in our lifetimes with these kinds of things.
Really, it was very strange when I went to the theater. I pulled right into a very convenient spot. There were very few people on the lobby. There are very few people in my theater. I know it did very well this weekend, but it was pretty empty when I was sitting there, which was a big surprise for me because I was expecting packed packed everything. I was like, Oh, this is the fantastic for the this is going to be huge. I mean the theater was overflowing for endgame,
of course, but not here. Not here, UNFORTUNATELYNGS. So I don't think they've got legs.
Yeah, I don't think they've built up the fucking the goodwill yet, you know, like Thunderbolts was a good first step, honestly, that before first steps.
Yeah, I'm this has taken a lot of momentum to get to this point, and they need to keep this is a good thing, that this will keep it building and not stifle it. But to your point, Mike, like I went and saw it in my theater was almost full, and I saw it today at one in the afternoon on a Sunday. So the post church crowd in the Midwest showed up for this movie. So I'm thankful for that.
They're the kind of the hardest ones to get through the door sometimes, especially on the weekends, because there's so much other stuff to do. There were plenty of people there, and it was a pretty mixed crowd too, a lot of adults, but there were also some families with kids.
So yeah, yeah, there was one couple in the theater with a baby, and so whenever Franklin would get upset, the baby would get upset. So it was almost like stair.
Was dobe at most. Feel everything.
Well, Chris, when you're not talking about the Fantastic fourward, are you up to these days?
Just doing audio stuff with you over at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Well, you and Father Malone. From time to time we do a little show with Father Malone every other week we're on his show Midnight Viewing, and then I've taken a little bit of a break from my show to kind of retool it. But the Culture Cast still has six hundred and ninety one episodes, which is a lot. So if you want to go listen to that show, it's on weirding Way Media too, But that's where you can
go for everything that I work on. What about you, father Malone.
You just mentioned my show Midnight Viewing, where we look at horror anthologies and horror things in general, you gentlemen, and I every other week look at tails from the dark Side. Currently, those other weeks are filled with a bunch of fests right now, HP, the host of Night Mister Walters, and I are currently going through the works of John Fusco and our Fusco Fest. We've also begun our Yaucha Fest, which is the actual name of the
race in the Predator movies. We're starting with Predator this Friday. It's it's it's a great series. We're having a lot of fun doing it. So that's what we're up to.
From Predator Fress What is this Marl Logoh hey, hey, exactly why we're calling it Yaucha fest.
Yaucha Fest. That's got a nice ring to it. I like that two thumbs way way up from it.
And as for me, you can find everything that I do also at wordingway media dot com, including the Projection Booth, which you are currently listening to one version of it. So you might be listening to this under the culture Cast or under Midnight Viewing. But yes, all of those wordingwaymedia dot com, come on over give us a listen. I think you'll be very pleased.
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