Fantastic Four: First Steps

Last night, I caught Fantastic Four: First Steps. It's been a good summer for superhero fans, with films from both Marvel and DC that easily above average for the genre. It's unfortunate, perhaps, that coming out in close proximity means the films will inevitably be compared to each other.

Like Superman, FF eschews the origin story to jump into a universe where the characters are already firmly established (4 years for the FF, 3 years for Superman) and well-loved by the public. FF pits new challenges against its protagonists, who are both heroes, celebrities, and effectively politic players through what is (I guess) an NGO. The first is a happy one: Sue's pregnancy. The second is the arrival of the Silver Surfer (though the name is never used in the movie, I don't think) who heralds the coming of Galactus.

Again, like Superman, FF gets a bit episodic with the overall narrative, as the team conceives and tries and generally fails at different means of stopping the threat. Franklin Richards is born in what may be films first zero gee birth sequence while they are feeling Galactus' relentless herald through space, after a failed attempt to negotiate with World Devourer.

FF has a more serious tone that Superman, despite having a bit less darkness to it. (While the world is imperiled there are no on-screen murders or torture, for instance). There are less jokes, though, and decidedly less of the typical Marvel quipiness.  The warmth of the team and their connection as a family does come through, though.

If I have a complaint about the film, it is with these family dynamics. The often (in the comics) fractious team members are pretty harmonious. A reasonable choice given how plot heavy it is, but none of the team get any sort of individual arc, except arguably Reed. There are gestures in that direction, but only gestures. Reed and Sue get a decent amount of character development and a bit of growth, but Ben only has the surface features of his comic portrayal, and Johnny, his hot-headed youth and womanizing attenuated to only shadows, doesn't really have anything else to replace, save perhaps a certain impatience and doggedness. He's worst served by the script.

Still, the performances are good with what they have to work with. There are tense sequences. The mid-century design sensibility manages to break the Marvel sameness to give it a distinct style. Galactus maybe should have been worked on a bit more to shore up imposing solidity, but we do get to see a giant in a goofy helmet stride through New York City, as that's something.

Jame Gunn's Superman

Last night, I attended a special showing of James Gunn's Superman. My short review is: I liked it a lot. I think it's the best Superman movie ever (with the caveat that it likely wouldn't have been made without an existing tradition of Superman films to build and comment upon), and one of the best superhero movies period.

I was a bit worried, honestly, when I heard Gunn was going to helm this one. I've enjoyed his previous films, but they often engage in a level and type of humor that while fine on an individual film level, I have come to like less when it's the standard for superhero films. There's often not a lot of space in the movies between having fun with superheroes and making fun of them. 

Also, as specifics for this film became to come out, I had other concerns. It seemed like it was overstuffed, like Gunn was trying to jumpstart an entire universe with one movie. That sort of ambition has proved hubris for superhero movies before, I feel like. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, I think most everyone would agree, seems at times to be spewing out product solely to point to future products.

Happily, my fears weren't realized. The film has humor, yes, but it isn't farcical or even particularly quippy in the tired manner of CMU films. It does eschew any of the reverence or perhaps mythic tone that has been a part of Superman's cinematic portrayals since the first Donner film--to the detriment, I think, of later films like Superman Returns or Man of Steel. This film is lighter, definitely, but critics of the "darkness" of the Snyder films should reckon with this films inclusion of government sanctioned extralegal detention, torture, Lex Luthor murdering an innocent man to coerce Superman, an extralegal execution by a superhero, and a shocking (well, as shocking as something that was foreshadowed with the subtlety of a flare) reveal about Jor-El and Lara.

Through this all, Superman, however, stays good and strangely innocent. This is the character at his most "Blue Boy Scout." It's to a degree not seen, perhaps, since the Superfriends. Gunn seems to have gotten an aspect of the pre-Crisis Superman (perhaps from Morrison's All-Star Superman) that isn't much talked about where Superman suffers indignity and hurt to solve problems in the name of not resorting to violence or at least to minimize violence before he acts. It's a thing that most sets his stories apart from Marvel Comics stories or even his fellow headliner at DC, Batman. While it likely started as a means to not have stories end too quickly through use of amazing power ultimately sort of became a character trait.

The film is perhaps objectively a bit of a too rich superhero confection, but its kind of in media res plotting makes things move along so that it's not ponderous. Further, the inclusion of multiple other heroes doesn't seem to be merely to build a universe. The narrative needs those other heroes so we can see Superman inspiring others to be better, and we can feel the limits of his personal abilities. Even Superman sometimes needs a friend.

There are things I didn't care for. The Kents are rural caricatures in a way they've never seen before and that's distracting and unnecessary. It might be a mistake to have Lois raise very good points about the unilateral use of force in complicated geopolitical situations only to ignore them, or perhaps imply it's okay 'cause Superman's really, really good.

But dodging ethical questions and realistic implications has a long history in comics, so I can't get too upset about it here. Questionable portrayals of the Kents are hardly new to Superman media. 

Overall, these feel like talking about the icing. The cake is really good.

Some Thoughts on the Indiana Jones Franchise

I finally got around to watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny this past weekend. I liked it more than I expected, and some quibbles aside, I think it's a nice ending to the series. 

It got me to thinking about the Indiana Jones film series in general, and I realized something that I hadn't before. An internet search tells me I'm not the first to have the basic idea--maybe even Lucas has said things that alluded to it, but no one has really looked at the implications over the whole series. 

The Indiana Jones films can be viewed as a series of unsuccessful attempts to bring the protagonist to redemption and the end of his arc.

The Arc and the Ark

The Indiana Jones of Raiders of the Lost Ark is not a good guy. This has been obscured a bit by him becoming a franchise hero and a pop cultural figure, but it's clear in the first film. I don't just mean with in regard to the colonialist elements of his work and adventures when viewed through a 2024 lens, I mean textually. Indiana Jones is a thief, as the opening sequence shows us. Maybe he steals artifacts to put them in museums instead of for the black market, but it's still theft and he's paid for it. The major difference between him and Belloq is that Belloq chooses to work with the Nazis and that's a step too far for Indy.

Let's not forgot he also enters a relationship with his mentor's teenage daughter when he's in his mid-twenties, then runs off and abandons her. 

All of this was intentional because one of the inspirations for the character of Indiana Jones and his appearance was the roguish Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) in Secret of the Incas (1954). At the end of that film, Steele has at least partially been reformed by the love of a good woman--and conflict with antagonists more villainous than himself. 

It's a lot like what happens to Indy in Raiders. He reconnects and rekindles his relationship with Marion, and he becomes motivated to stop the power of the Ark from falling into Nazi hands. In the end, the cynic and skeptic comes to respect the Ark's power and survives the apocalyptic judgement on the evildoers it unleashes. He and Marion head off together in a happy ending.

Back to the Temple of Doom

Really, Raiders seems like it's meant to be the ending to Indy's story. He gets his redemption and heads off into the sunset. The first sequel, Temple of Doom, respects this arc by being a prequel. It's a story of the old Indy before he met the Ark. Sure, he does return the stones to the village they belong to rather than steal them, but he was always a rogue with a heart of gold, so the occasional lapse into heroic action is allowable.

The only problem with ToD from this perspective, I think, is that Indy encounters the supernatural, which the Indy of Raiders seems skeptical of until he sees it in action. One would think he would be more of a believer if he had encountered such things before. I think this is the first indication of a formula beginning to develop.

Grails, Skulls, and Dials

The subsequent films are all sequels to Raiders, and more then ToD, tend to follow its formula. In order to do this, they have to backtrack a bit, not necessarily unrealistically, on Indy's redemption arc. Also, he's a bit less in need of that redemption because he's portrayed somewhat more heroically in these films. Nevertheless, we get the arc repeated with Indy reconciling with his father, reconciling with his son, his goddaughter, and again reconciling with Marion (in two films!). As with Raiders, a supernatural force and a battle with evil to possess it (and a realization that it can't be possessed) is the vehicle for this reconciliation. The needs of the franchise demand he never fully learns his lesson and gets his happy ending.

Last Crusade adds another interesting element that highlights this arc in case anyone was missing it. We have a flashback where the young Indiana Jones is in conflict with a treasure-hunter who is almost a double of his adult self over the Cross of Coronado. In the context of the more heroic version of Indy that developed since Raiders, Indy's "it belongs in a museum!" focus is contrasted with the venal treasure hunter. But curiously, the young Indy explicitly models his adult style on this hunter. The film remembers what the franchise is trying to forget. Adult Indiana was pretty much indistinguishable with the treasure hunter until he encounters the Ark. 

Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Despite the attention lavished on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, and even Star Trek or the Alien universe, I feel like the science fiction franchise most consistent in quality is the Planet of the Apes. Sure, it's not without its duds (Burton's film) and lesser lights (the last original film, the cartoon, perhaps), but the Wyatt/Reeves reboot?/prequel? series of the 2010s defied sequel gravity and only got better as it went along. (To me, anyway. Some would say Dawn was the high point. Either way, War was still good.)

When Reeves left and Disney acquired Fox, I had some trepidation about where the series would go. Happily, it seems like Wes Ball has things well enough in hand, at least with this first installment. While it's not as good as the best of the 2010s series, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was more enjoyable and more substantial than any other existing-franchise entry I've seen in the theater since the end of the pandemic--though perhaps that's damning with faint praise.

Anyway, it's "many generations" after the time of Caesar. He has become a mythic/religious figure. His name is borrowed. and his legacy evoked by an up-and-coming bonobo tyrant who (like King Louie in the Jungle Book) wants the technology of humankind. He needs (ape) slave labor to get it at it and a mysterious, young human woman, so when he captures Noa's village and kills his father, the young chimpanzee makes common cause with the human. 

There are hints of Beneath of the Planet of the Apes in here, and (perhaps unintentional, perhaps not) Biblical echoes with a hero named "Noa," but those are as they should be with an ape installment. The special effects are amazing, and it makes me mad the Marvel Cinematic Universe films often seem sloppy. I guess when your whole premise requires motion capture, you have to get that thing right.

I miss Andy Serkis here like everybody else, but he trained the new cast of apes well. It probably could have been a bit shorter, particularly for a film that is a lot about establishing a new conflict, but I'm not immediately sure what I would have cut.

All that to say, if you liked the previous ape films you should see this one. If you haven't seen any of the new apes films (which lately I've discovered a large group of folks that haven't) then you should see those and see this one.

You can also check out the watch and commentary Jason "Operation Unfathomable" Sholtis and I did of the much less good but still entertaining 70s Planet of the Apes TV show.

Spider-Man of Two Worlds

In case you haven't heard, Marvel Studios recently reached a historic deal with Sony Pictures paving the way for the third cinematic Spider-Man of this millennium.

Also, the Pope is Catholic.

Since there are still less than a million analyses of the implications on the World Wide Web, let's consider a question not getting much press:  Is this the beginning of the end for exclusive licensing of comic-book properties?

More Spider-Men!  More!

First, though, let's clarify what this Sony-Marvel partnership is and isn't.

Despite some oversimplified reporting, movie rights to Spider-Man are not reverting to Marvel.  They remain steadfastly under the control of Sony's Columbia Pictures, who acquired the license back in 1999.  What's new and novel here is that the licensee (Sony/Columbia) is willing to share rights to the character and mythos with another licensee — in this case, the wholly owned subsidiary of Marvel we know as Marvel Studios.  In other words, Sony is willingly turning a blind eye to the exclusivity promised them in their original licensing agreement.

It still comes as a surprise how much this brand is worth.

Not without reason.  The Amazing Spider-Man raked in $758 million worldwide, a pretty penny by anyone's standards.  Consider the massive costs of making star-heavy, effects-laden movies — Amazing had a production budget of $230 million — and the uncertain costs of promotion and paying whatever licensing fees and revenue-sharing are owed Marvel, and you begin to appreciate what an expensive house guest the Spider-Man license can be.  If Spider-Man is a goose that lays golden eggs — and it most certainly is — it's one that eats its weight in gold, too.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 did well internationally, but its take at the U.S. box office dropped off nearly a third from the original film in the series, leaving a beleaguered Sony, reeling from hacking and The Interview fiascoes, anxious to step off the path of diminishing returns represented by The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and start fresh.  The deal with Marvel allows them to do just that.

On their own, Sony had no creative excuse to relaunch the flagging Spider-Man franchise.  In a partnership with Marvel, they can "cater to the creative needs of the Marvel Cinematic Universe," bend to the will of fans who "want to see a more authentic Spider-Man," or whatever reasonable mandate fits the eventual reboot.  "Fantastic new opportunities for storytelling and franchise building," as Bob Iger says.

Movie-making is big-budget, high-stakes business.  Studios don't like to introduce more risk into the process than is already built in.  This is why most mainstream films hew to the same formulas and how what works once becomes an endless barrage of what once worked.  A film pushes the boundaries a bit, surprises audiences with its freshness, and a dozen imitators arise to reverse-engineer its plot, characters, or "attitude."  No business, even comics, is as rife with rules, formulas, and received wisdom as the film business.

Marvel Studios put itself on the map by pushing specific boundaries, by breaking a few silly rules anyone with half a brain could recognize as rules, formulas, and contrivances.  When Iron Man hit theaters in 2008, the consensus was that only top-shelf super-hero properties could build an audience.  (Only seven years later, it strains our internet-atrophied collective memory to recall a time when Iron Man wasn't a top-tier name.)  When The Avengers arrived in 2012, everyone knew you couldn't build a summer blockbuster that required knowledge of previous, largely unrelated film series — and that if you could do it once, you certainly couldn't repeat it, as the cost  of superstar actors would be prohibitively high.

As we head into the summer of the Avengers sequel, things have changed.  Rather than an underdog breaking the rules, Marvel Studios is the establishment.  The Marvel brand rides high on a crest of faith from its fans that invites religious comparisons.  This golden age can't last forever, but Sony (like everyone in the movie business) knows to play it safe — to go where the smart money is while it's there.  No matter how clever or bulletproof their plans for a third Amazing Spider-Man film may have have been, Sony could only hope, at best, to compete with the zeitgeist magic of "a Marvel movie."  Partnering with Marvel Studios and breaking one silly rule about exclusivity in movie licensing allows them to make both a Spider-Man movie (the latest in a long chain of comics' most valuable licensed property!) and a Marvel movie (from the studio that brought you all that is good in life!).

By ignoring the exclusivity of its licensing agreement and working with Marvel Studios, Sony is making a smart move in the short run — and changing the status quo for all of us in the long run.  Once a rule is broken (as Iron Man broke the second-tier comic character rule and Avengers the shared-universe rule), the genie is out of the bottle.  The inexorable laws of Hollywood economics insist the rule be "broken" again and again for maximum profit.

The pressure is on for 20th Century Fox to reach out to Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige in some way.  Unless Josh Trank's hail-Mary production of The Fantastic Four scores a touchdown in August, every eye in the room will be on Fox executives to pick up the telephone and make that call, to cash in on Marvelmania while there's still time.

Ezra Miller.

Grant Gustin.

John Wesley Shipp.

Marvel's deals aren't the only places we see signs of exclusivity eroding.  Although the Flash stars in his own weekly television series on the CW, Warner Bros. is developing a feature film starring a different actor (Ezra Miller) to be set in the shared universe introduced by Man of Steel.  Heck, Miller's casting was announced just as initial ratings for Grant Gustin's turn as the TV Flash were coming in, leading Arrow star Stephen Amell to chide the Bros. for impeccably bad timing.

With The Flash and Arrow doing well on television, it's clear neither DC nor Warner Bros. have a hang-up about their characters appearing in different versions in (ever-so-slightly) different media.  And let's not forget Arrow's penchant for using Batman-family characters, notably Rā's al Ghūl, who featured prominently in Christopher Nolan's recent Batman films.  Do we really expect Roy Harper to stay true to Arrow and not appear in some form on the upcoming Teen Titans show?

The plethora of super-hero stories on big and small screens proves non-niche audiences have an appetite for the genre.  Maybe there was a time in the past when publishers benefited from granting exclusive use of Superman or Spider-Man to a single network or movie studio, but today's TV and movie makers are more than willing to negotiate for a slice of the Spider-Man pie rather than go without.  Even the publishers, creatures of habit though they are, are beginning to realize they're in the driver's seat.

The writing is on the wall:  Exclusive licensing is a bad deal for the IP holder and no longer necessary to get wider exposure.

It's past time for this change.  The notion characters must be licensed to a single studio is a silly rule, rooted in underestimating audiences and sheer, ignorant inertia.  Sony's willingness to look the other way, to "break" the rule, may be the thin end of the wedge here — the beginning of a flood of imitative deals that will leave licensed characters (and audiences) better off in the long run.

Not that long ago, everyone in television believed audiences had neither the capacity nor inclination to remember continuity from week to week.  Episodes of TV shows stood alone and could be watched in any order, stymieing long-term character development or plot pay-offs.  The networks got over that bit of so-called wisdom, and audiences now follow season-long arcs and even entire shows built around a single plot progression, like Breaking Bad.

So give me three Spider-Men.  Personally, I'd have loved Columbia to finish its Amazing Spider-Man trilogy with Andrew Garfield as it was promoting the arrival of a brand-new Spider-Man in Marvel Film to Be Announced (But We All Think It's Civil War).  In an age of cord-cutters and savvy television audiences who throw around the term "shared universe" as comfortably as any fanzine writer of the 1970s, no one would be confused by two Spider-Men.

---

A parting thought:  Since Marvel is now farming out part of its core Marvel Cinematic Universe continuity to Sony, would it be willing to do the same with future projects?  Looked at through a certain lens, isn't that what it's doing with ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter and the Netflix Defenders family of shows?  Could the Spider-Man deal open the door for partnerships with Lionsgate or Focus Features?  Might we finally get that Wes Anderson Power Pack movie I'm hankering for?

Bringing Wonder Woman to the Big Screen

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. Thanks to everyone who asked how things were going during my break. I used to the time off to reflect on the future of this blog. One of my issues is that my day job is one that has me sitting down typing a lot, so I am often reluctant to do the same thing during my weekends.

So, what I think I might want to try is an experiment of sorts where I post shorter items, more frequently, rather than the big posts on the weekends. From time to time, I will still put out a big post, (I have one on comparing Marvel Now sales data in the works) but I think shorter posts might work better for me in the long run.

With that in mind, the topic of today sprung to my mind from an email from friend of the FBU Scott Simmons. He found this exchange on some social media site accompanying this image of the new Guardians of the Galaxy move line up:

DC:  "Wonder Woman is a difficult character to work out on the big screen."

Marvel:  "Our next movie is about some failed '70s characters, a talking raccoon, and a tree."

This elicited a chuckle from me because it really illustrates the different approaches between the two studios. The conventional wisdom (which Time Warner seems to hold dear to their heart) is that action/adventure movies that feature woman historically don't do well. That coupled with the problematic nationalistic imagery of Wonder Woman would make a movie with her a chancy proposition.

Meanwhile, Disney continues to crank out mega blockbusters that feature female heroines. At the time of this posting, their latest movie in this category, Frozen, has earned $256 million dollars.

Now, I can already hear the naysayers...

...but Frozen is an animated musical based on a fairy tale for kids! Wonder Woman needs to be an serious superhero movie like Iron Man or Man of Steel!

Well, while I think you *could* make a good action/adventure movie with Wonder Woman (because I've seen several cool fan film trailers that have done just that very thing) I have to think that Time Warner might be missing a golden opportunity to lasso a whole new contingent of fans for the character by taking a different approach with the movie.

Think about it:

• Wonder Woman is a princess created by magic
• She inhabits a magical/mythical realm
• She has a brightly colored outfit that would look fine in an animated movie (as opposed to how we will probably get it in a live action movie - dark and drab)

What if TW went with an animated action/adventure (like How to Tame a Dragon or Monsters vs Aliens) using the Wonder Woman mythos?



One of the battle cries of comic curmudgeons such as myself is that there are no new readers coming into the hobby. I think such a movie would be a perfect way to introduce a whole new generation of kids to the character.

What do you think?