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Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) (1 Viewer)

JoSAN

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Since the first one didn't bomb, I doubt its sequel would. It can only improve. FF made $330 million worldwide, more than X1's $296 million. Since X2 went on to make $407 million worldwide, I predict that FF2 will make over $450 million.
 

Michael:M

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I don't mind cheese - my own DVD collection bears that out. What bothered me (among many things) about FF is that it was lazy cheese; they used a lot of predictable, tired and flat plotting and dialogue. The most egregious example was Ben's wife dumping him on the bridge; not cheesy, not pulpy, just terrible. And the choice to make the Thing based on conventional make up effects rather than CGI was, IMNSHO, a huge error.

To each his/her own. More power to you if you liked the film. I myself found the faults outweighing the good stuff.
 

Jason_V

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The only issue I think Fox and Marvel would have with this is what happens if FF2 bombs? Are they committed to making the third movie or do they let it go? They did the same thing with the end of X2 (Phoenix), but X-Men had a lot more positive buzz for it than FF did/does.
 

JoSAN

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According to the Fox Australia Media schedule, the full title of FF2 will be:

Fantastic Four: The Next Chapter

Which I think is a good title, since it dispels all the first film nay-sayers who thought the movie didn't go anywhere by confirming, in words, that the first film was only the first chapter in the team's development -- an origin piece. And now that their origin has been established, we can move on to the next chapter in the lives of Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny, who have now been excepted as super-hero saviors and celebrities.

I still hope that Galactus won't feature prominently in the next one. If there is only to be a trilogy of FF movies then Galactus appearing in the third film - "Fantastic Four: The Final Chapter" - would be going out with a bang. After all, how do you top Galactus in terms of the epic size of the storyline?
 

Chris Atkins

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JoSAN:

Spiderman 1, X-Men 1, and Batman Begins didn't have to spell out that they were origin stories in order to justify certain story choices. What they did do was tell their stories in entertaining, original, and creative ways--something that Tim Story largely failed at in FF1.
 

JoSAN

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Hi, Chris --

The thing about Spider-Man was that it only had two super-characters to show the origins of. (I haven't seen Batman Begins, so can't comment on it).

X-Men has a lot of characters, yes, but the X-Men movie wasn't an origin movie. The X-Men as a team were already long established. If anyone had an origin it was the character of Rogue. The movie also dealt with the admittance of Wolverine into the school. I thought that X-Men was mainly about two characters: Wolverine and Rogue, and all the other mutants were peripheral and crammed in for show with little else to do.

FF, on the other hand, had to develop 5 major characters. No small feat. That the movie's plot was mainly about how these four people dealt with their newfound powers differently and had to learn how to come together to be a team/family at the end was extremely satisfying to me. You can feel that, at the end and having defeated Doom, they are NOW the Fantastic Four team, not just a name that cocky Johnny dubbed them for the media.
 

Paul_Scott

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the thing about FF is- they aren't a group with secret identities, they've always been public figures. Therefore their origins, etc would be a part of the public record and accessible and relateable by all media.
If they actually existed in the real world, there would have been plenty of segments on things like Dateline, 20/20, 60 Minutes, etc discussing them- each of which no doubt would have included a brief encapsulation of how they came to be- no matter what the actual angle of the story happened to be.

A first FF film could have dispensed with the origin altogether, by using clips from a show like this, or even begining with one of the memebers being interviewed for a show like this and relating the background material that way.

This would have not only been the most concise and expedient way in terms of screen time to cover the 'origin', it would also
-have left money in the budget for other sequences (since something like a News/tabloid show would be using its own no budget crude computer animation in the story, to illustrate it)
-quickly gotten across how different these characters are compared to superheros- i.e that they have accessible daytime public personas
- set this film apart from other first superhero/comic book movies, by being able to launch right into a 'real' story.

a good screenwriter could have told us all we needed to know about the team, established their individual powers, their inter-personal relationships, etc all within the first 10 minutes.

this point is moot now, but i can't help but look back at the first film as a tremendously blown opportunity to do something other than the same old same old in terms of franchise kick starts.

I dunno who is really to blame, but considering how little regard Fox has shown for X-men, I would lay the blame at the studios feet before I would blame the work-for-hire professionals. They do the best they can with what they have- Its only when a studio goes the extra mile and exercises a little taste and class (like Warner did for Batman) that you get something special.
 

Patrick Sun

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Umm...if anyone cares, Jessica Alba is on Letterman tonight (not sure if it's a repeat, but Dave does ask her an Invisible Woman-related question).

(Oops, Alba was on Leno, while Lindsay Lohan was on Letterman. Doh!)
 

JoSAN

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Snippets from a recent interview with Jessica Alba...

"I start [filming] on August 28th, I think, through the fall. It's going to be a very, very exciting, hot, new, fresh 'Fantastic Four.' We're going to amp up the action, amp up the love interest, amp it all up."

Alba also indicates that Invisible Girl's powers will be amped up as well, making her "the most powerful of the four." She also adds: "I can kind of do everyone else's powers." This is an interesting comment. Have her powers been increased by an outside force to break up the team --? Or could this be a hint that a shape-changing Super-Skrull will be appearing? We'll see.

It also sounds as though there will be a new "love triangle" in the works, one between Sue and the Silver Surfer. "There is a little tension between the Silver Surfer and Reed," she says.

Although Alba says that she "cannot bring up Galactus", she does take a deep breath afterward and giggles, "I can't believe I just said his name! Maybe he'll do an appearance."

Full article here:

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/artic...06/story.jhtml
 

JoSAN

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P.S. It kinda sounds to me like FF2 will end in a cliffhanger (like BTTF II) and Galactus will be the "full meal deal" in FF3. It will be cool to see how Von Doom reacts to a force that makes him seem like an insect in comparison!
 

Seth Paxton

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I don't understand how this is a logical reply to someone discussing how the film "didn't bomb" by frontloading well and then effectively bombing. Plus your logic also has plenty of examples to contradict it. Harry Potter 1 made MORE than Harry Potter 2, so the whole X2 made more angle is just silly. What about Spider-Man 2, also came in lower than Spidey 1.

Where is the "it can only improve" for those films? They didn't bomb of course, but they didn't make $100m more either. Plus, X-Men was the first of the Marvel franchises and the new birth of comic flicks. The quality of that film put faith in the minds of audiences for future comic films. After a few duds mixed in its clear that you can't just stamp "Marvel" on something and ship a hit (Elektra, Punisher) even if the character was in a "hit" already or was a very popular comic.


Making more on the sequel has consistantly appeared to be based around the WOM and the legs a film has, or its acceptance on video (like Austin Powers). FFour ended up viewed as a letdown and I don't think they are going to have the audience there that they think they will.

Tom Cruise took the main hit for the MI3 failure, but what was overlooked was that the first film done mostly well by DePalma set up interest in a sequel, which meant a bigger take. But the disappointment of Woo's sequel left many audiences gunshy about the quality of the 3rd film.


I agree with others who said that Tim Story and the lead casting (Alba, Gruffudd) really hurt what was otherwise not a bad effort. I'd be much happier about a sequel if Story was pulled off the project and someone more capable came on board.


And speaking of that, it seemed clear to me that Ratner's inability to dial in on personal conflicts and character development, even when it was in the script and already established for him, hurt X3 and kept it from reaching the Singer X-Men level.

Direction is an art and when you put hacks or weaker producer-controlled directors in charge of a project, any project, it's going to suffer. Raimi, Singer, Nolan - these were directors that had already proven to have a real craftmanship and vision.

What bugs me is how Marvel is trying to crank these things out regardless of having the right people available to do the work, as if the characters themselves can carry the load. One reason Batman Begins was so strong was the cast itself. If you look at the director, cast, cinematographer, etc and think about the kind of film you might get if they were put on a dry costume drama or a police procedural and you think that those films would suck with that talent, then you are still going to have a problem on these comic projects.


Heck, give Dr. Strange to Cronenberg and you might get something really brilliant. Hand Power Pack to Alfonso Cuaron and a surprise hit shows up with the public demanding more.

But put Spidey in the hands of Uwe Boll and people will stop going. Writers and directors don't magically get better just because they are handed a franchise.

And this is relevant because if Tim Story or other directors put a damper on the box office of Marvel characters its possible that Marvel will mistake the audience's dislike of bad direction with the audiance's weariness of comic charcters in general.



One positive is that I am pleased that Marvel was willing to put Silver Surfer on the screen. With today's CGI and FX work there is no reason why they can't nail this.

And for the Avengers, I'd love it to be Vision, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye...though they could work a pretty cool angle by bringing out Iron Man or Cpt America first on film and then using them as the partial link into the Avengers film. Just keep the villans in their own film lesser than the challenges the Avengers team would face and use that greater threat as their incentive to joining/starting a team.
 

ChrisBEA

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I always thought that the Blade sparked the Marvel renaissance. Granted, it wasn't a blockbuster, but it was a solid film that held its own at the box office, and was quality.
 

JoSAN

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I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here, Seth. All I was doing was responding to the comment "I can't believe they're making a sequel - this thing is going to bomb". This negative comment is based on the incorrect assumption that the first movie "bombed" and, therefore, the idea of making second one must be a ludicrous one.

What I was pointing out was that the movie didn't bomb; it was, in fact, a box office success story. I'm not talking about what someone thinks of the movie personally; everyone has different tastes. All I'm talking about here is monetary facts and in that regard, Fantastic Four was more successful than Batman Begins. And please don't all knee-jerk react by saying "but Batman was better, blah blah blah..." You can't compare them since the two comics these films were based on are like black vs. white, Citizen (Bob) Kane vs. Wizard of Oz. I'm talking about simple math, here. Batman Begins cost $150M to make and made $371M worldwide. Cost divided into profit gives it a success factor of 2.47. By comparison, Fantastic Four cost $100M and made $330M worldwide, or a success rating of 3.30. Ergo, if Batman Begins was not considered a financial bomb, then Fantastic Four certainly wasn't.

I then went on to compare the closest movie to FF, which happens to be X-Men, another Marvel super-hero team film that had a fairly modest first outing at the box office. If someone can make the emotional prediction that FF2 will "bomb", I can certainly make the more logical prediction that it won't. Some people here on the board predicted that FF would make less than $18M on its opening weekend, while I predicted over $50M, which is what happened.

If you want to talk about word of mouth, then look no farther than this... All the Internet negativity surrounding FF in the year before its release. Then the bandwagon bashing it got by the critics (25% on the Tomato-meter). And what happened? People went and saw it anyway and (gasp!) they had fun. They told their friends and they went to see it again. Compared to the praise that Batman Begins got (83% on the Tomato-meter), the fact that FF did so well makes it the overcoming-all-odds success story of the year!

Yet, still, it's amazing how most people on the Internet still talk about FF like they were convinced it made no money (old habits die hard, I guess), yet everyone in the real world see it as a hit it was. The movie was #11 that year worldwide, well ahead of "obvious" hits like Wedding Crashers and 40-year Old Virgin.

Moving ahead with the X-Men comparison... Look at X3. Disappointment seems to reign on the message boards but the movie is currently ahead of X2 by $28M on the same 11th day of release.

With the revealed inclusion of the Silver Surfer, then later Galactus, FF2 will quite probably go where fans wanted X3 to go... a space epic. X3 didn't opt for that (and logically so. It is not necessary for Dark Phoenix to have anything to do with aliens or space to talk about the dark side of human nature. Conversely, that is the very point of the Surfer/Galactus threat). FF2 will give fans that, hence my optimism for its continued, and growing, success.
 

AlexCremers

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Conclusion: it doesn't matter whether these movies have any artistic values or not. Just gather a bunch of attractive actors, make them do unbelievable stunts and people are happy.
 

Chris Atkins

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JoSAN:

Is being #11 worldwide in 2005 really something to brag about, from a box office perspective?

Not to mention the fact that many other genre films badly outperformed FF (on gross) in 2005: Harry Potter, ROTS, Narnia, War of the Worlds, King Kong, Batman Begins.

Finally, I ask you: if you are a film exec, and you are looking at the returns on Batman Begins and FF, which sequel are you having more confidence in at this point?

I'm not trying to bash FF...though I did not enjoy the movie...and I am hopeful for FF2, but let's not pretend that FF was a "success story" by any reasonable definition of that word.
 

Kevin Grey

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Okay JoSAN, how about these numbers- Percentage of FF's total made opening weekend: 36.2%. Percentage of BB's total made opening weekend: 23.7%. Batman Begins had substantially better legs than Fantastic Four which tells me that the the BB sequel has a helluva lot more potential at increasing on the gross of it's predecessor than FF does.

Never confuse opening weekend numbers for how well liked a film is- Opening weekend the film quality is generally unkown so the numbers are pretty much only indicative of how well the studio marketing machine did it's job and how much potential a franchise might have on name alone. How well it holds up later tells the story of how much the audience liked it. The fact that FF was able to pull a 50+ million opening weekend is a great indicator that audiences are interested in a FF film. The fact that it dropped so quickly after that is a pretty strong indicator that audiences didn't necessarilly warm to Tim Story's take on the franchise.
 

JoSAN

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No it doesn't, Kevin. By and large all movies drop off from their opening weekend values fairly quickly, especially during the summer, with the next new hit around the corner. FF opened in #1, pushing down both WotW and BB, a fact that nay-sayers said wouldn't happen. They wanted FF to be another Catwoman but the fact is all those FF crtics are the ones that needed their claws filed.

My Conclusion: Regardless of what you thought of Fantastic Four, it was as profitable as Batman Begins, which will have a sequel (se-pre-quel?) too. Avi and Tim will do their best to try to make everyone happy as it is in their best interests to do so. I'm sure Batman Continues makers will also try to improve upon the things that audiences disliked as well (ie. Batman's accent, hard-to-make-out fight scenes, Katie Holmes, etc.). Sequels are a chance for directors & writers to improve. As much as I think that Tim Story made a movie that was suitable to a comic book like the Fantastic Four, I also wanted more.

Here's hoping FF2, and all sequels, do just that; improve and make having a sequel worthwhile. I think we audience members deserve that. :)
 

Malcolm R

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Given its box office, I don't know how you can say it wasn't.

While the quality of the film could have been better, it certainly wasn't as dire as some other franchise launches, such as Lara Croft Tomb Raider, that spawned sequels that "disappointed" financially. After all the negativity and teeth-gnashing that preceded the FF release, I was pleasantly surprised by the film and look forward to the next.

If I were a studio head, I'd have no hesitation in green-lighting a sequel to FF.
 

TheBat

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you also have to remember that fantastic four stopped the slump that the movies were having that summer.. who would have expected F4 to be that movie.
the comic book convention in san diego was the next weekend after F4.. might have taken some of the audience away from it. the next week it did pick up a bit better.

Jacob
 

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