Hey folks, Harry here with a preview of the Fantastic Four trailer that will be attached to prints of ELEKTRA, which opens this weekend. I just got a press release saying this trailer was just going to be in theaters this weekend and not online, so if this description fills you with anticipation, then my oh my, go check it out. However, if this description fills you with dread, just remember... there's a scene, where Reed Richards is testing Ben Grimm's reflexes by hitting his knee with a hammer, and The Thing's reaction? He kicks Reed in the balls.... It's not in the trailer, but it was in the shooting script. JOY!

Hey Harry.

I just got back from a screening of the very mediocre Elektra. Since the site seems to be lousy with Elektra reviews, I won’t waste your time with all that…what I thought WOULD interest you was the fact that we got an eyeful of what MAY have been the North American premiere of the new Fantastic Four trailer.

I should start off by saying that FF was my Gateway Comic. It was my pure, unfettered childhood love for FF that sparked my interest in comic books. That, in turn, led to several years of desperate loneliness, never knowing the touch of a woman…as is wont to happen to comic book nerds. However, I like to think that it’s because I was too choosy…I never met a girl who met up to Sue Richards or the She Hulk’s impressive standards. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

That having been said, I’ve been pretty optimistic about this treatment. Sure, Jessica Alba seemed too young to play Sue, but hey…she’s fucking hot. And at any rate, it HAS to be better than the Corman version…am I right?

Apparently not. I now have no faith in this picture at all.

For starters, about a full third of the movie is plain text. Ordinary, boring, lower-case white-on-black text. It gives us a quick summation of what happened…5 astronauts flew into space, Something Happened, etc.

There’s my first problem…FIVE astronauts. One of them is Doom. This isn’t news or anything, but I’d been hoping feverishly that it was just a bad rumour. Denying the mounting evidence the same way Bush denied that Iraq didn’t have WMDs. I can’t do it any more. It’s proven. As is the lousy idea that the cosmic ray shower (or whatever it is) gave him his armour. Ugh.

Then the text helpfully tells us – and I’m paraphrasing here – “One became evil…the other 4 became…(wait for it)…fantastic.

Cue the rapid-fire editing of scenes from the movie…and there’s not ONE shot that gives me any faith at all.

The costumes look downright ridiculous…as you can see from the promo art. The CGI in this trailer is downright abysmal…it’s actually not far off of the Corman version. A shot of Mr. Fantastic stretching his arm under a door to open it from the other side looks abhorrent. Not only that, but it doesn’t make sense? Why would he just stretch his ARM under the door? Why wouldn’t he just flatten himself completely and slither under? That’s just fucking sloppy.

Doom looks ridiculous, and Chris Evans exudes no charm whatsoever as the Human Torch. Then again, it IS only a trailer, so maybe I’m just assuming he’ll be as lame as he is in every other movie he makes. And again, the few CGI shots of him with flames are just atrociously bad.

But for the true horror, feast your eyes on The Thing. Poor Ben Grimm honestly looks WORSE than he did in the Corman masterpiece. I don’t know what I was hoping for…maybe that his look would be polished up in post or something. But Viktor Yushchenko looks like a more convincing Thing post-dioxin. Don’t believe me? Here’s the proof.

Not only that, but the one scene of him in action is just laughably bad and got jeers from the audience. Apparently, it’s clobberin’ time on the freeway as Grimmy stands perfectly still in the middle of traffic and allows a Mack truck to basically crumple around him (I can’t quite recall if he PUNCHED the speeding semi at all). Meanwhile, he remains completely motionless, rooted in place as the truck becomes so much scrap metal. Christ, that was bad.

I suppose that the terrible effects on display aren’t the FINAL ones…maybe they’re still touching them up. But if so, WHY bother putting them in the trailer? It doesn’t make sense.

My Spider-sense is tingling, and it tells me a bomb is incoming.

Regards

The Naked Critic