Fantastic Four

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by Ben » August 10th, 2015, 1:54 pm

It's online if anyone wants to watch it, hilariously bad but kind of cheesily good. Certainly not the *worst* or cheapest superhero movie I've ever seen! ;)

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by Dacey » August 10th, 2015, 2:14 pm

It's VERY easy to find, too. Not that you heard that from me. ;)
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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by Randall » August 10th, 2015, 8:06 pm

I've had it on VHS for 20 years. :) Cheesy, but fun. I wish I could have a better copy. I bought a DVD of the movie a few years ago at a show, but it looks no better than the lousy tape.

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by Dacey » August 10th, 2015, 10:27 pm

"Hey, Mrs. Storm! Can Johnny and Sue go into space with us?"
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift--that is why it's called the present."

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by Dacey » August 12th, 2015, 3:12 pm

Pretty interesting read. Obviously some of it might not be true, but I find it fascinating that Fox was actually not wanting to interfere at first (and apparently rolled their dice on Trank and ended up losing big time):

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/fantastic- ... 94982.html

But I am a little tired of John Carter always being mentioned in this context by the press. The $284 million it made worldwide really doesn't put it in that category (but maybe I just feel that way because I'm fond of a film that I think critics wrote their reviews for before even watching).
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift--that is why it's called the present."

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by EricJ » August 12th, 2015, 3:27 pm

Dacey wrote:Pretty interesting read. Obviously some of it might not be true, but I find it fascinating that Fox was actually not wanting to interfere at first (and apparently rolled their dice on Trank and ended up losing big time):
That was the big thing at the time, with superhero franchises from "big" directors taking a beating on their third movies.
Since Trank had just become the indie darling with Chronicle, studios thought "The new kids will save us!", went out to hire any indie director who'd done an offbeat superhero-themed movie for the festival circuit, and got overconfident when "Super"'s James Gunn turned out to be the only one you could hire for Guardians of the Galaxy.
Otherwise, hiring idiosyncratic indie directors is usually NOT the most ideal road to go with a mainstream big-budget major studio epic, like when Sony thought Michel Gondry might be just right for the Green Hornet.
But I am a little tired of John Carter always being mentioned in this context by the press. The $284 million it made worldwide really doesn't put it in that category (but maybe I just feel that way because I'm fond of a film that I think critics wrote their reviews for before even watching).
Yes, there were a lot of reasons why John Carter didn't turn a profit, but "Backstage chaos" and "Clueless directors" were not among them.
I remember at the time, we had to define the distinction between "Flop" and "Box office disappointment"--A Disappointment is an innocent victim of circumstance, like marketing, competition or bad timing, while a Flop was a born disaster at every stage of the casting, writing and filming.

The way to tell them apart was to administer a series of Flop Tests based on previous examples--
And in addition to failing the aforementioned Green Hornet Test (was an indie director promoted out of his water to deliver a mainstream-studio tentpole?), F4 also nominally failed the Godzilla Test (was a recognizable audience property warped out of all recognition?), although not the fault of the director, and the Amazing Spiderman 2 Test (did the movie exist largely as a studio contractual obligation, with no audience demand?).
That's two and a half right there, and anything over two is enough for the F label.

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by Ben » August 12th, 2015, 5:37 pm

Actually, and as much as I like Andrew Stanton and his John Carter (Of Mars) film, the problems of an animation director helming his first (major) live-action picture was *exactly* "behind the scenes chaos" and a "clueless director", according to friends on set.

John Carter flopped because Disney lost faith and failed to market it well, but they lost faith because of the overages and the fact their hotshot Pixar director didn't know how the heck to shoot a live-action film. Once it started to slide, they wondered why they were backing a passion project and saw its loss as an easy way to put pressure on a Nemo sequel.

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by EricJ » August 12th, 2015, 6:22 pm

Ben wrote:John Carter flopped because Disney lost faith and failed to market it well, but they lost faith because of the overages and the fact their hotshot Pixar director didn't know how the heck to shoot a live-action film. Once it started to slide, they wondered why they were backing a passion project and saw its loss as an easy way to put pressure on a Nemo sequel.
Well, that, and the days when studios still believed the myth that a big geek-week SFX epic would clean up and do summer business in one or two weeks of March the way 300 and Clash/Titans did, and risked way too big a budget for such a superstition to rescue, when three or four other crushing-competition studios had the exact same idea...And yes, Rich Ross was fired because of the marketing, although it may have been because of Winnie the Pooh.

We can be glad that Mission Impossible 5 did better business than F4, but nobody's saying that was the reason.

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by Randall » August 13th, 2015, 9:23 am

How I wish this really existed:

http://auntpetunia.com/index.html

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by Ben » August 13th, 2015, 12:27 pm

Holy friggin' crap!!

That would have been amazing, and no doubt would have changed the direction of superheroes in film and television from that point on, seeing as it would have come along a couple of years before Batman, if that show would have even been considered at all given the "serious" nature of this FF program.

Love their casting choices, and the Thing make-up is pretty ingenious, as are the many "photos". As you say, though...how we can wish this had even come close to being *proposed* let alone existing - great find and very well put together.

In some alternate dimension this picked up the superhero baton years before the current cycle - following Orson Welles' excellently gritty take on Batman in the mid-40s!

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by ShyViolet » August 13th, 2015, 1:01 pm

Wow, that looks awesome! :)
You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by Randall » August 13th, 2015, 9:08 pm

Alex Ross also painted Russell Johnson into his Marvels miniseries in the 1990s. But I LOVE the idea of Miss Montgomery as Sue Storm.

The Photoshopped photos are, of course, originally from the Corman FF film. But what a nice fit!

And Fabian as Namor.... Genius! ;)

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by gaastra » August 17th, 2015, 4:43 pm

Dropped 70% on second week! Studio will lose 90m on the film!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_goSYPbFoA

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by droosan » August 17th, 2015, 5:32 pm

Image

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Re: Fantastic Four

Post by EricJ » August 17th, 2015, 5:58 pm

("Straight Outta Compton's Oscar potentials" (giggle!)... :lol:
Someone's due for a lot of Joy or Sadness betting on that one.)

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