Alex and Joe hang out and talk about initial reactions to Robert Downey Jr as Dr. Doom, and then start talking about the rest of the MCU and the how we ended up where we are.
You can reach Alex and Joe can be found on Twitter respectively @karcossa and @FirstRonin4 if you feel the need to tell them they’re wrong individually, or by email at ItsThose2Geeks@gmail.com.
Alex and Joe hang out and talk about Deadpool & Wolverine. Yes, there’s spoilers. No, there’s no real cohesion.
You can reach Alex and Joe can be found on Twitter respectively @karcossa and @FirstRonin4 if you feel the need to tell them they’re wrong individually, or by email at ItsThose2Geeks@gmail.com.
Alex and Joe hang out and talk about the Fox Marvel movies, the up coming Deadpool & Wolverine and a bunch of other stuff.
You can reach Alex and Joe can be found on Twitter respectively @karcossa and @FirstRonin4 if you feel the need to tell them they’re wrong individually, or by email at ItsThose2Geeks@gmail.com.
Alex and Joe talk about the released images from the Crow reboot, movie casting and internet reactions.
You can reach Alex and Joe can be found on Twitter/X respectively @karcossa and @FirstRonin4 if you feel the need to tell them they’re wrong individually, or by email at ItsThose2Geeks@gmail.com.
Alex and Joe start to talk about Wakanda Forever, and quickly lose themselves in tangents.
You can reach Alex and Joe can be found on Twitter respectively @karcossa and @FirstRonin4 if you feel the need to tell them they’re wrong individually, or @those2geeks if you want to yell at them together on Twitter, or by email at ItsThose2Geeks@gmail.com.
Joe is back! And because we recorded this a week or more ago, I can’t remember what we talked about, so it’s a surprise for us all!
You can reach Alex and Joe can be found on Twitter respectively @karcossa and @FirstRonin4 if you feel the need to tell them they’re wrong individually, or @those2geeks if you want to yell at them together on Twitter, or by email at ItsThose2Geeks@gmail.com.
Before you start yelling at me for writing a column about why the worst reviewed Fantastic Four movie doesn’t entirely suck, I’m not saying the movie is the best thing since sliced bread. It’s not. But it is unfairly shit on by so many of us, and that’s the whole point of Underrated. This is a column that focuses on something or some things from the comic book sphere of influence that may not get the credit and recognition it deserves. Whether that’s a list of comic book movies, ongoing comics, or a set of stories featuring a certain character.
The columns may take the form of a bullet pointed list, or a slightly longer thinkpiece – there’s really no formula for this other than whether the things being covered are underrated in some way.
This week I wanted to talk about the much derided Fantastic Four movie from 2015. Or Fant4stic, as the stylized logo goes, which is how I’ll be referring to the movie from here on out. The flick was directed by Josh Trank and starred Micheal B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, Miles Teller as Reed Richards, Kate Mara as Sue Storm, Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm and Tobey Kebbel as Victor Von Doom. The relatively unknown director Josh Trank had previously directed the cult hit Chronicle and one other movie that I’ve never seen before being handed the reigns to Marvel’s first family, but based on Chronicle there was hope that Fant4stic would be on par, with, or better than, the other superhero flicks of the year.
Obviously that wasn’t the case. But was the movie really as bad as we think it was?
Sure it was certainly disappointing when it came out, almost entirely failing to meet the vast expectations heaped upon on it – of course, I’m being facetious, because almost from the get go it seemed this movie was doomed to fail. From the way people turned their nose up when talking about the rumours swirling about choices made around Doom’s origin, at one point he was supposed to be a Russian hacker called Victor Von Domashev; the reprehensible reaction to the casting choice of Micheal B. Jordan as the Human Torch (yes, there were some who were more worried about the lack of perceived blood relation between the Storm siblings rather than the colour of their skin, but the sense that many – myself included – got was that the outcry was a bit more racially tinged); and the dreaded Studio Involvement toward the end of the filming and editing process.
By now I’m sure you’ve heard of the strife between the director and the studio (if you haven’t there’s a good account of it here), but when Trank tweeted his frank tweet about Fant4stic you could hear geekdom cry “I knew it! It’s so bad even the director hates it!” And Tobey Kebbel seemed to agree with Trank in an interview given last year, saying that “the honest truth is [Trank] did cut a great film that you’ll never see.That is a shame. A much darker version, and you’ll never see it.”
Kebbel goes on to say that much of the footage of Doom in the movie isn’t him, due to the amount of the film that was reshot “I played Doom in three points: Walking down a corridor, killing the doctor and getting into the time machine, and lying on the bench. They were the only times I played Doom. Everything else was some other guy, on some other day… doing some other thing. I was infuriated that he was allowed to limp like that!”
With all the vitriol surrounding the movie prior to it’s release there was realistically no hope for the movie (indeed it barely made enough money to cover the budget, let alone the marketing costs), and many people took a rather large shit on the movie because they felt that they had the right to do so – whether they’d actually watched the movie or not.
Almost a year after the movie came out, I sat down and watched it on Netflix for the first time. And you know what? It wasn’t anywhere near as terrible as I expected it to be.
Now I did go in with some pretty low expectations but, dare I say it, I actually enjoyed the movie; even though it seemed to do everything possible to prevent that from happening. Yes, there are moments that seem contrived only to move the plot from point A to B in the most straight forward manner, and there is a sense that there are two visions on display here due to the reshoots, but this isn’t as bad a movie as you’d expect based on the hatred and criticism that Fant4stic received upon it’s release.
While some of the acting is questionable, the performances of Jordan and Teller (and Bell’s vocal performance) are pretty solid. While we’ll never get to see the original version of the movie, the one we did get does have a visual punch that’s better than you’d think. As a slow burning action movie, this isn’t too bad.
Was this a great Fantastic Four movie? Hell no.. but it’s not as bad as you’d think, and if you look at it as a movie very loosely based on the Fantastic Four rather than an actual Fantastic Four movie, then it’s actually watchable.
That’s why it’s Underrated.
The atom bomb has a troubled history in Western cinema. It’s been mostly relegated to specific sequences that play out in dream sequences about the fate of humanity (Terminator 2: Judgment Day) or in impossible action sequences that are made to feel more dangerous due to the threat of a nuclear explosion (True Lies, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). In most cases, it’s a narrative device, the thing that explains why the world is in a state of decay or why humanity is living in a post-apocalyptic scenario. Christopher Nolan’s new movie, Oppenheimer, has something else in mind.
A new, full trailer has been released for the movie and it is quick to communicate its intention to consider the creation of the atom bomb in a bid to understand the enormity of it and how it effectively altered the course of global history. It’s about a thing we’ve feared since its inception (no pun intended) and how its creation reshaped reality as we knew it.
The movie will center on J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, and his role in the creation of the atom bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. Recent reports have been hyping up Nolan’s decision to recreate atomic explosions using practical effects rather than CGI, something that should warrant the price of admission alone. We should expect an intense and visually stunning Trinity Test sequence thanks to this, showing the first time a nuclear weapon had been detonated (which happened on July 16, 1945).
The trailer has a similar feel to that of Interstellar’s, a science fiction movie that imbued space travel with a sense of wonder mixed with fear of the unknown and the uncharted. It seems to be a sensation wants to capture with Oppenheimer as well, just in a more somber manner. A lot of this can be extracted from one of the trailer’s most interesting quotes, spoken by the titular scientist in voice over: “We imagine a future, and our imaginings horrify us. They won’t fear it until they understand it. And they won’t understand it until they use it.”
The words are spoken over glimpses of the work that went into building the bomb, of human ingenuity on display. As much as it was a watershed moment in weapons development, it was also a breakthrough in the field of science. This can be seen as a play between opposites, one that requires we navigate in grey areas rather than in the fickle safety of blacks and whites.
This captures quite well the sentiment that followed the end of World War II after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. Victory had come in spectacular fashion and global war had been finally put to rest, but the destructive capabilities of the bomb and the lasting effects of its infernal destruction didn’t convince many that victory over the Japanese was “clean” or ethical. It didn’t help that the nuclear age that followed stoked the fires of paranoia more than it did of hope. A fear of mutually assured destruction overtook the world, and with it came the Cold War.
Looking at the man at the center of this, who also witnessed the very first atom bomb explosion in history (which led him to consider the Hindu Bhagavad Gita quote “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” after the test was done), can put all of this into context and offer a very sobering kind of perspective. It’s one of the things that makes Oppenheimer one of my most anticipated films of 2023.
The figure of Oppenheimer himself is a controversial one, though. He’s been oddly kept at a distance given his views on the results of the Manhattan Project and the worries that sprang from it. Nolan’s take on the character is based on the Pulitzer prize winning biography American Prometheus, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. The book paints a complicated portrait of Oppenheimer that brings his ethical concerns on the bomb’s use and the necessity behind the Nagasaki bombing to the fore, things that left him ostracized by many in the science and military communities who wanted to look at the bombings and the work that went into them as a justified examples of military action and scientific innovation.
Cillian Murphy has a compelling character in his hands with J. Robert Oppenheimer and the trailer goes as far to show that the actor might have one of the most impressive performances of his career under his belt here. He already has the look down, that of a serious man burdened by the consequences of applying science in such a manner that creates new forms of death. Oppenheimer stands to be one of the most important films of 2023, perhaps the decade. This first full trailer is indication that fear and wonder aren’t necessarily strange bedfellows when it comes to world-altering historical events.
There’s no denying that CGI has revolutionized the giant monster movie, and it has some prime examples of the kind of horror it’s capable of producing on the big screen. Cloverfield comes to mind as not only one of the best big monster movies in recent times but also one of the scariest. The monster’s design, the set pieces, and the mystery behind the creature’s presence all converge to produce a very unsettling experience unlike anything seen before in the genre.
And yet, for my money, nothing beats Jurassic Park’s T-Rex animatronic as the most impressive giant movie monster in film history. There’s just something special about knowing the creature that’s trying to eat the movie’s characters is actually there, especially during the first encounter when it slaughters the goat and breaks out of its paddock. That the actors aren’t just reacting to a guy in a green suit holding a dinosaur prop head as a marker for the subsequent CGI work gives the sequence a uniquely horrifying feel that heightens the tension in unprecedented ways (even though CGI was used in some scenes to for the T-Rex).
The new big budget Thai/Chinese production The Lake is aiming for the same thing that made Jurassic Park so impactful, bringing the practical effects monster back into the fold with a giant creature designed by Jordu Schell, the artist behind the Cloverfield Monster, Starship Troopers, The Thing, Men in Black, Planet of the Apes, and Predators.
The film looks to tap more into horror than fantasy for its giant monster story. The teaser trailer keeps things pretty light on details, preferring to offer a generous set of hints as to the threat the human characters will be facing instead of the reasons why there’s a monster attacking people in the first place. It’s highly effective at hyping up the threat, though. The glimpses we get of the monster suggest its design will feature classic giant creature elements along with key tweaks the trailer doesn’t entirely give away.
There are also instances in which the possibility of smaller creatures are hinted at, but not definitively. This is, after all, a teaser and its purpose is to foster an air of mystery that surrounds the creature’s origins. The shots of the monster do look impressive and showcase the prowess of practical effects in storytelling. There’s an overwhelming sense of presence to the creature and it helps make it look supremely dangerous and deadly.
Schell’s monster design, what’s shown of it, is downright disturbing. It compares to his design for Cloverfield by favoring horror over sci-fi on a visual level. Regardless of what its origin ends up being, one thing’s already certain: the creature will leave an impression. The production looks ambitious and the settings varied enough to guarantee the action won’t just focus on big cities or densely populated areas. In this regard, The Lake somewhat reminds of Bong Joon-Ho’s 2006 The Host, another monster movie that aimed for being different within the genre. It explored other environments and spaces to great effect, preferring to keep some distance from the all-too-common skyscraper-dominated areas that populate these type of movies. That’s on top of having a unique creature that still invites close observation to fully appreciate.
The Lake is slated for an August, 2022 release in Thailand. There’s no information yet on when it’ll reach our shores and whether it’ll go for an initial theatrical run or if it’s headed straight for a Video on Demand release. Whatever the case may be, this new giant creature feature deserves attention for bringing practical effects back to the table and hopefully introducing the form to a new generation of movie-goers.
With the Snyder Cut of Justice League having just been released, I felt it was an ideal time to rerun this older post. This has nothing to do with me not preparing a column in advance. Nope. Not at all.
This is a column that focuses on something or some things from the comic book sphere of influence that may not get the credit and recognition it deserves. Whether that’s a list of comic book movies, ongoing comics, or a set of stories featuring a certain character. The columns may take the form of a bullet pointed list, or a slightly longer thinkpiece – there’s really no formula for this other than whether the things being covered are Underrated in some way. This week: Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice Ultimate Edition.
Let’s not beat around the bush here: the theatrical cut of Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice wasn’t the greatest superhero movie of last year and while it wasn’t the worst comic book movie of the year, it was perhaps one of the most disappointing – for me at least. I had expected so much from the movie, because it was fucking Batman and Superman on the big screen together. And… well we got an average movie. There were parts that were great (Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot), and parts that were pretty good (Henry Cavil), and… some less than savoury parts. I left the theatre feeling quite unsure of how I felt; did the good outweigh the bad, or did it balance it out? What didn’t click for me? Could the movie had been better?
Shortly after seeing the movie I found out that there would be an R rated extended cut of the film released for home media, and I wondered whether that would do anything to set the film right.
As it turns out, it did.
Almost every problem I had with the pacing, plot and direction of the movie was made better by the extended cut. I still wasn’t happy that the entire movie had effectively been told in short form in the trailers, but there wasn’t much I could do about that other than not watching the trailer in the first palace. Since that wasn’t an option…
Look, I get that Warner Brothers probably had concerns about audiences sitting for an extended period of time… I mean the near two and a half hour run time of the theatrical cut was the longest movie in recent memory, and understandably Warner’s were concerned about audiences attention spans. It’s not like we’d ever sit patiently during Lord Of The Rings, or binge watch five hours of Daredevil in one sitting. That’s just not who we are. And to think we’d rather have a great long movie longer than a slightly shorter average one would never cross their minds.
It’s okay, though.
Whether it’s thanks to the success of Deadpool, or the critical slamming early on, or both, the Extended cut of the movie is a much better story in every way. The plot holes that resulted from the opening sequence are fixed because of the additional footage showing the soldiers using flame throwers to incinerate bodies to mimic Superman’s heat vision, if you wrote the movie off based on the theatrical cut then you’re missing one of the better superhero movies of last year.
Yeah, I said it.
The Extended edition is a better move than Civil War is, but because the real version of the film was never released in theaters, the movie as a whole got quite an unfair reputation – albeit fairly earned based on the expectations people had for this supposed juggernaut of a film, and what was initially delivered. If you’ve only seen the theatrical cut of the movie, then give the Extended edition a shot. The additional scenes add significantly to the overall experience, delivering a much better experience than anything you’d have expected from the theatrical experience.
