Von Doom Fest - Fantastic Four

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Ray love fantastic Welcome back midnight viewers to on doom Fes. It's our Fantastic four edition. How many episodes there are in? Are we now? Three?

Four? Who cares for? Is this the fourth episode? We did the Hulk? Did Captain America?

Yep? We did Batman? Bat We didn't do Batman. I'm kidding. We did the Hulkman.

I wish so this is the third episode. Okay, well that's more. That's better. I like that. Well, technically, if we want to split hairs, Father Malone, we did cover some of the Fantastic Four on another episode.

The Roger Corman film, The Roger Korman. Thank you the Roger Korman. Then that would make this the fourth episode in the series. If we include that ephemera kind of well it is, but then we would have to also include the incredible Hulk trial episode and then that gives that kicks this one to fifth place. Let's call this fantastic four B Planet eight twenty eight.

That's where they live. Then, yes, with me as always discussing these things when we're not out fucking up the universe needlessly. Mister HP, how are you, HP? I'm well, Father Malone, how are you? I'm doing very well, sir.

I cannot complain. Who would listen? Right? Oh? I don't care if they listen or don't.

I don't have I got nothing to complain about it currently. Let's talk fantastic for everybody. They are Marvel's first family. They have been adapted over and over again and many media and many art forms. They are certainly super iconic.

There are some people's favorites, not mine because I love that not. Mine either, And we'll get into the reason, which is not to say I dislike them. There's nothing about them that I find aggressively bad or annoying. They just never really hit that sweet spot for me. But I guess we'll talk about the reasons why.

Their origins, like most of the early Golden Age of Marvel characters, are a were birthed with multiple parents. In most cases, those two parents are Jack Kirby and stan Lee. Now, this is supposedly back in nineteen sixty one where the Marvel method is born, where stan Lee says, here, here's these four characters. They're going to do these things, and then Jack Kirby makes an entire comic book and hands it back to Stanley who writes dialogue. That's the Marvel method.

They'll be doing that for the next sixty years, except, of course they're at Marvel. Just like there's a free sides to every story is and the truth. There's always two sides of every Marvel story, what stan Lee says and the truth, which is what Jack Kirby says. Jack Kirby says that he just drew those characters and handed them over to Stanley, who wrote a bunch of dialogue and said anything else was a lie. Where do you fall on the Lee fracas when it comes to the four Oh.

I'm completely on Kirby's side, and it's problematic because he's no longer here to defend himself or to litigate this any further, but just purely based on what we know or what we knew of stan Lee and his for lack of a better word, his hucksterism, which, let's be honest, did keep Marvel afloat on many occasions. Marvel could have gone the way of the Dodo, but he, to a certain degree, he kept it moving. But I think along with that, I think he overstated a lot of his own contributions to the detriment of many artists and writers, not just Kirby, but Steve Didko, John Bushima, these are all people I think that probably Lee did more than stan Lee would give him credit for. But all that credit's coming out now, though, which is nice.

If you want to find out these things, it's all readily available. And I just don't believe everything stan Lee says. I mean, here's the thing. Just think of the thing, the character of the thing, the character of Ben Grimm born on a Yancy Street, a street, tough Brooklyn guy. You tell me, does it seem like it sprang from the mind of Jack Kirby, who came from many of the same streets, or did it come from stan Lee?

What's more likely? I imagine Stanley had more to do with mister Fantastic and I'll have his deceptions than the street brawler of Ben Grimm. Did you ever hear Noram McDonald's sketch about the Fantastic Four on his album Father Alone? I know I have, but I could not remember a stitch of it. There's a Fantastic Four gathering for their first sort of discussion about the team and what their names are going to be, and everybody gets really bitter because it's the Invisible Girl, it's the thing, it's the human torch.

And then you have this guy who can stretch his body like elastic, and he calls himself mister Fantastic, And that's the crux of the comedy there is They're all like, why don't we just call you all stretch O, Like why are you mister fantastic? Why do you get to be mister Fantastic? And this goes on for the better part of six minutes of Norm MacDonald is read Richard's trying to defend his name to the rest of the team. It's actually very funny. If that conversation had to happen at some point, right Johnny alone would have said, wait, well, I get human torchs because I'm a human torch.

But and that's exactly what happens. He goes look Johnny is human, but he is also a torch, so he's the human torch. Sue can make herself invisible, so she's the invisible girl. I am a rock like thing, and you can stretch your body, and you're mister fantastic. Help me understand.

It's they don't get mad, they're just like, help me understand, Reid, like, where is this coming from? Why are you mister fantastic? He would call himself mister fantas because he's a narcissistic asshole. It's interesting because he's been alternately depicted as narcissistic. He's often very aloof always he's used to being the smartest person in the room.

Yet how many times did he try to cure Ben Grimm unsuccessfully? At least three dozen times that I can think of. Here, drink this, or let me bathe you in these special kind of cosmic rays that should reverse the change. No, let me do this, he's always. One of his defining features is he's also very guilt ridden over what happened, because in his mind, it could have and should have been prevented, the cosmic rays from affecting everybody.

Back in nineteen sixty women, those cosmic rays hit them. They were just in a test flight, right, They weren't going up for or scientistic experimentation at all. It just out of the blue, a cosmic wave hit them. I mean that happens eventually anyway in all the rewrites. But when we think of the Fantastic FORO, you think of them as a unit already, even though they're not superpowered.

They are like a scientific team off to do missions, whereas it was very happenstance at the start, which is why I think they always seem to retcon the Sue and Johnny relationship. There's a lot of retconning, Like maybe, like I know that since I had been reading it as a kid, there were I think there were an issue or two where there was some suspicion that Reed knew what was going to happen, and that was his goal is to have them all have their DNA affected in some way. So there's because, as you said, the actually their actual origin is actually rather humble and not very interesting. They had this rocket that Reed had developed. They they essentially had to steal it because they couldn't make their launch window.

And I think the people in charge of the finances were going to back out. So he said, we have to do this and it has to be tonight, and that accounts for a lot of the rushing and maybe the corners cut in the in the flight plan. Let's say, well, so. Nothing could have accounted for an out of the blue cosmic wave. They wouldn't know what that was.

They were just going up for a test flight. Yeah, I guess we have. To agree that when we're talking about the origin, we're talking playing Vanilla. This is what Kirbean Lee wrote. I'm not going to get into all of the as you say, the red Conning.

They got into a flight, they got hit randomly with some cosmic rays, they crash landed back on Earth, and they were all changed forever. This comic and Spider Man are pretty much credited with giving us the Marvel worldview, the Marvel difference, the Marvel brand. In that kirbean Lee, I think that this is more Lee than anybody, honestly decided that they were going to move away from fantastically named places like Gotham and Metropolis, these stand ins for American cities, and instead let's go to those American cities and let's have our characters not just be so fucking noble. That all they do is basically dressing that outfit unless they're reclining at home for two seconds. Let's have them squabble and be human and have human problems.

Oh and the Fantastic Four had squabbling. That's one of my pet peeves about the team Fathom alone is that by nature they're supposed to be a family, and families bicker and families argue. But boy, if you go back and listen and listen, if you go back and read some of those early books, it's all they do. They're just bickering, and usually it's the thing is sore at being the thing, understandably, and then Johnny gets under his skin and they fight, and sometimes Johnny leaves and runs away. And it's that I always found that bothersome because I don't care about the interpersonal squabblings of a family when when I'm an eleven year old reading a comic book.

Nor should that sustain itself for any length of time, because the level of prankery and getting on each other's nerves and fucking with each other that seems to be evident in every movie. It's just wall to all that because they have to pay service to that, because that's what's Fantastic for is known for. But if they were an actual family, after about three weeks of that, several of them would be dead. The human Torch and the Thing would have battled to the death one of them, maybe both of them would be dead, but it would be. The Fantastic Three at that point.

It would just kind of rad Sue and Franklin. I will say this going back, I did rewatch the twenty twenty five First Steps movie, and it reaffirmed a lot of what I loved about it. And one of the things that I love is they did scale back on the squabbling, the sort of getting on each other's nerves. It's a lot more of a family dynamic. Clearly they care about each other.

I think that hit more so in that movie than any of the other ones that preceded. Whatever was outright squabbling between Johnny and the Thing and any previous iteration, they just reduced to practical jokes and things just slightly teasing one another, which is actually how a family works. It's not like a big loud barrage of Neil Simon attempting dialogue at each other. Well, they were a lot more mature. Usually Johnny when he originally became the human Torture, he was a teenager.

He was interested in girls, he was interested in cars. He was a ne'er do well for rebellious type, and. Chris Evans circa two thousand and three. Kind of Chris Evans brought some panache to it. I think originally Johnny Storm was bratty.

He was more bratty than too cool for school, which I think Chris Evans. Was, well, I think that would be Johnny after a couple of years teenage. Johnny, the one you're describing, has all those traits and I think he's doing those well, but they had to move him beyond me. I just want to get a girl. I know we're going to get to it and we're going to talk at length about the last year's movie.

But again, that's one thing that I appreciated was that Johnny is It no longer comes off like the sort of spratty kid interested in cars and really doesn't want to be there. He was more mature and wanted to be part of the team in fact, which I think is important. He's not just along for the ride. And now a question that only you can answer HP, has anyone seen a flaming teenager? And I knew you were going to bring that up, and I came prepare.

Father Malone is quoting my second favorite non comic iteration of the Fantastic Four, which would be the Fantastic Four Radio Show, which was for some nineteen seventy five. It was they were adaptations, essentially audio dramas of some of the early Fantastic Four comics. But what really put it on the map, not the least of which is actually stan Lee's involvement. He narrates effectively and introduces each show. But the interest for Father Malone and myself was a pre snl.

Bill Murray who plays Johnny Storm in this You heard me right, it's Peter Benkman, mister hilarity, Bill Murray. We all know mister groundhog Day. What's his name? There was just a Winger? What was his first name?

I remember? He Ringer? What kind of name is Ringer? Anyway, he's all of these Morty, what are you reading a great new comic magazine? Hey?

Look, doesn't this master remind you of been? You mean our own Dashville blue eyed thing? Oh yeah, give me that, you spoy. Hey, that's my book update you to complaining to them comic book monsters, look a lumpy. It might get too hot for you.

Yeah you riddle funk. I'm gonna get you this time. Play come back here you. I mean, this must have been just before SNL. This was he was on the cusp of hitting it big.

He was at that time already doing radio with Oh He's. Doing National Lampoon Radio Hour, of course, so that makes sense. But it's I will say this for them, and they're very silly, but they are faithful to a fault to the original comic books, which you can't always say with this kind of material. And actually, I in my opinion, I still listen to them. I think they're a great deal of fun, even putting aside the weirdness of hearing Bill Murray delivered these like I said, Braddy teenager type line, I just want to get the girl.

He really gets into it the thing. You'll hear that in full swing in these audio dramas him and the Thing bickering. You think he was imagining older brother Brian Doyle Murray on those confrontations. I wish there was more information online about the origin of this and how it all came about because I don't look. We've collectively, you and I have seen probably dozens of not hundreds of hours of interview material with Bill Murray over the decades.

Father alone, I have never once heard anybody ask him about the Fantastic four Radio Hour. That's true, nor have I, but I guess I haven't looked for it, but I don't think I'm gonna find much. If I did. There's a wiki somewhere that I did look up just prior to getting on this, but there's no details about what I think if I'm using my imagination on this goes back to what I was saying about stan Lee wanting to keep interest in Marvel Comics alive. I think this was probably his brain child because he's so prominently in I could see this being something that he would, you know, sit back and say this is gonna be great.

This will We're gonna spread our empire to the radio in addition to comic book, so I can't fault him for that. And Japanese TV. That's Spider Man Supaida Man, I think is what it was called. Right, Well, we'll get to that and we talk about Spider. Man, indeed, we will.

But speaking of Spider Man. HPA quick quiz before we move on to the televisual portion of the Fantastic for his history, I'm going to name some characters and you can tell me if they also belonged to the Fantastic Four or not. Tru or false if you will. There have been a lot of members over the years, absolutely, but changes. The number remains the same.

It's always Fantastic Four, not Fantastic for By the way we spend it now, there is no indefinite article. Now before we start, are you talking a reality or what if? Because there were a lot of lineup changes in the what if catalog. I am not talking any what if characters. This is all straight up part of the canon.

Let's do it. I'll give you an easy one, Spider Man. Spider Man tried out for the Fantastic Four. I don't know that he was ever an actual member though. Well he was back in March of twenty eleven.

Oh see. Now I have to qualify this by saying I have not been an actual consistent reader of comics since high school, so that's a good amount of time. How about Luke Cade Luke Cage here for hire. It would make sense to me, because he's a New York hero, I would say, probably. That's right.

Fantastic four one sixty eight from March of nineteen seventy six. Quote it, Oh, okay, here's an interesting one. Black Panther, Black Panther in I'm gonna I'm gonna say no, but I'm sure it's probably yes. I will let you double down with another black superhero in the Marvel Cannon Storm Aroro Monroe. An X Man in the Fantastic Four.

Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it. It does not, And it's been so long. I remember when she lost her powers. There was a run of X Men where she she had been sure her powers were taken away from her. I'm gonna say, yeah, she probably was.

I don't know if that factually, but I'm gonna assume. Yeah, Storm in fact was. That was Fantastic four five four three from two thousand and seven. But also joining her was Black Panther in the same issue. So who were the other two members if they were, who else was not in the Fantastic Four at that time?

No, they were all in the Fantastic Four. Well, but if she's in it and Luke Cage is in it. No, they weren't in the same time. It was okay, it was Black Panther in Storm at the same time. Well that's what I mean.

So it was Black Panther Storm. That's two yeah. Then just one issue, man, just one issue by Oh. Okay, all right. I think she helk was also in the Fantastic four at some point.

She help was She was back in nineteen eighty four for one issue to sixty five. This is good. This is more of my wheelhouse the eighties because I'm so old. How about and you said she helped How about mis Marvel. Miss Marvel, that we're getting it back into the two thousands.

Oh no, this is eighties. This is an eighties Well I just gave it to you. Yeah, she was in an issue. She was an issue in nineteen eighty seven. So this was what you're talking Carol Danvers, Okay.

No, Miss Marvel, the she thing talking about Sharon Ventura. Okay, I'm going way deep at this, baby. You're going to get this deep cuts. Keep going. How about Powerhouse Powerhouse?

Who's Powerhouse? I have no idea who Powerhouse is. I know power Man. I thought it was a fucking slam dunk man that's fucking Franklin. That's it.

That's his hero name. Franklin was Powerhouse. I've never heard that, really, I was. It's like two thousand and seven, so you're already disengaged. Huh, yeah, that's way after my time.

How about Ice Iceman Bobby Bobby Drake. Well, you know what, Aurora Storm smashed that mutant glass ceiling, so why not. Probably, Yeah, it wasn't until twenty twenty or twenty eighteen, but yeah, Bobby Drake was member of the Four as well. Everything I asked you, they were all parts of the far They. Were all parts.

But let's think about something. This is comic books are really the so op opera of our time, right because this is now. The Fantastic Four debuted in the early sixties. I think it was about sixty three. I think was the first issue, sixty one, sixty one.

That's what we're closing in on. Sixty five years of the Fantastic Four. That's insane. They've been through a lot. They've been through so much.

They've saved the world countless times, no doubt were. They disappeared for a while and then we got the New Fantastic Four. Do you know that lineup. No, is it the West Coast Avengers. It's crazier than that.

It's Powerhouse. First of all, Franklin. Sorry, that's such a that is all due respect. That is such a lazy ass name for a superhero. Powerhouse.

Also part of this iteration of the Forest, Spider Man, Hulk, Wolverine, Sleepwalker, whom I do not know. He throws alarm clocks at you. No, he just wanders through battlefield stops because I don't want to wake him. Sleepwalker. Rounding out this fucked up crazy version is Brainstorm.

That's Valeria Richards and finally ghost Rider, which automatically makes me excited, except it's Danny Ketch and he can go jump in a lake. Wait, so so what is so? That's another child of Read and Sue Richards. Valeria Richards, I have no idea who Brainstorm is? Is it her ability.

Storms from fucking twenty twenty. She's the daughter of mister Fantastic and Invisible and god daughter of doctor Victor von dum Oh. She's the younger sister of Franklin. Okay, and is her ability like she thinks real hard and she can create a light bulb ab over her heead and throw it at somebody brainstorm, that's what she does. Yes, ideas, I hope.

So why do you need anyone past Wolverine and ghost Rider in your band of superheroes? Make this fantastic too? It seems overkilled, doesn't it be? Yeah, Man, Wolverine, Terrestrial and Supernatural Villains, you've got him all covered. I guess the question I have is was the Silver Surfer ever a member of the Fantastic Four.

He was not. He was always an ally love him. Oh yeah, we'll talk about the Surfer. We've tangled with his ass before now our first Okay, for those of you HP already mentioned it, there was an episode It's being the show notes where he and I covered the Roger Corman Fantastic for a movie, So go listen to that one, because that one's a lot of fun and sad, very sad. Yeah, we didn't get obviously a proper fantastic for a movie after until after X Men and Spider Man hit.

The scene improved that people could actually go to the movies and watch superheroes and take them seriously and we might actually like some cannon on screen for once, So that gave us. Let me pull up my note find that gave us. In nineteen seventy nine, Fred and Barney Meet the Thing, a cartoon in which Ben is now Ben Graham is now Benji Graham, a teenager with thing rings that he would clack together and say, thing rings, do your thing and turn into the Thing. Not featured in Fred and Barney Meet the Thing Fred or Barney. So was he in the prehistoric age?

No, he was a teenager living in the regular world. Then what was the Fred and Barney Flintstone business all about? None other than The Flintstones was a wildly popular television series and they could draft off of it. So was this their attempt at a backdoor pilot for the Thing. No, it was a series.

It had thirteen episodes. It was an animated series. I'm not familiar with that in the least. Well, you don't have to be, because back in two thousand and five, that's when Tim's story and directed the Mark Frost Michael Frantz screenplay starring Eowen Griffiths, Jessica Albert, Chris Evans, Michael Chickliss, Julian McMahon, and Kerry Washington. That was the Fantastic Four from twentieth Century Fox.

Almost a Chris Columbus film, and boy didn't it feel like one anyway. Well, the interesting thing for me there is that I've well, let's talk about this first and then we'll talk about other efforts that never made it to the big screen. That's where I was going with this. But I will say this, I'm not mad at those movies, the original or the sequel. I don't think they're especially distinguished in any way.

I think they're pretty bland and along with that, harmless. But there's a lot to like. I actually like Michael Chickliss as the thing. I think he's probably the standout. I loved Chris Evans as Johnny Storm.

This was still pre obviously pre cap Chris Evans. You know he was making it. He was in that movie Cell with Kim Basinger, where he played basically the same kind of surfer type character in that one. Well, this is a this is an amplifying, ego driven version of that character. Certainly correct.

Yeah, but I but they I didn't think they were. I wasn't mad at them. I watched them, and I thought they were perfectly adequate. But it wasn't like I was a huge fan. What did you think of them?

For them alone? Oh, those two guys were perfect. When I heard the cast, I thought that was great and they were going to do no wrong. And that bore out as well as the suit for Michael Chicklis given it's two thousand and five and it's really good looking for some reason, missing the brow. Just put the brow in, don't.

You don't have to take shit away because it's too cartoony. We want that, that's the thing to us. But the rest of the cast, iowan Griffiths is too likable or too affable or too weirdo to be an effective miss fantastic read Richards. I thought he was fine, but not great. And I really like that guy.

I watched the Hornblower series religiously and over and over again. I loved him in that. But Jessica Albo was a huge fucking problem because she's terrible, first of all, and it represents that kind of who's hot right now, let's stick them in everything thing that goes on in Hollywood. She has no business playing this character at all. They had to blonder to do it.

It looks incorrect. She's ugh, She's playing it like it's a romantic comedy when it's not. And I don't know, man, I think she's a huge liability, But then again, I wasn't that big a fan of the movie overall. Anyway. I think the scene on the bridge is really good.

Yeah, this was still early goings for comic book franchises, so I was just happy to get any kind of comic book movie up on the screen, and one with the decent budget. The thing that I kept returning to, specifically with The Fantastic Four is I always thought, and I'm not the only one, but it was my personal opinion that the only way a Fantastic Four movie could work is if you made it into a period piece from the nineteen sixties, because that is where this team really lives and dies. It's in the sixties with the gadgetary and the esthetic and everything else. And at a certain point Peyton Reid was attached to direct a period version of The Fantastic Four. It never came to be.

We eventually got it when we talked about first steps. But I think reason number one why I would say that it didn't really work for me was because I just I don't feel like you can really modernize the fantastic for it. There's so of their time that again that aesthetic, that it's very hard to update it and not make it seem even more silly than it. Actually they have to start up ge Whiz, don't they? Yeah?

Absolutely, And Read is being a scientist, but being a scientist of the sort of mister Wizard school of thought, where you know he is the smartest person in the room. You can't have anybody really second guessing what he does. He's just a smart guy and a lab coat. The sixties was a time of wonderment. It was a time of great advances in science.

I think he fits so well in the sort of new frontier vibe of the sixties and the Kennedy administration and all of that. It's you're fighting an uphill battle when you try to bring them into current day because you lose that Gollie g vibe and now we're talking so much cynicism and sarcasm and nothing is at face value and is earnest, And with a team like the Fantastic Four, you need that earnest. I certainly think that in any other scenario than the nineteen sixties framework, Read Richards becomes just another academic yeah, and we don't need him to be that. And that's certainly what's here in the movie. It's the movie begins with Reid Richards going to beg for funding for his latest project from Victor von Doom.

By the way, did I say that Jessica Alba was the only liability and Fantastic four because not to speak ill of the dead, but Julian McMahon is fucking terrible as doctor Doom. And another, by the way, another spoke in that wheel of who's hot right now? Because that show Niptok was the all the rage and oh that guy he could be sinister. Let's make him Victor von Doom. That'll bring in whatever crowd is not going to actually follow that and come see this movie.

Well with von Well. First of all, I will say this about Julian McMahon, he looked the part. If you look at how von Doom was drawn in some of those early books, he is Julian McMahon, He's Matt and a idol looks. But they completely destroyed the von Doum character in that. He's fanbastic man.

He's the biggest drama queen around and they had the most subtle Hello everybody. I'm Doctor Doom. Let's fight everyone. I just when people it used to be, when they would make these movies or try to adapt these properties, they kind of felt like they had carte blanche to just change any old character, fuck with their origin story. Von Doum's origin story is not that complicated.

He dabbled in the occult arts in an attempt to try and contact his mother, who he believed was in hell, and there was an explosion that disfigured him, and that led to him eventually donning the armor and taking over a republic in Lataria and becoming a ruler and having a hatred of Reid Richards because he was a classmate and he believed that he was somewhat responsible for or the accident that disfigured him. That is in rocket science. I just gave you the character's backstory in about thirty five seconds. But I think just because you can update the character and change their origin doesn't mean you should do that. And that's a big mistake here with Doctor.

Jo they should. The problem was with superhero movies. Let me start again. What you're saying is absolutely true. For some reason, every filmmaker got it in their head that this was just a springboard, this fifty years of material.

I know what I want and I don't like these things. The fact is there was never any up until two thousand and nine for any Marvel property. There was no sort of guidance from Marvel or no. There was no appreciation or adherence to anything Marvel was saying. I'm sure Marvel had notes on every movie and every TV show that was coming down, and every one of those movies and TV shows, whoever was running them took those notes and immediately threw them away, like, well, this is my thing now and I'm going to do what I want to do.

So when I read an interview you with a screenwriter and they say, well, first of all, when I looked at it, I thought that's stupid. I don't like that thing. You thought, what was stupid? That thing that's been canon forever that fans are in love with. I'm sorry you didn't like it, but maybe check with some experts and try to incorporate around it and be creative in that way.

It's not a good way to endear the fan base to you either. I'm not suggesting that everything has to be letter of the law. As it was in the comic, because in some cases that might be impossible to depict. As a parallel consider the Watchmen movie, which was considered unfilmable for decades because I'm not going to spoil it for I'm not going to spoil a forty year old comic. But the climax of that is crazy, and there's no there's almost no way you could actually render that in a movie and make it comprehensible.

Well up until recently. Now you could do it like that. You could do it now. But I think, look, I like Watchmen better than some, let's say, and I thought how they compromised, how they had apted it for the movie. It was fine.

It wasn't the book. But the book doesn't start being the book just because you make a movie of it. You can still go back and reread it. But to your point, I just feel it's almost like a dog marking its territory, like pissing here, because this is my territory. I'm just this is I'm marking my territory.

That's what a screenwriter, I feel like does. Sometimes I'm adapting Fantastic four. I'm putting my own spin on it. I'm pissing on it my own way to mark it as mine. And it's an ego driven prospect, and I just think it's Any screenwriter worth their salt should be trying to make the best movie they can and damn the ego of the whole thing.

If you make it great, then people are gonna say to you, Wow, you adapted it beautifully, you adapted it amazingly. So let that be your guy. Not just because I can make Doctor Doom for some reason grow metal under his skin like they didn't at two thousand. That's so so wack of you even just to say it. Father Milone, you remember that.

Oh yeah, that's perfect example where a screenwriter just goes, I don't like the traditional Castlevania looking secuit. Let's do something interesting with that I was just reading about and such as that. I'm going to put that in this movie. Now. No, don't be or flash in the pan.

You're not innovating anything. You're not impressing anyone in the audience. What they're doing is impressing their bosses who have hired them to write a screenplay, where they have to prove that they're doing some sort of innovation. But none of them get the idea that the innovation is bringing them into the real world and making it work. You don't have to change any of their stuff radically to do that.

Yeah, this is this could have been an opportunity to really make something of lasting value and satisfy people who've loved the Fantastic Four forever. And instead what we got with those the two thousand and five movie. In the sequel, which had the Silver Server, they're merely service. It's nothing that's going to knock your socks off. It's they're fine.

They're lukewarm water. Well, I will say that I do like the sequel a lot more, obviously because the addition of a particular character. And if that character, of course was Captain Ray played by Bo Garrett. She was also she was gem in that Tron sequel. Oh my god man that that girl.

I'll tell you whoa Anyway, Also, Silver Surfer was in it, and what they had Doug Jones of course, because they needed a skinny guy. So Doug Jones is the Silver Surfer, but Laurence Fishburne doing the voice the looks CG looks terrible. We get zero surfing. It's just a guy flying on a board. It might as well be a goblin glider.

And we didn't get Galactus, the galactus that we all want, with the big helmet, with the antenna and the eyes. We got a cloud. This is the start of let's this is the start of the Let's just have it be a bright light in the sky or a menacing looking cloud. I guess in that case, it's probably most likely just a budgetary thing. Like I don't think so at all.

I think, well, we were talking about this terrified notion of every screenwriter and filmmaker that there are things going to be viewed as silly, like it's going to be too cartoony, a giant guy in a helmet wanting to munch on earth. That to them was just no, we can't show that. That's too out there, it's too ridiculous. Everyone will laugh us off the screen. And given that they the effects of twenty one years ago, they could not have pulled off Galactus to the degree that we saw him in last year's motion picture.

So I they're probably the instinct was probably correct that we got to figure out another way around this. I'm not saying that I would have done that, but just imagine how we already we already said how bad Silver Surfer looked. How are they going to make a fifty story high guy who's running around the planet. That is to me though, that is terrifying the process. Yeah, man, and you know what, Okay, so don't do that, but at least have a machine show up that's going to consume Earth and convert it into any For Galactus when he makes his final appearance, he could have just done that, because the amorphous cloud doesn't make any sense.

But that's how Galactus worked, at least in those early books. He showed up and he had this giant planet sized machine, and he would just he wouldn't interact with the world at all. He'd just be there working, putting his little machine together. That's going to help him digest the world. It wasn't him reaching down with his fist and collecting a handful of planet to wolf down.

He did. It was a way that he would convert the energy of the Earth into something that he could eat. But that made him even more kind of scary and implacable because he would just sit there going about his business, and nothing anyone did would even gather at his attention. He would just keep going with what he was doing because he was so massive, we were just gnats to him. That would have been horrifying.

And start the movie with him landing and there's nothing stopping him. He doesn't seem to be like menacing us, but something's going on. Yeah, And he wouldn't even be able to talk. He would just he would communicate through the heralds. He would communicate through silver Surfer man.

Oh man, they dropped a fucking ball with these movies. I'll tell you what they for the most part they did. Those two are like I said, they're okay. But the less said about the twenty fifteen was that the one with. The less said, Jordan bought you out of your mind.

Here we go, baby, so bad man. Twenty century Fox, in a desperate bid to hold on the copyright of this clearly lucrative those movies. As much as we're saying they're terrible, they did baffo box office as verright. Oh yes, say sure, well, you're the one who told me, like years ago, on a different tack, like I used to wonder how Polly Shore used to get all those terrible movies produced. And your thing was, look those things, you can produce those for like pennies, and if you can make a few million dollars off of them, that's all.

That's all profit. Those are profitable. They wouldn't make them otherwise. No, those movies were like five million dollars. They'd pull in twenty that's fifteen million dollars.

That's free money. So you make it until the budget gets to where the box office is and then you don't make polyshorre movies anymore. Yeah, smart, It's like that Roger Carman saying, carnoisaur one, we did this much, and carnisour two. We did this and it's it's a little lower each time, and when it hits the final budget, he goes, and that will be the last Carnisal. Okay, so you say it was it was.

A copyright like they were afraid they're going to lose the. Copyright, absolutely, and they handed over to the new hot kit in town. See look more of this bullshit, more of who's hot at the moment, who will take on our project? Well he just did a superhero movie kind of chronicle. That's Josh, who turns out to be a fucking nightmare, apparently complete nightmare.

And I'm I actually I liked Chronicle. I thought it was pretty cool. There was a lot of suspension of disbelief because the whole thing is supposed to be first person and they had to come up with a way to have it filmed that I don't I liked it. I thought it was a clever spin on a superhero movie. But I liked it a lot of point as well.

He's one of these guys that maybe shouldn't become successful because it brought out all the worst tendencies of that guys. Who was that with Max Landis? Was he that guy who. Yes coincidentally wrote Chronicle. Yeah, that's another guy who just maybe has a degree of talent, but is just a terrible person who shouldn't be in a position of power.

You can tell these people were just waiting for their moment, like it was destined that they would be the next guard at in movies, and god damn, thank god we ousted them in some way. Seriously, someone woke up and said this is not cool. In Josh Trank's case, though, that was so public, his downfall was so measured and just visible day by day because that movie was just so wrongheaded and he was fighting, communicating, battling back and forth with the studio and it became adversarial. And what's he done since then? He's basically been blacklisted.

Yeah, well, why would you hire him? This was his shot, this was his big studio break, and he was turned into a fucking nightmare. And I'm sure there was a lot that was out of his hands that he was fighting with. And there's a lot of sides to every story, certainly, but you know what, he did make this movie and I don't think there's a cut exists in the world that could save it because it is boring as shit and it turns Doctor Doom into a fucking robot basically, which it's all with the magnetism of the things. I don't know.

Man, he seemed like a He seemed like a techno ghost in this one. It visually reminds me of remember that there was a trend for a long time with trailers where they would get like a song, like a well known song like smells like teen Spirit, but they would get somebody to sing it in a. Very slow and plaintive way. Everything reverb, Yeah, everything after that cover of Mad World by tearsa Ferris That ever since that, yeah, ever since that cover came out. That was all that any one wanted in trailers.

Find a pop song and make it mournful. Make it sad, and make it very reverb laden, and make it very dramatic. That's, in a nutshell what he I believe what he tried to do with a Fantastic four, because he took this what should have been very poppy and effervescent and swing in the sixties kind of set thing and he made it into this morose, gray, dark, foreboding and ugly type of story that it's that's the exact opposite of what you should get with the Fantastic Four. It was too real world in a way because Read Richards probably would be on the run from the government for trying to get the again at his secrets, and if they caught the thing, yeah, he would have turned and become a fucking agent for them, out there doing crazy military shit.

But I don't want that. I don't want it. The whole other story that's don't bother. I want the Fantastic I want the Baxter building with the mailman who comes in and is like, hey, Read, I got some mail for you. Oh thanks, Willie Lumpkin, Hey, how's everything going?

Smiling at each other. I want to see Herbie the Robot doing housework. I want to see the Fantastic car zooming between the build the Empire State Building. I want fun. That's what's missing from that movie is the word fun.

And now I'm going to praise a monopoly. Thank god Disney purchased twentieth Century Fox and got that fucking franchise out of their hands. Man, those are they were also responsible for, No, let's not forget ghost Rider. They were also responsible for the X Men movies, which, again, those were fine when they started off for easing us into the jacuzzie of superherodim But my guy, you look at them now. They're Yeah, they're not.

They're stepping stones to where we are all. I think they are in some ways first steps. That's very appropriate. There's a they've arrived at a formula, and I think in this case the formula really works. This is to me, this is probably as good an adaptation, and this is as good an adaptation of the Fantastic Four on screen as I could ever imagine.

Foe could not agree with you more. I'm gonna put a link to the episode. I actually did an episode of five the Moons Weekly round up where I covered Fantastic for our First Steps if you want to hear that, But let's talk about it because you and I haven't. And I loved it when I first saw it, and then I rewatched it, and I loved it again, and I've watched it a couple of times since I can put it on, and it's one of those movies it's like First Avenger to me. It feels like an appropriate and fun world to hang out for a while, and it feels like the very first time.

Honestly, this is the comic book. This is who we were looking for all these years, in all of these different adaptations from casting, from art direction, the whole bit man, because it isn't nineteen sixty four or it's nineteen sixty one. It's a whole other universe and that's what we need now. Well, they really had their cake and ate it too, because this is really said in the sixties. But because they've already introduced the idea of alternate universes, this is effectively an alternate universe where the pantas asking for are the dominant heroes on the planet.

And there's so much So let me back up for a minute. I agree with you one hundred percent, and like you, I saw it in the movies, and now this is coming off of a long run of very disappointing Marvel movies. We're talking like Love and Thunder quantum Mania. My expectations were very low by the time I sat down to watch Fantastic four First Steps, and boy was I was charmed by it. I loved it when I saw it.

I saw it later on home video that way that sounds that day. Wow, dude, that's terrible. I went to my local Blockbuster, and I know when I saw it. Do I have to rewind I loved it at home. Every time I've rewatched it, and it's been several times, I it is still consistently made me happy.

I typically I start to nitpick things after one or two three watches, but I love being in the world of the Fantastic Four, of this universe, this MCU and I'm it's It's silly to call it like a quiet triumph for Disney, because Disney is a conglomerate. Disney is not an independent, like a scrappy independent producer. But I think based on the run of crap movies and TV shows that they produced. This couldn't be anything but a breath of fresh air compared to all that junk. They certainly got way out of control with the TV, where every series was a disappointment.

I love She Hulk, I thought that was really good, but Falcon and the Soldier was boring. Definitely that fucking the Secret Wars bit or the idea. I liked Hawkeye. I thought Hawkeye. Hawkeye was good.

There aren't exceptions to the rule where it's it understood that it should be effervescent, but anytime they tried to do anything serious in world building, it felt just over baked. And then none of them ever paid off in any satisfying way. Agreed, And actually we probably should mention the first, really the first apearance of Fantastic Four. Was it? There was the mid credits sequence of Thunderbolts.

Right, yeah, well they see their ship arriving, so that actually hasn't happened yet. Right, But that was the first indication of Wow, this is actually this is going to happen. We're going to see the Fantastic. Four and I'm gonna have to watch Thunderbolts again. I'm not going to watch it again, but I remember that sequence at the end, I was like, Oh, that's cool.

I think I judged that a little harshly when I first watched it, So I want I know my criticism are going to remain, which is that opening scene where they're all duped at the same time was fucking ridiculous because those are above all professionals, right, Yeah, but once they get on the mission, I want to reevaluate that part of it. Yeah, I probably should get. Well, we're gonna because we're gonna have to fucking review all of the peripheral characters, the sort of the outside the norm teams that are going to be factoring into the whole doomsday affair, because they're definitely going to be there. Man, everyone, they'll be there. They'll be there.

But no, this the other thing, well, another thing I liked about Fantastic four. I guess we'll just call it first steps to differentiate. But what they've learned over time is you don't we don't. You don't have to hit us over the head with the same fucking origin story. We It's all condensed in the context of a TV show that the team is going to appear on, where they catch you up on how they became the fantastic for but it's so efficiently.

I love economy, man, I love it. Yeah. So, so people who aren't that familiar with them understand that they went up in a rocket ship, they got cosmic rays bombarded, and then they came back down and they were all changed. And that's all you need. We don't need to see fucking Bruce Wayne's parents die in the alleyway another fucking time.

Oh look a pearl. So that's great. It puts you right in the action. And the thing of the interesting thing that I keep returning to with first Steps is that, yes, it is a movie about the fate of the universe hanging or the fate of the Earth at least hanging in the balance of Galactus. But at the same time it's so very insular story.

It's not. It really is the four of them and how they're dealing with this threat and this moral dilemma of what to do about Galactus and Glactus wants the baby and all this kind of stuff. So not to say it's low stakes, but it's not this massive, universe spanning epic that we don't need in this case. It's a very small scale story in that sense. They did exactly the opposite, while doing exactly the same as Rise of the Silver Surfer, which is here comes Galactus.

He's going to fuck up your planet. He's got a herald same story, except told with thoughtful attention to detail and care for the characters and not leaning on any fucking trends trends of the death of superheroes. Man, you throw in a fucking Marble truck and a that's a bad outfit. Check you know that's a bad outfit? That shit yeah blow.

That still makes me smile. Oh, I laughed my ass off when that happens. That's great, Okay, but it does say, hey, man, this was made in nineteen seventy nine. Oh absolutely, And there's no evergreen once you put in the Marlborough truck. No, but it's but you're immediately immersed in the art direction of this movie.

You can see that it's all about the sixties. You have Herbie the robot, who is awesome. He's got that crazy he's got the cassettes that they put into his head for different household tasks. I love that. I love that he's putting together the crib and stuff and doing all these menial tasks.

I love the look of the Baxter building. I love the look of the team. I love their dynamic. The world itself, the world itself is great. The fantastic car looks as it should, like some kind of late model sixties type of Cadillac or something with the fins and all that.

We get to put to some tranea and they take it seriously. We get to see that's what's his name, Paul walter Hauser. Paul Walter Hauser, who really was in the midst of a real moment. I think he's still goes going through it because he appears. He was in The Naked Gun.

He was in that movie about the guy on pressure Luck, which is actually a really good movie. I have to watch that. It's really good. It's very offbeat, there's some interesting stuff going on there. And and he's a professional wrestler.

Who Paul Walter Houser is a pro wrestler. Yeah, I didn't. Oh my god, man, look it up. No. Yeah, he's great.

Yeah, he's doing it. Man, he's living the life he wanted right now. And it's amazing to watch. Wow. And he's fucking great, by the way, he's fucking great in this movie.

Oh, he's great, and he boughted me up. Yeah. Yeah, and just like this, I'll deal with Sue of course. Yeah. He is very bureaucratic, which is very different from the mole Man that I grew up with, because the hole Man from the original book is this little short guy who's shunned by society, who's a badass hand to hand combat fighter.

This he's more of a bureaucrat who's very haughty and you know, refuses to deal with re It's great, he's awesome in this, but but the look, if it's great, the thing they give us the thing as he is, everybody wants the thing with the brow and just the look of him, the sort of squat built like a fire hydrant, but get those soulful blue eyes. He's phenomenal in this, and well, the thing is one of the one of my top three favorite things about this. He's almost flawless. No, I think this was a bit of a cheat on their part, but I cannot in any way be angry with the cheat in giving us shallow Ball or shell Ball as our silver surfer. Now she is a silver surfer, There's no fucking question about it.

You can use whoever you want. But and I think that's more of a tip off that this isn't our world, it's another one of. Theirs, because we didn't have norn Rad. Yes, and I guarantee nooron Rad's on the way, but. I didn't think of it in those terms.

You're absolutely right, it's our world, but slightly different. Yeah, so that's not even that's not even our Galactis. There's another Galactis out there. Right, But I thought it worked fine. I had no because what you said about the other silver surfer at the Doug Jones Silver Surfer, this Silver Surfer, we actually get to see her surfing along black holes and all this crazy kind of stuff.

It's really she's as graceful as you want the silver Surfer to be. She performs her heraldry duties as you would expect. I thought I wasn't missing anything, but not having the quote unquote real silver surfer. Okay, well, listen, I'm a fucking Silver Surfer fan from way way back, and he's one of my favorites of all time. So any chance I get to see Nora and Ratt, I want to see it.

When Rise of the Silver Surfer came out, I was working at a movie theater that was showing it. I was a projectionist there and we had the giant twentieth century Fox standy, which was basically a mannequin of the Silver Surfer on a surfboard in our lobby, and that stayed in my house for years and years. We would string him up everywhere. So yeah, I want to see him in the movies. But I'm not mad at Julia Garner as shall al Ball and I loved her performance, and I thought the effects were fucking fantastic, all the close up stuff, like when we were seeing the Earth.

I wish they would not release special effects footage until it's actually done because the early stuff, I was feeling iffy about the entire affair just based on her. But then, like you said, this is the first time we get to see her actually cosmic surfing man, and it's too brief. That entire sequence is too brief with her out there doing that, because I want at least a thirty minutes of just him surfing. Okay, is that too much to ask? Maybe this is too much to ask.

Well that I have hope, Like you, it would be really cool if they had a real Silver Surfer centric movie because that was one of Kirby's crowning achievements is the stuff he did with Silver Surfer, because that you can say is almost psychedelic and its depiction of because he's surfing the galaxy, he's going to all these weird places he was. This kind of ties in with some of the cartoons you're making about us musing about life, and that's Silver Surfer is a soulful creature entity who is always considering his place in the universe and eventually breaks the bond of being the Galactus servant. But it raises a lot of questions. He's somebody who gave his basically gave his life for his planet. What does that mean after he's fulfilled his obligation to his master.

It's interesting. There's a lot. I think there's a lot you could do there, but. That place sucks. You should have let him eat it.

Listen. Yeah, look, I love the Surfer. He's to me like the Marvel equivalent of DC's Martian Manhunter. Like they said, every alien seems to have some tragic tail at its heart, and his is worse than most because his world's still there. He just can't go anymore.

He's not one of them anymore, and when he finally does, it's all disastrous if you read the comics. So yeah, I like the Martian Manhunter comparison though, because that is a very sad somebody who he can only dream of his his home planet, can never go back there. No. Yeah, And it's what's crazy to me is he exists in the same world as Superman. The conversations they must have because Martian Manhunter can say, yes, I know you're the last son of Krypton, but I'm the last Martian and I actually lived on Mars and I had a family and they all were burned by the fucking white Martians.

He had a great feature in the one of my favorite stories, I think you have mixed feelings about Kingdom Come. Yeah, But it's part of that pall of let's make everything dark and make everything hardcore that the nineties were all about. There's some of that, but there's hope at the end of it. But Martian Manhunter figures into that story because he has at a certain point he has opened his mind up to the world and basically been crushed by all the voices in his head. So he ends up basically being basically mentally disabled as a result of trying to open his mind up to the It's a very tragic no matter how you slice it.

But I but one of the things that I think is interesting getting back to The Fantastic Four is when I think about the story, they could have very easily made The Fantastic Four with this type of story as a mini series on Disney Plus. The story, like I said, is it's fun, it's action packed, but there's a lot of moral dilemma going on because what effectively happens for folks who maybe haven't seen it so read and Sue they're going to have a baby Franklin. Sue is pregnant with Franklin, and they go to try and deal with Galactus, and Galactus sees that she's pregnant and recognizes that this unborn baby is going to be one of the most powerful beings in the universe. So he presents them with this idea that you give me the child Franklin and I will spare your planet.

And it's awesome. Because they've gone to deal with Galactus, the world considers them their protectors. They come back barely within an inch of their lives with frank and they come back to Earth, and everybody's so, how did you defeat Galactus? Tell us all about it? And they have to sit there basically hat in hand and say, we didn't kill them.

Well, okay, so how are you going to deal with them? Well, I'm gonna be honest with you. He said he'd spare the planet if we would give the prices too high? Though, well, what was the price he wanted our child in exchange for the planet. And then people are like, and you didn't think that was a fair bargain?

One life for billions? But they're like, it's our child. Didn't you hear what I said? But then you have read later in the movie at least considering the calculus of that. Is that something they should still consider.

That's a very interesting ethical dilemma to have in the middle of a summer blockbuster. Yeah, and it's balanced perfectly too, because they could have leaned more heavily into it if they wanted. They had played that for the rest of the show, the rest of the movie, Earth United against the Four against Galactus. Yeah, the only thing I didn't love about. So they come up with this plan, right, this gonna be spoilerific.

So if you don't want to know if you haven't seen first Steps, stop now, maybe Father Malone will give you time code to skip to. But so what they do is effectively read has developed this teleportation, but it's impractical. But he figures out a way that if they if they can't stop Galactus, they're gonna move the whole planet to another place in the Solar System, which, let's be honest, is a weird plan to come up with. It seems like it's fraud, fraud a best. It's a terrible plan.

It's a terrible plan. Gravitational forces alone would tear this world apart. But somehow he unites the whole planet. He ensue into doing basically supplying this project of creating all of these teleportation gates all over the globe, and then the day comes that they're going to power this thing up and where all systems go. They're counting down from thirty and they get to five or three or something, and then Silver Surfer comes in just starts flying through gate after gate and basically inside of what five seconds, this plan that probably took them the better part of six months to develop and execute is gone.

In an eyeblin that I had a bit of a problem with because it just seems like you're taking that plan and just crumpling it up right there in front of you and throwing it in the bash. Oh that's I loved that. Actually. I love seeing them getting a kicking and then getting another kicking, and then getting another kicking until. There was a lot of that though.

Yeah, but that's okay because this is a family that was fracturing at the beginning, and it's all about them coming together and fucking doing it. And I'd like to say that the finale of this movie, it's all Sue Storm and that's a time because she's always shunted off to the side and given bullshit to do, and the fact that they've made this about her child means that she's the one to fight well. Vanessa Kirby, I confess I didn't know much about her before seeing her in. This That's right. You didn't see her with Shay Wiggham in the Mission Impossible movies.

I did not. I have to catch up on that. But she is she sells it. She is fantastic. She She's very deep, almost gravelly voiced, so when she is sending all of that invisible energy and doing all that stuff to Galactis to physically push Galactus.

She does it to the point where she effectively dies right there. Oh, spoiler fucking moloney to me to say that she exerts herself to the degree that she topples this giant of an alien, But she sells it because you feel her motherly instinct to protect her child no matter what, to the point where she outshines Reid, who is the leader of the Fantastic Four. But again, mister Fantastic can't hold the candle to the invisible woman in this because she is a bad ad. It's a double mother affair because Silver Surfer was denied her child when she had to become the goddamn Surfer, So she's the one who actually knocks Galactus back and into the portal it so it's a double mom fistathon. It is.

The thing that maybe got under my skin a little bit with the Silver is that she destroys all these gates all over the globe in an eyeblink, and then Johnny confronts her with all of these met They've been picking up these messages from deep space through the whole movie, and he is the one to effectively translate them. He figures out, what's the tabula rasa the Rosetta stone rather of this language, and he letislates it. I thought that was pretty cool. It gives him something to do, and he's not just a brady kid anyway. He confronts her with all these messages and he.

Can and it's him getting chicks too at the same time, so he's actually totally in keeping with his character. But my problem is he spends all this time trying to He convinces her to eventually turn against Galactus, which is a good thing, but boy, if he could have gotten to her five seconds earlier, maybe they could have teleported the whole planet away. And it just seems like such a missed opportunity for the sake of five, ten, fifteen seconds, he just was a little too late. HPU can't handle this appointment, Kenya. I just I wanted them to succeed so so bad because there's such a they're so likable.

They did, they did, and at the end, they did well. But it's very It all unfolds very logically because Sue has a relationship with the mole man I don't remember his name in the movie, Harvey Elder, and he she negotiates so that everybody can evacuate to the underground, because she knows that when when Galactis comes, there's gonna be miles of blocks of buildings that people are going to be in danger of getting hurt. So they evacuate everybody underground so that it's completely empty New York except for Galactus and the Fantastic Four facing off. And it's great because we get Galactus as we know and love him. He looks exactly like he does in the comics, but a little bit judged up for modern day.

But they didn't fuck with the character design. I mean, they fucking put Ralph Innoson in that goddamn suit and filmed him that's Galactis. I could have just done that from the beginning. It makes no sense, but it's I don't know, Like I said, it's I hate to call it low stakes because the world hangs in the balance, but it is a very small scale story about the Fantastic Four going to try and figure out Galactus and then deal with them. By the end of it, it's all very logical and fun.

They're a family, but they don't. There's less of an emphasis on the prankishness and the arguing it's they might rip each other a little bit. I think Johnny pokes fun at the beard that the thing has to grow because they're they're rationing power so they can't so he has to grow a beard instead of shaving, which we've I've never seen the thing with a beard. I thought it was cool. I loved it, man, I thought that was great.

And you get to see so go. No, what you're saying is true, though. The thing about this film is, and leading up to it, I think you and I definitely had this conversation where we kept saying, we don't need the entire world to be in peril, like it's okay to just tell us an intimate story of these characters. And this movie pulled off a very nifty trick, which is it is a worldwide disaster movie that feels like an intimate family drama. Yep, that's exactly that.

Those are my words, my thoughts exactly, Father alone, You've crystallized them. It just not every movie has to be where the universe is liver or die hanging in the balance. Not every comic book that you read is the universe is in peril. Sometimes it's just a matter of some local villain that's causing trouble in your neighborhood, You deal with them. If they had made first steps twenty years prior, they would be fighting Galactus while the machines were working, and like Earth was being destroyed slowly, Earth would be a desiccated husk by the end of the fight, and then that would still be a victory somehow, somehow.

But there's damage just him walking around Galax knocking into buildings and all that stuff that the effects work works really well. I think the small scale stuff like buildings, trees, and just after Waterfront. After all those Transformer movies, Man, I've had my fill of watching buildings get knocked down, you. Know what I mean. I don't need it anymore.

Yeah, they have confidence in their ability to deliver on this kind of stuff, and it all, like I said, it all really works for the most part. All the space stuff where they travel to Galactus's ship to negotiate, I thought all that was kind of cool. Sue gives birth in zero gravity and that's a harrowing. Sequence, amazing sequence. I don't know that I've seen a zero gravity birth in age oh, in a serious movie, never mind a comic book movie.

And it's all. It just feels like it's been thought out with care, and there's some fan service. We didn't even mention the cast of the Korm and Fantastic Four that all appear in cameos throughout this movie, which most people will never notice, but I know you and I did, and I was like, that's pretty cool. Underwood was there, and the culp, the guy who played he played mister fantastic was like a news commentator's. Fantastic fantastic the word, yeah.

Fantastic is it? It was just it's it feels like the filmmaker's heart is in the right place. Without giving us fan service, it's too fascile. It all feels like for the fans, by the fan. And you can't have Doomsday without introducing them here, because we know that Franklin's going to be the whole crux of that series.

Right, there's Doomsday that one movie. There's it going to be two, who knows. Do you want to talk about the post credit sequence? Yes, let's where it's how many four years later? Four years later?

My god? So by then they've definitely engaged the services of Miss Agatha Harkness as their first nanny, as was in the comics. Right, But it's a big jump. It is a big jump. But he's obviously a genius.

He's ready advanced philosophy books and such, and but Sue goes out to check on him, and there's a green hooded figure holding Franklin. Who might it be? Of course it's a Victor von Doom. Don't shush me away, don't shoot me away? HP, how dare you?

There was a fly crawling on the screen. Sorry about that, but that But how exciting is that? Because that was not long after we heard that Robert Downey Jr. Was going to be Doctor Doom, right is maybe within the last year before that movie was produced. So it would have been more excited if it were not Robert Downey Junior playing Victor von Doom.

But well, look, the thing of it is, Marvel is not immune to just sh well, no, this shit happening. Okay. Now, in Marvel's perfect world, that Jonathan what's his name would have been Kang. He would not have been exposed as an abusive duca. Right, he could have been that this was going to be the Kang dynasty, Right, this is what this movie was supposed to be.

Right, So so there's no there's well, I can't say there's no knowing what might have happened, because I'm sure that there are drafts and synopsies and paperwork in the archives of Marvel somewhere how they were going to approach Can and his role in all of this. But look, he fucked up his life, and by extension, he fucked up the plans that Marvel had for him, So they have to pivot now. I have to admit that it is probably the biggest example of stunt cast that I think I've ever seen in my life. To bring back a guy who, not five years before less than that, was one of the most beloved Marvel characters in the movies, and to watch him die so dramatically an endgame to bring him back as Victor von Doom.

Look, put aside the the what's the word, the negative vibe that maybe you get just thinking about that's just fan service and there's no regard for the character. Put all that aside. Didn't did that not get your attention to see that they're bringing back downy as von Doom in this the next big phase of movies. I certainly took notice. Yeah, but it was negative for me.

So, and it continues to be. It continues to be because I know what they're going to do. They're just going to say he's a variant, and then he'll be dead at the end, and then at the end of the end of Doomsday we will get our proper Victor von Doom. I know that's what's gonna happen. But fuck them, and they're stunt castory.

Man. They could have had anybody play Victor von Doom. It would not have made such a big splash, though, because they needed Here's the thing. We just talked about the fact that we had years of crappy Marvel media. That's true.

They were in a rut at that point. I agree. Nevertheless, this just felt desperate to me. And it's one hundred percent desperate. I'm agreeing with you there.

This was a move motivated by desperation, because. I think they could have made the same announcement and said, here's what we're doing. It's going to be Doomsday, and we're gonna have Victor von Doom, and we're gonna have every character and then just show every fucking character that's going to be in it and go are you excited now? And then that would have been. Enough based off to answer for the Jonathan Majors thing, though.

You have to, if nothing else, just to prove to the shareholders that they have a handle on this problem and how they're going to address it right. And that's we're switching gear. We're switching gears. We're bringing we're accelerating to the actual big bad villain of the Marvel universe, which is doctor Doom, and we'll cast somebody appropriately and everyone will go see it. That's come on, it's possible.

But the ordinary people like you and I, we will never know unless someone writes a book on the subject and says here's what they planned on doing, and here's how it would have panned out versus what we actually got. There's no telling that book is being written as we speak. You know it. Probably probably, and I'll read it because I'm genuinely curious. I told you a while ago, I was looking on Instagram for something.

I was just poking around, and someone had posted without attributing it to it, without attributing it to anything. It was. Turns out it was just an a sort of film clip that they created with Jonathan Majors as the Kang Dynasty, and it Basically the clip involved doctor Doom like laying waste to this whole arena full of Jonathan Major's variants, and look, it's AI bullshit. I hate it, but I'll be damned if it didn't look let's say ninety percent. I was ninety percent sure that it was just AI bullshit, but ten percent unsure is pretty high when it comes to this stuff.

It looked. It captured my attention for the minute and a half or whatever that it it ran, and it made me think, Wow, maybe I don't know, maybe the Kang thing could have worked out one way or another. It's hard to tell because they had invested so much time and effort into laying the groundwork for him and to have that literally disappear overnight in the span of what it was the Oscars that year, that's when he got in trouble. He was in a limo on the way home, and I think that's when he got abusive, and that's when they called the cops. And it's breathtaking how swiftly he was canceled.

I'm not saying it wasn't completely warranted because the guy was abusive, let's be honest about that. But at the same time. Boy, it was just it made my head spin how quickly he was just gone from all of Marvel's plans, as he should have been. But at the same time, what are they supposed to do? And I'm sure it was particularly panic and anxiety driven, particularly in anxiety full time at Marvel, because they had been listening to all the criticism, and I'm sure they were thinking, just wait, because once we get to the Kang dynasty, everything's going to be fine.

And then suddenly, oh, come on. Yeah they Loki Season two or three of Loki, which I really liked. I did too. I actually, truthfully that was probably one of my favorite Marvel series, certainly one of the last ones I ever watched, because I thought Tom Hidleston is amazing and the conclusion of that series was He'll be back. We'll see Loki in Doomsday.

But I was genuinely curious about because I'd read about Kang in the books. I knew that he was essentially an ancestor to Doom or in the bloodline. It was there was some interesting stuff they could have done there. He fucked up. Oh well, thank you, Jonathan Majors.

Yep, all right, anything else we're gonna talk about is going to be pure speculation. So I think we're just gonna end it right here. We both love the Fantastic Four. We love that fucking movie. Actually, it's one of MCU's best in years and years, and it's definitely worth a rewatch.

And obviously they're on their way. They're coming here because that's what it was foretold in The Thunderbolts. All right, next time we're gonna be talking about something else, probably Thor talking Thor. Next time we'll talk Thor. Sure, i'll talk Door.

I don't want to talk Thor. Let's not talk Thor. Let's talk. Let's talk Scarlet Witch. How about that?

You want to talk Scarlet Witch? No, I don't want to talk Scarlet. Let's talk doctor Strange. I would love to talk about doctor Strange. Let's do Strange.

He's a huge figure now, so he's got to be dealt with. We'll split the difference between Thor and Silver Surfer, right. Doctor Strange has been that psychedelic middle. Ground totally man. Yeah, he's separate enough but as integral as anything.

So next time we'll be talking about on von doom Fest, we'll be talking about mister doctor Strange. And until then HP work. People find you when they're looking for Yeah. So I co host the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast alongside my esteemed best friend, the oldest friend right here, father alone. And I younger than you.

That's by about a month, not even no, not even two weeks. What am I talking about? Those count It's ridiculous. I also host the Noise Junkies' music podcast, and I have a band campsite hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. For me.

You're listening to the show that I do most it's midnight viewing. We're on twice a week. Either we're doing a fest on a Monday here, which is right now is Von Doomfest with HP, or we're doing horror anthology series. We're currently doing Tales of the Unexpected. That's Roald Dolls Tales of the Unexpected with mister Mike whitefin in Projection Booth.

Every Friday is either a Father Malone's Weekly round Up or a Father Malone's guest spot. I've been pulling in a lot of shows that I've done on our pulling in a lot of episodes I've dropped in on other people's shows to fill out the balance. I've been pretty busy lately. I now work for Universal Scare. Time of the times of the feeding these stations, So please keep listening, go the Patreon pas, build the show notes, do all that stuff, and the see you next time.

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