[To find out what similarities other critics and RogerEbert.com readers detected in Depp's performance, see our article "Is Willy Wonka Wacko Jacko?"]
Q. Let me start off by saying that Tim Story's "Fantastic Four" is a lackluster film, with very little going for it. In this sense, your appraisal is correct. To call the Fantastic Four "second-tier heroes," however, is not.
The Four, one of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's earlier creations, are also one of Marvel's longest-running comics. They have been rightly coined comics' "First Family" and their own comic subtitles itself as "The World's Greatest Comic Book." They are miles more popular than many other characters who have been given the film treatment in recent years -- for evidence of this, look at how this mediocre, critically panned film nearly doubled its initial box-office projections.
How you could confuse The Human Torch with The Flash is baffling. One lights on fire and flies, the other runs really fast. At least mix him up with X2's Pyro, who could control flame (but not create it). And comparing Storm with the Invisible Woman -- why, because they both have blond hair? I had thought you were beginning to catch on to the fact that powers and personality were intertwined -- that comic book films contain some depth of character.
These are not films about flashy powers, they are stories about people. I will give you this much, however: the film's version of Dr. Doom (much changed for the worse from his comics incarnation) is derivative. Instead of a vengeful and scarred totalitarian dictator, the film offers up a Trump-wannabe tycoon whose every "motive" scene to fuel his hatred for the Four is completely ripped from Willem Dafoe/Norman Osbourne's exposition in the original "Spider-Man."
I don't expect you to do all the homework in reviewing these films, with long and storied histories in other mediums. I do wish, however, that if you don't know what you're talking about, don't act as though you do. Justin Morissette, Vancouver
A. It is easy enough to label yourself "The World's Greatest Comic Book," or "The World's Greatest Newspaper," for that matter. The trick is to get someone else to describe you that way.
But you make a good point. Many, many, many Fantastic Four fans have written to me complaining that since the Four pre-dated the appearance of X-Men, they could hardly be ripping them off. My defense is that I was thinking of the movies, not the original comic books, and so "Fantastic Four" seemed like an afterthought to "X-Men" and "The Incredibles."
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