gcsman

If this movie had been made 15-20 years ago it would have been hailed as great, and would now be seen as a classic. Nowadays of course it has loads of competition, but it's still good across the board. I liked its balance of plot, characters, dialog, action, and visual impact. And pace. It moves along briskly, expecting (quite rightly) that at this stage viewers will have no trouble filling in any little gaps for themselves. It has a classic unity of focus -- no distractions with side plots or multiple storylines -- and makes good use of two big cosmic antagonists (Galactus and Silver Surfer) that have been staples in the Marvel comics since they were introduced. And to a level that is now rarely seen, it's pretty much comics-accurate: These are the FF characters just the way they should be. The cast are all just fine (among which Vanessa Kirby stands out, with the script allowing her to show that she is, hands down, the strongest team. Member). The choice to set this in a retro-1960's setting and in a parallel universe is simple and clever, totally getting around the problem of how to introduce them into a superhero universe already stacked with characters, and answer the question where they've been all this time.

So all of this together gets a 10/10 from me. Does this mean it's perfect? No, you can always find ways to poke holes in the story or the details or something that didn't appeal to you personally. It just means that I can't really see how it would have been done better. What pushes it over the top for me, however, was something visual and rather subtle, which I didn't notice consciously till well into it. It has something to do with the color palette and how the characters LOOK so real-but-enhanced. They just look great. I can imagine the production team spending days over choices like what exact shade of blue to use for the FF uniforms, or what precise shade of orange for The Thing, or how to make the Baxter Building remind us of the Avengers tower but have its own identity, or exactly how big to make Galactus, or how shiny to make the Surfer's skin, and on and on. And baby Franklin Richards is really about the best movie-baby I can recall seeing anytime recently. There is really a LOT behind everything we're seeing.

This all honors the importance of of FF in the Marvel canon. It was THE very first Marvel comic title where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were striving for something different from Superman or Batman and it struck gold right away. Fun fact, I learned from one of artist Scott Adams' books that the FF characters represent the four archetypal elements of nature: earth, air, fire, and water. (And I really thought it was fun to see how they used Harvey Elder, the Mole Man, who was the very first villain in FF issue #1.)

The first FF movie (back in 2005) actually wasn't all that bad for the time, but it was aimed more to juvenile audiences and just didn't quite 'work'. The attempted reboot in 2015, though, was just bad. Third time's the charm.

Notice that whenever this studio wants to start over with their superhero film lineup, what character do they call on? Every time. That's what happened with director Richard Donner's pioneering version in 1978 starring Christopher Reeve, Zack Snyder's version in 2013 with Henry Cavill, and now James Gunn directing David Corenswet. Superman is THE iconic superhero, and from the box office buzz on this opening week it's obvious that lots of people who won't come out for the latest Marvel or even DC outing will go to the theater to see the Big Guy in action. Instant success.

But then the actual movie has to deliver and I'd say this one is pretty good. I can't think of many films with (just over) 2 hours run time that motor through so much material. There are loads of characters who all get good time on screen, the acting is uniformly just fine, and the storyline is pretty complex but winds up satisfactorily. Comparisons are inevitable of course. I thought Henry Cavill was great, but that version was in the hands of a director (Snyder) with a very dark vision of things that just does not suit Superman. He (and we) would have been better off directing Batman. And of course Christopher Reeve was the original (at least the big-screen, big-budget versions) who just suited the role of the ultimate good guy with the power to make things right. Rachel Brosnahan is the best Lois Lane since Margot Kidder, and Perry White and Jimmy Olsen also have more prominent roles than they did in previous versions. They're good. So is Nicholas Hoult as our classic villain Lex Luthor, playing a power-hungry man consumed by jealousy and rage. The "Justice Gang" trio also add quite a bit of interest, particularly Mr. Terrific.

A surprising standout though is Krypto, who's on screen much more than I expected. The dog is absolutely great -- I don't know whose idea it was to feature him so strongly, but it works! Weirdly, the chemistry between Superman and his dog is at least as important to the story as the link between Lois and Clark. If there's anything genuinely new about this version, that's what it is.

A couple of things that didn't totally work for me though were the Kents (a friend of mine who was raised in Kansas said their accent is not even close to accurate -- maybe they moved there from Georgia??). I preferred Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter.

And then there's the junk science like antiproton rivers, pocket universes and impossibly big monsters which indeed are typical in the actual comics, but seemed a bit over the top. (But to be fair, watching Christopher Reeve reverse the flow of time by reversing the Earth's spin was crazy too.)

I feel like only the Brits are capable of doing films like this -- small-scale stories with eccentric characters put into unpredictable situations, suffused in a warm, low-key and gentle sense of humor and irony. The story here is that Charles Heath (Tim Key), a resident of a tiny and thinly populated island, has invited folk musicians Herb McGwyer (Tim Basden) and Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) to the island to do a special concert of the music they sung back when they were a popular duo. Turns out the "special concert" is just for him (Charles), and he can afford to pay them because he's won The Lottery -- twice. Since they broke up as singers years ago, Nell has moved on to marriage and other things, but Herb still carries a torch for her and can't let it go. He needs help and refuses to see it.

We get quite a bit of impromptu singing as it goes on, and it's nice. The island looks exactly like it should -- isolated, rocky/meadowy, slightly gloomy with rain. There's one little town with a tiny general store which doesn't seem to stock anything that Herb is looking for, but the owner lady (Sian Clifford) always comes up with a clever and slightly weird substitute. The central part of it, though, is the interplay between Herb and Charles. To call Charles 'eccentric' doesn't tell half of it. He's the nicest, most generous person you could imagine, but anything he says is so tangled with elliptical side tracks and self deprecation that it takes a while to translate it all. But both of them grow because they change each other. Herb learns to step outside himself and do things for others, while Charles gets the courage to take some (social) steps that he has long been aching for. It's a feel-good experience in the best sense. This is 2 hours at the movies that you won't regret.