Fantastic Four Gets Script Changes and Upgrades It’s Visual Effects

It’s always nice to hear that a film wants to upgrade it’s visual effects. That usually means the director is paying attention and not just accepting what he’s got. He/she want to give the audience it’s moneys worth. However, it’s usually a BAD sign when a film (already nearing the end of shooting) has to do major script rewrites and changes nearly the entire 3rd act of the movie. The tells me that the movies’ management team couldn’t realize they had a bad ending when looking at the script they had in front of them and are now scrambling (scrambling is never a good thing) to re-do it on the fly.

With all that in mind, the good folks over at Dark Horizons give us this bit of good and very bad news:

With principal photography on the “Fantastic Four” film about to wrap, Cinescape now reports that the entire third act of the film has undergone extensive changes as a result of Pixar’s CGI family film “The Incredibles”. Seems after seeing the stretching effects of Elastigirl, the final battle sequence of FF needed to be beefed up, especially the similarly stretchable Mister Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd).

20th Century Fox apparently stepped up to the plate and coughed up more dough, anywhere up to an alleged $20 million in fact so Mister Fantastic could have more screen time to stretch across and some of the other characters may get some more action as well. On top of this, the third act has had to undergo a major rewrite. Writers and producers have been working overtime all through November and December as they thought about ways to better build up the film’s final battles and the resolution. This has lead to almost daily script changes in order to distance the FF ending from that of “The Incredibles”.

It sounds like this whole project has gotten totally out of control. Oh well, I guess we’ll really just have to wait and see how it turns out. Who knows… perhaps all this will lead to a great film experience for us the audience… but I doubt it.

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10 thoughts on “Fantastic Four Gets Script Changes and Upgrades It’s Visual Effects

  1. F4 looks entirely too depressing, and makes me crave a hulk re-release.

    I elect we petition Marvel: for a “Test Audience Cut” of the Hulk movie; treated as if Ang Lee spent one week less with the CGI, and instead edited at least 45 minutes out of the first hour (which is remarkably hulkless)

    In this hypothetical DVD, Ang would’ve learned from the already released Lord of the Rings that, in fact, there is an audience for epic artistic direction- provided theatrical release whets the appetite for deleted scenes.

  2. A movie can be enjoyable in its own right, regardless of what other movies similar to it have come out within the same time period.

    Besides, didn’t you see the original FF movie that was made about 7-8 years ago? (Or was that canned and never even released to video, because it was so bad?) :)

    Actually, the Incredibles and the FF composition is pretty similar in terms of powers: Violet / Sue Storm, Reed / Helen, Bob / Ben Grimm, and (personality-wise) Dash / Johnny Storm. But Pixar was working on this movie back in 1999, long before FF was announced for release.

    I think it’s sort of pathetic for Marvel to have their own ideas out-implemented — the stuff Elastigirl was doing in The Incredibles was straight out of John Byrne’s version of FF, 20 years ago, and should have already been in the FF movie… but the movie guys didn’t even mine those visuals, apparently, while Brad Bird did. (To quote Syndrome, “Lame Lame LAME!”)

    But take some consolation: At least it’ll be better than Star Wars 3.

  3. Well, I’m sure there will be comparisons, but who gives a shit? If we wanna see the movie, we’ll see it. If what we imagine to be a good FF movie isn’t realized, then we’ll all be back here to bitch about it. If other people want to be stupid and compare the Fantastic Four to some Disney rip off, then let them. We shouldn’t worry about things like that. It’s not OUR job, it’s the studio’s job. And something for Angry Editor, don’t be a stupid weiner! If he says it’s or its, who gives a shit? He wrote his post in a hurry and he probably has a lot of other things to worry about, and grammer isn’t one.

  4. “It’s” is short for “It is”, not the possessive form you’re trying to use. Please use “Its”, or I will be too distracted by crappy grammar to read your otherwise good posts.

  5. I’ve been concerned about this ever since The Incredibles was announced. Consider the fact that both films feature families with super powers, and two characters in each film have the same powers, (Violet/Sue Storm, Elastigirl/Mr. Fantastic), and you’re just begging for comparisons. Never mind the fact that the FF have been around for 40 odd years. The general public is just going to think that the FF is ripping off the Incredibles.

    Poor timing on Marvel’s part, if you ask me.

    Alter Ego Comics

  6. I am quite sure that they just dont want other people to think that “Fantastic Four” is an imitation of “The Incredibles” since ElastiGirl has the same powers as Mr. Fantastic. Not all viewers would be able to tell that “Fantastic Four” came first before “The Incredibles”, so you can imagine their dilemma.

  7. “perhaps all this will lead to a great film experience for us the audience… but I doubt it.”

    Well I couldn’t agree with you more. Now I am not going to boast that I am a film expert like yourself, but I can admit to my “movie dorkness” and I pride myself in that dorkness -it come in handy at parties- and the day I saw the first pic of the cast, I new that this movie was going to be a joke -kinda like the Nick Fury movie with David Hasselhof-. But with this new news of upgrading the special effects, it could bring some new positives to the flick. Lets just hope that one of those upgrades is the Thing. I mean the commish covered in playdoy does not sell me as the Thing.

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