Mitch

Ineson is a great cast for Galactus. I think at least half of the Fantastic Four casting choice are fucking inspired.

But I am sitting here bracing- because I know Doom is coming and if they fuck that up this whole things crumbles like a house of cards.

I am not a huge Fantastic Four guy, but there is no project I've thought more about than how to adapt FF into a proper film- because it's been done so poorly repeatedly. Fan4stic was so bad that it made public opinion flip on the other movies and everyone started talking about how they were good actually.

The two guiding lights I'd point to for modern FF are Hickman and North. Hickman is who gets brought in by Marvel when something isn't fucking working and needs to get fixed. I know some people have gotten tired of the Krakoan age of X-men that he spun up but they don't remember how absolutely DIRE it was before that, X-Men comics were BAD across the board. Hickman's FF run is what showed he could do that. He took things seriously, built heavily off the lore, and very importantly brought the kids in. Making Reed into a dad is the missing piece that makes that character sing, so including his son and daughter as actual characters is now vital to the mix. North on the other hand is the current writer and is best known for doing the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. His run is episodic and fun. It makes me understand what the original appeal of these characters was and makes the whole "action scientist" thing work.

And the important thing for both of them, is that they commit. Everyone is living in a weird, wild world and despite how zany things are, it remembers the stakes are real. We don't need a wink to the audience because Dr Doom has teamed up with a T-Rex variant of himself and now they will rule over both worlds. We get what is both cool and ridiculous about that. You don't need to joke about how there's a bug in purple armor called Annihilus. It's all ridiculous, and at it's best when people are joking about how weird the world is- we also understand how much they love it. They didn't choose to be empowered, but they all chose to be explorers of the unknown.

And the thing that kills adaptations of it, moving it between page to screen. Is the embarrassment. It's looking at all this weird stuff and going, oh this is silly. Isn't this silly. And it is! But while the fantastic four is many things- it is never cynical. It wears its heart on its sleeve.

Like the whole reason folks are excited by this announcement art is the fact that it feels genuine. Bright colors, big smiles, fun outfits. They are already the fantastic four, so an exec doesn't have to suggest they cringe through figuring that out. Hell, they even have HERBIE, their robot sidekick. This doesn't guarantee it will be a good movie, but this is a great place to start from and shows that they at least understand what is fun about the characters.

Y'all need to learn you can pump up the things you love without tearing down the things you hate. That critique is more than simply being critical.

If you aren't asking yourself why a project made the choice they did with curiosity, then you aren't doing critique.

You are being cinema sins. Here's a thing I don't like ding.

The best advice I have ever heard about critiquing art is to simply describe what it's doing and to ask why. But this requires curiosity. It requires being willing to give something the benefit of the doubt. And most of all it requires leaving your cynicism at the fucking door.

And that can be hard, I get it. Online media analysis has been ruled by the idea that it is something to be done angrily. It's how people have seen it done. More than that people are taught to write persuasively, to not use passive language. It can't simply be "I didn't like this" it has to be "this is bad".

This sort of sensationalism also leads to people trying to come up with takes instead of critique. The problem being so many people work in reverse. Instead of engaging with the work and then coming to an idea about it, its having an idea and then reverse engineering scaffolding to hold it up. And people are fucking vicious about protecting their takes because it's often seen as the end product of engaging with art. What do you have at the end? Your take.

And it's completely reductive. When I watch a movie I have thoughts on the different actors, the scenes, the shots, sound, and dialogue. They synthesize together and become my opinion. And the thing is that my opinion can shift overall or on smaller things inside of it that may shift the whole. But takes are a single, pithy opinion. They are, by their nature, easily repeatable and get in your head. That's the function of their design. And damningly it leads to people not engaging with the work at all because it's been replaced by the take. But it also becomes sacrosanct. It's a single line, one opinion, so it can't be changed less the whole thing crumble. And more than that it belongs to somebody, it's theirs- so they viciously hold onto it.

Here's the thing. I do this all the time. I truly wish I was kind and nice, but grew up clever and cruel because that's what made people laugh. I love that serotonin hit I get when I make someone laugh with a pithy insight. Even if it's mean. When I played We Know the Devil, I came away liking it but hating the "true ending". It felt monstrous to me and while I knew what it was going for it just didn't hit for me that way. I had friends try and explain it over and over, and again, I understood the message and themes- I just felt the finale wasn't successful. But I could feel myself starting to calcify around my opinion, my take that the ending of this game sucked actually and HERE'S WHY. Then one day I saw someone explaining their read on the game and I got it. But I still tried to fight it, to mentally hold onto my take. Because it was mine, so it has to be better than anyone else's. It was precious. But then I let it go and it all clicked for me. It wasn't due to someone else coming up with wittier retort, or trying to prove me wrong. They just spoke about how they read it and I realized oh that makes perfect sense. I got it know. The Grinch's heart grew three sizes that day. It's an amazing feeling and not one you can get if you don't leave yourself open to having your mind changed. Not open yourself up to the idea that maybe you are wrong about something. Or even the idea that maybe your opinion can change.

Anyway this was art analysis 101, come back next week where we discuss dialectics and that you can enjoy something while taking issue with it.

The last few interactions I've had here have had the most twitter energy.