The Four Color Media Monitor

Entertainment Weekly (via The Daily Wire) interviewed the cast of the new Fantastic Four: First Steps, and it looks like, despite the mess the live action Snow White film from Disney turned out to be, both artistically and politically, the cast of the latest attempt at launching a FF movie looks like it'll get similar treatment. For example, here's what they say about Human Torch:

Johnny is Marvel's archetype of a "hothead" teenager, but what exactly that means has been open to interpretation over the years. In the 2005 and 2007 Fantastic Four movies, for instance, Chris Evans played the character as a skirt-chasing scallywag. Quinn wanted to do something different.

"He's a man that leads with a lot of bravado, which can be an affront sometimes. But also he's funny," Quinn says. "Myself and [Marvel Studios boss] Kevin [Feige] were speaking about previous iterations of him and where we are culturally. He was branded as this womanizing, devil-may-care guy, but is that sexy these days? I don't think so. This version of Johnny is less callous with other people's feelings, and hopefully there's a self-awareness about what's driving that attention-seeking behavior."

Johnny is the little brother of the Fantastic Four, Quinn notes. But that's not the only quality that defines him.

"He is really smart," Shakman says. "He's on that spaceship for a reason, and I think sometimes people forget that in various comic stories, he's been one of the most heroic of them, even if he's undercutting his heroism at every turn through humor. He's Sue's brother, which means they are cut from similar cloth."

Now it's sad enough if they're implying Johnny was portrayed as little more than abusive to women, but are they also implying it's wrong to depict him as a funny guy and hero simultaneously? By that logic, it was wrong to depict Spider-Man as a guy who made humorous wisecracks too. If the film doesn't depict Johnny dating/romancing girls, if at all, then it's getting nowhere fast. If they haven't given Fandral from Thor this kind of treatment yet, I hestitate to think what they'll do if they have another Thor movie in the works. And then, here's what Vanessa Kirby says about how she's portraying Sue Storm, the older sister and wife of Mr. Fantastic:

Achieving global political peace sounds only slightly harder than synthesizing the decades-long fictional history of Sue Storm. As Marvel's first female superhero, she been part of the Fantastic Four since its first issue — but back then, she carried the relatively demeaning codename of "Invisible Girl," could only turn herself invisible, and mostly functioned as a damsel in distress.

"If you played an exact '60s Sue today, everyone would think she was a bit of a doormat," Vanessa Kirby says. "So figuring out how to capture the essence of what she represented to each generation, where the gender politics were different, and embody that today, was one of the greatest joys of this."

Over the years, Sue evolved in several ways. Her abilities expanded from individual invisibility to control over electromagnetic light and force fields, making her arguably the team's most powerful member. At various times, she's become a mother, a leader, and a skimpily clad dominatrix named Malice. Synthesizing all these aspects into a single character was a lot of fun for Kirby, who says motherhood, in particular, became the key through-line. Indeed, Sue's pregnancy will play a significant part in the plot of First Steps.

"Matt and I were really aware that there hasn't really been a mother with a baby in these superhero archetypes women have been getting," Kirby says. "One of the things I love most from Sue's history is when she becomes Malice, and all her dark stuff comes out. I was obsessed with that chapter of her life. So I wanted to make sure that there were tones of Malice in there with her, that she wasn't just the stereotype of a goody, sweet mother."

Kirby continues, "I've always been really interested in the mess of femininity, and how can you be both? How can you be all the things? Not just the tough, invincible, powerful woman, but also a mother who gives birth, which is itself a superhero act. I love that these characters are real humans in a messy family who argue and try to work it out and get things wrong."

Well if she's going to depict Sue as a hybrid of a baddie, I'm not sure how that can be reconciled with a motherly role, let alone femininity. Predictably, this interview is ambiguous about how Sue went on to gain more than just invisibility powers, as the force shields came about 2 years later, she became less of a distressed damsel, and none of this came at the expense of femininity in her portrayals. So what's their point? I think Kirby and company are just filtering everything through a lens where they only see what they want to, and it doesn't sound like they're grateful to Lee and Kirby for what they created back in the day.

What's irritating in addition is how the citation of the Malice portrayal echoes the Phoenix Saga from X-Men. I knew something had gone wrong for years with how certain "auteurs" get their "inspiration", and this looks like it'll be the next botch to borrow from one of the most questionable storylines of the Bronze Age. It's also grating how Kirby sounds like she's going to play a "sexy villainess" stereotype. What's so great about that? If being a criminal is the only way they believe a woman can be allowed to be sexy, that's disturbing, as is the citation of darkness as inspiration. It says pretty much all you need to know what's bound to go wrong with the latest adaptation of a classic comic that's regrettably been run into the ground by Hollywoke. For all we know, darkness is bound to overshadow the light of the source material here.

Breitbart also notes:

Fantastic Four: First Steps already has one major red flag, with one of its stars — the overexposed Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, The Last of Us) — declaring “A WORLD WITHOUT TRANS PEOPLE HAS NEVER EXSISTED [sic] AND NEVER WILL,” then taunting fans who disagreed with his virtue signaling.

This of course is the sad result of studios failing to discipline the actors they hire, and provide clear instructions they're not to make divisive political statements during filming and promotion of the projects. With this kind of mix in the movie, I think it'd be best to skip this as much as the previous live action iterations. This latest looks to be the worst FF adaptation of all, and another insult to the legacies of Lee and Kirby.

Labels: Fantastic Four, history, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, women of marvel