After writing the article ‘Should you watch the Fantastic Four’ I was left with some broad conclusions and more questions, having externalized the issues drove me to write in the first place. One of the main reasons I wrote it was a sense of disbelief that, what I considered to be an engaging and entertaining movie, had been thoroughly criticised on a scale of quite epic proportions. As Kevin Smith put it in a podcast about the F4 movie, it had been “Gigli-ed”; referring to the film Gigli (2003), which was universally panned by critics and moviegoers alike. The conclusions I came to refer to ideas of, to put it broadly, orientation and taste.
Everybody is an individual in today’s western world. There are more than 50 different gender statuses one can select on Facebook, and gender is rather a defining term. Under such large umbrellas of identification lie a plethora of still broad subgroup categories of ideology/orientation/taste we are free to align with. For example:
“I like fast cars”
“I’m a cat person”
“I’m a romantic kind of guy”
“Diamonds are forever”
These examples indicate all manner of appropriated stances on what’s good, what’s bad, what you do, or do not, like. When it to watching movies, it makes sense that everyone has a variety of different wants and needs, all at different levels of priority. And this is why I was upset with reviews of Fantastic Four. A lot of what I’ve seen and heard about it has been based on broad, unspecific, subjective statements. Things like, “It was bad”, “It was the worst thing I’ve seen”, “Avengers was much better”.
And so on.
Any specific critique I’ve read has been largely focused on completely non-relevant things such as the continuity of Sue Storm’s hair, or that they made Johnny Storm a black man. None of which should affect the viewing in any negative way. If you didn’t like it, fine. But if you are going to take the time to upload your views online, be sure to make them as rational and objective as possible. F4 would have benefitted greatly, I think, if people were to watch the film without preconceived notions of what they think it should be. Generalised, harshly critical statements, based on subjective opinion, are not a basis for a movie review. Having said that, if anyone is able to give me at least one sensible reason why F4 was not ‘good’, I’m up for a friendly, dispassionate debate.
