lydamorehouse | (Reply)

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Lord of the Rings has an ensemble cast and did phenomenally well.

It's all a matter of how much time you're willing to (A) spend on each movie, and (B) spend on writing the script to BIND THE CHARACTERS TOGETHER.

The Fantastic Four movies were actually weak, in my opinion, for one reason only: for whatever ungodly reason that I cannot comprehend, they fumbled the ball on Doctor Doom. How the hell you can SCREW UP the characterization of Doc Doom I don't know, he's Darth Vader crossed with a Mad Scientist and that's it. Instead we get Evil Businessman and wierd powers, neither of which is Doctor Doom. Then after getting rid of him, we bring him back, and don't improve the characterization. Thus in both cases we have significant screen time devoted to a failed characterization.

My main concern right now is the Thor and Captain America films, which havea couple of very large caution flags raised by preliminary stuff including the cast list.

With respect to Thor I have no objection to selecting a racially diverse cast when it's not an issue for the story (i.e., Nick Fury was a hard-bitten white sergeant, but there was absolutely no reason he couldn't be black and Samuel L. Jackson is a perfect Nick Fury, regardless of the original vision), but they've chosen a black man to play Heimdall. Um, hello, HEIMDALL? NORSE GOD? NORSE? Like we're all EASILY SUNBURNED PASTY WHITE PEOPLE UP HERE?

And the guy they've picked for Thor... if he's supposed to be Thor he doesn't look either large enough or the sort of guy to have the presence necessary to carry it off, and if he's supposed to be Donald Blake, he's TOO big.

Captain America, I'm sorry, Cap doesn't look ANYTHING like Johnny Storm, yet they picked the actor who did Johnny Storm to play Cap. Looks are generally secondary, yes, but Cap's an image as well as a role. And to pull Cap off properly, they have to do this as a proper period piece, dead on, with the 1940s Patriotism Dial turned way up and NONE of the modern cynicism.