Adorkification: Character Review: Reed Richards

This isn't a movie review.

If you're looking for movie reviews, check out JeremyJahns, schmoesknow or Belated Media, They're good at what they do.

This isn't a comic book review either.

For good reviews of comics, I recommend Comic Vine. They know their stuff.

So, what is this?

It's a review of a given comic book character as she (or he) was portrayed in a specific, alternate medium. It could be a movie, a television show, a cartoon, a radio program, an episode from a television show...whatever.
I wanted to look at that character's unique interpretation, and the factors involved, to see how faithful the depiction was (or wasn't) to the source material.

If you're still interested, read on...

Since there's a new interpretation of Fantastic Four coming out August 7th 2015, I thought I'd start with the first one...

...well, yeah - I meant the first successful one...

...and their leader, Reed Richards.

Fantastic Four came out July 8th, 2005, and was 20th Century Fox's initial attempt to bring Reed to the big screen. Let's see how they did, starting with:

1) Casting

Reed was played by Ioan Gruffudd, and don't ask me to pronounce that 'cause I'd fail. He's from Wales, the same place that gave us Catherine Zeta Jones and Torchwood. Putting aside everything else I may know about this guy - like his acting ability (not bad) or whether or not he can pull off an American accent (pretty good actually) - when I look at this picture, I see Reed Richards. Casting Director Nancy Klopper did a great job.

2) Wardrobe
The other half of successfully pulling off the look of a given character is the suit. In Ioan's case, it was this:

which worked for me. Costume Designer Jose I. Fernandez chose a proper shade of blue and did a great job incorporating the classic 4 symbol into it without it being the "bulls-eye" it was in that Roger Corman disaster. My one nit-pick is that it's a little too reminiscent of the outfits from X-Men 2 (2003), which Fernandez also designed.

3) Script
Getting a character's...character...right falls squarely on the writers, and the best way for them to do that is to boil said character down to the basic elements. Most people can agree that (aside from being team leader) Reed is...

...brilliant...

...inventive...

...and somewhat emotionally obtuse when it comes to Sue.

Mark Frost and Michael France had the task of bringing these elements to their Reed, and the result was hit and miss. Their first misstep was with Reed's introduction.

In the books, Reed was trying to develop interstellar travel but the cosmic storm put a stop to that. Here, he wanted to go into space to collect data on the cosmic storm that everyone knows is there. A significant change, but that wasn't my problem. My problem was with Reed's bankruptcy.

Reed's a brilliant scientist. Frost and France knew this because they used his intelligence later in the film to come up with Ben's "cure". So why was he out of money? My guess? They had to make Reed relatable. The best way to make an audience relate to any character is to give him flaws, but having none of Reed's inventions work in order to make him bankrupt?

Fortunately, Frost and France had more success showing Reed's intelligence though his vocabulary. In the scene where he gave Ben a checkup, Reed described what he was doing and why he was doing it. Ben turned to Sue and said "huh?" At which point Sue explained what Reed just said in simpler terms. That showed us how Reed's mind works, and was very well done.

Reed's also inventive.

In the comics, Reed works with his hands. He uses his patent money to buy the raw materials he needs to build his inventions (in addition to afford things such as food, shelter and clothing). Granted, he usually takes advantage of Ben's strength and Johnny's ability to control fire, but Reed's more than just "the idea guy". He's a maker.

Frost and France touched on that a little bit when they showed the "Building the Cosmic Ray Generator" montage. Instead of using Ben and Johnny, Reed had a bunch of Victor's scientists, technicians and construction workers help him put it all together. I understand why they did it that way, but it would have been cool to see Ben lug some chunky piece of equipment into the room while Johnny welded stuff together. But that would have meant Reed wasn't using Doom's resources to build the thing. He would have been using his own.

Then there's his emotional obtuseness,

which doesn't come into play with Ben or Johnny in the books.

Reed's friendship with Ben was faithful to the source material. When Debbie broke off her engagement to Ben, it was Reed who gave him the ring back They're best friends. They understand each other and have each other's backs. True, Ben was led to believe that Reed wasn't trying all that hard to "cure" him, but Reed really was trying...to the point of exhaustion.

Reed's relationship with Johnny always struck me as "father/son" in the comics, and while they didn't share a lot of screen time that's how it felt to me, so good job there.

But it was with Sue that Reed's obtuseness flourished.

I'm not going to go into "full-critique mode" about their relationship, because that's another blog for another day. This is about Reed's side of their relationship, since he's who I'm talking about today.

Reed is very devoted to her in the books...until he gets obsessed with all of his discoveries and experiments - at which point he becomes emotionally numb. He gets so wrapped up in his thoughts that he simply doesn't realize how lonely Sue gets at times.

There's a scene where Reed talked about recreating the cosmic storm. He was walking around, talking a mile a minute about all the potential benefits it could bring, while Sue kept up with him both physically (as he moved around) and intellectually (keeping him focused, even though his thoughts were clearly all over the place). The thing was - he wasn't talking with Sue, he was talking at her; using her as a soundboard. It was subtle, and proved that Reed (occasionally) needed her in a completely emotionless way. Nicely done.

Reed's "emotional neutral-zone" came up again when he and Sue were at his desk working on generating her force-field. He was completely unaware of how mad she was getting, and was genuinely surprised when her power knocked him over. It succeeded in showing how "dumb" the "genius" can be, but that same scene brought up a different problem...

4) Special Effects

There were 22 different companies involved with the special effects on this film. While most of them dealt with the CGI involved, I couldn't track down which ones specifically worked on Reed. However, while watching this film, two things were clear: they had a fixed special effects budget, and Reed's powers were last on the to-do list. Which brings me to the scene I just mentioned. Reed's sitting there talking on and on about Sue's feelings and "emotional state" until she was (rightfully) pissed off and threw a force-field at him, knocking him down.

What. The. Hell.

Reed's power is e-l-a-s-t-i-c-i-t-y! He wouldn't have been knocked out of the chair and onto the floor. His body would've flattened out on impact, and the force of the field would have most likely rolled his chair backwards. That would have looked awesome and been equally funny, but the effect would have cost money. Lots of it.

Which is a problem that just doesn't come up in the comics.

I can only imagine what went through Stan Lee's mind when he sat down to create Reed.

It must have been something like: "Well, Plastic Man's been around since 1941 and Elongated Man's pretty popular now, so I'll give this guy the same powers...only he's going to be an 'egghead scientist' on top of it."

And that was pretty much it.

Since then, even if you knew nothing about the Fantastic Four, and read just one issue of Fantastic Four you'd understand why Ben's the Thing, Sue's the Invisible Woman and Johnny's the Human Torch. The cosmic storm brought out what was already inside of them. What was already part of their character.

But I never...for a minute...understood why the cosmic storm gave Reed elasticity,

until I saw this film.

Again, I'm going back to the scene where Reed's talking to Sue about building the generator. He's talking up a storm...

...see what I did there...

...and his mind is clearly going in several directions at once. He's thinking about what it could mean for them, what it could mean for society, what it could mean for science and medicine, what he'll need to build it, how to make it work, the power necessary to create the energy...

...which is exactly how Reed thinks in the books.

But you'd think that someone with racing thoughts like that would have gotten super-speed, like Quicksilver or Flash. But Reed's a scientist. His thoughts aren't about going to multiple places at once, they're about doing multiple things at once: watching the monitor in the space lab, heating the beaker in the chemical lab, running the centrifuge, testing the circuit board, checking the Petri dish and constructing the H.E.R.B.I.E. robot.

All at the same time, without missing a thing.

He got elasticity so his body could keep up with his mind.

Yeah...that's how I felt when I finally got it.

So I gotta give Frost and France points for that. Even if they didn't mean to explicitly show it, their best use of Reed's powers in the film...

...were when he wasn't actually using them.

Then there was the scene where he reached across the hall for the toilet paper. Reed may be out of touch with the little things of everyday life, but even he wouldn't store the extra toilet paper in another room. It's simply not logical. If Frost and France wanted to use his elasticity for comic effect in this way, they should have made him stretch out the window, all the way down to the corner store with money in hand, and buy more.

Again...money.

So what did they spend some of that coveted CGI cash on? They had Reed pull his face down so he could shave better.

He wouldn't need to actually pull his skin to shave. He has control over his body. His cheeks can just move. Frost and France knew that, because at one point Reed fell asleep on his keyboard. When he woke up, his face had the impression from it...until it went back to normal on its own. Then at the end of the film (when he proposed to Sue) he altered his face mentally - without touching it at all.

There were other examples throughout the film that hurt me physically when I saw them, including when Reed:

used his body to take the impact when the shelving fell on Sue, instead of simply pulling Sue out of harm's way...and into his arms.
caught that firefighter falling over the Brooklyn Bridge. Funny how his normal everyday clothes could stretch like that.
restrained Ben during their fight. What was Reed using for support to keep Ben from walking forward?
wrote on the blackboard down past where his body was standing. How could he even see what he was writing? Wouldn't he have one of those boards that roll up? ('Cause I know those exist.) They could have shown Reed writing on the board, while looking at it mind you, and then pull the camera back to show that his head and arm were 8 to 10 feet above the rest of his body.