Hey folks, Harry here... Ya know - Go take a look at the trailer of DOWN WITH LOVE which seems to be a fun little romantic comedy set in the '60s starring Ewan McGreggor and Renee Zellwegger - and for some wacky reason I look at this trailer and I think... MARVEL COMICS!
On April 18th, this romantic comedy hits and all I can think is how perfect that film looks - and how I wish the director of that film was directing... FANTASTIC FOUR - because that just looks like the right universe...
Suddenly I realize that... oh my god... Peyton Reed is directing... HE IS THE DIRECTOR OF THE FANTASTIC FOUR!!!!
This is a PLEA to the folks at 20th Century Fox, Peyton Reed, Avi Arad and the folks at Marvel. PLEASE MAKE THE FANTASTIC FOUR PERIOD!!!!
Here's the thing, the 1960's Pop-Art style is very much in big time right now. I mean, Christ, look at the numbers that AUSTIN POWERS brings in, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN is bringing in! Look at the premiere cars being designed today going totally retro. The whole 1960's Mod look is cool again and that's when THE FANTASTIC FOUR were born.
More than any of the other Superheroes - the Fantastic Four were born out of the Universe that swung around the glorification of our Icons in the late 1950's and 1960's. John and Jackie Kennedy were very much the prototypes for Reed and Sue Richards. All of her fashions, the way celebrity embraced them. The way the media loved them. All very much, pre-Watergate in style. Post-Watergate we build our heroes to tear them down, pre... well We diefied our heroes and saw them die, where we would then spend eternity worshipping them.
The Fantastic Four came about when the Space Race began, when Rock-N-Roll was born and when the Marvel Age kicked off! And the style and look of DOWN WITH LOVE is exactly correct.
The Fantastic Four isn't about gritty dark sides - It's about the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees... When the Yancy Street kids played stick ball in the street and kicked the cans. This was about Jack Benny, not Letterman. That opening whoosh into New York City - that's the New York City of the FANTASTIC FOUR!!! Put the Baxter Building in there, put a Flaming Four above the city and let's see these heroes in an environment that they OWN!
Right now, all these Superhero films are here and now... But I'm telling you... The way to really make FANTASTIC FOUR more special and magical is to take it out of our time. Have the machines be those gigantic Jack Kirby machines with Vacuum Tubes and Electrical Coils. Have him making devices we have today, but that are huge - STYLISTICALLY THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE ON FILM TODAY!!!
The Argument against this is that it separates the audience from the action, thus making it not connect as well.... Well GOTHAM CITY of Tim Burton's BATMAN didn't look a damn thing like anything we've ever seen or lived in, and it managed to do $413 million World Wide - and that was with sub-par action and visual effects. Oh and at the time, that was the 6th Highest Grossing film of all-time. LORD OF THE RINGS takes place in an environment that NOBODY LIVING EVER could associate with and it's pulling in around a Billion worldwide.
The main reason to do it is this... IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO! Look how much in love Peyton Reed is with that environment... It is... Absolutely delicious. Look how alive those actors look... How much more glamorous they are in that style of hair and make-up... And we've never seen what the Fantastic Four would be in that era.
PLEASE MAKE FANTASTIC FOUR PERIOD!!! JUST LIKE THIS MOVIE: DOWN WITH LOVE!!!
