Fantastic

I went to see "Fantastic Four" tonight. When it comes to comic book movies, I think I have an excellent talent for suspending my disbelief. Bat Man can get away with anything. Professor X can stop time? Sure. I can find some way to rationalize it. But Fantastic Four kept trying to explain things for me, using non-stop appeals to "science." It just didn't work. I will admit that I never read the Fantastic Four, so I'm not too familiar with the story. With all the psuedoscience confusion, I'm afraid the movie didn't communicate the story to me very well.

Some problems are on a basic character level, winding up into more serious plot issues. What kind of scientists are these people? Did someone say they were astronauts? Why is Sue, the geneticist, scheduling space launches? Is she some kind of space-geneticist? Is Mr Fantastic a geneticist too? He wants to study this space cloud for its influence on biological evolution, and he's done all the astronomical calculations, so is he an astrophysicist? Ben Grimm (the Thing) appears to have no skills, but he was an astronaut and now helps Reed (Mr Fantastic) negotiate grants for scientific ventures? So, the Human Torch is a pilot for NASA, but he's also an idiot? Is this movie set in the present or the near-future? Is NASA of the near-future filled with morons and blue-collar space toughs?

What kind of self-made billionaire is Dr. von Doom? I gather he went to MIT with Mr. Fantastic, so he must also have majored in "Science" for his Ph.D. His company has a space station, a launch facility, presumably a fleet of space vehicles, and a ski lodge with a large quarantine facility. What does it do? We know that he has defense contracts... He comes from a country called "Latvernia"? What? Why are immigratns always the bad guys? If his company was already a multi-billion dollar industry in itself, why was it just going for an IPO? Why did one really cool space explosion cause the IPO to "fail"? Why did the failed IPO instantly destroy the whole company? Did those defense contracts fall through?

If Reed (Mr Fantastic) isn't worth a postage stamp, then why can he bring in a team of specialists to his giant apartment to build all kinds of multi-million dollar custom contraptions? If he hasn't paid the electric bill (as Dr. von Doom notes in one scene) then why does he have electricity? If he hasn't paid the bills for his giant penthouse apartment, then why isn't he being evicted? Why can he have a huge modern industrial lab in an old residential building? When Reed's calculations are wrong (leading to the big space accident), he can't figure out why. Ben tells him "it was a freak of nature, let it go." Hmmm, yes I believe this is precisely the statement made by Rutherford to support his flawed model of the atom.

Now for the science bits. The movie was very heavy on science. They were always, "science this" and "scientist that", so maybe they teased out my inner grumpy scientist. First, when Ben Grimm becomes the Thing, he is in a hospital bed. He suddenly gets really heavy and breaks the bed. Where did all that mass come from? The Invisible Girl has the powers of invisibility and telekinetic force fields. What is the relationship between these powers? Why do they go together? In one scene, the Invisible Girl explains that their uniforms share their powers because they also went through the crazy space cloud. But their powers supposedly arise from genetic changes. Do the uniforms share their genetics? Are the uniforms alive? What the hell? I would have bought this if they didn't try and "explain" it. Mr. Fantastic hopes to reverse their transformations by replicating the space cloud and "reversing the wave pattern" or something nutty like that. How can he do this when the film spent so much time explaining that nobody had any clue what happened in their space accident? Did he suddenly figure it all out? They didn't show him figuring it out.

I noticed many other things in the film, but I didn't take notes. I will close with one especially pedantic question. What, exactly, is Dr. Doom's power? I realize that he can shoot lightning bolts at people. But what exactly is he doing? Could he look at me and cause me to fill up with positive charge while he fills up with negative charge? Is that what he does? I'm totally okay with stretching, turning into rocks, bursting into flames and turning invisible. But I just don't get this lightning thing. I also wondered whether Dr. Doom could have been anything but a villain, given that his power is useful for little else besides killing people and burning out light bulbs.