Hollywood Has Forgotten How to Make Movies

Disney has really forgotten how to make movies. From That Park Place: Marvel’s Fantastic Four Trailer Sparks Backlash—Female Silver Surfer Roundly Mocked for Terrible CGI and Design

Now, to be fair, the 2005 Fantastic Four film, and the 2007 sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer were both produced by 20th Century Fox, before that studio was purchased by Disney, for a stupidly large amount of money. No one thought that they were good films at the time. The first did make enough money to earn a sequel, but compared to the schlock coming out of Disney-Marvel the past few years, it is amazing.

Marvel’s latest Fantastic Four trailer dropped and sparked a wave of online mockery. Fans quickly turned their attention to the visuals and casting choices, particularly the debut of Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer.

While the gender swap of the Silver Surfer has been known for months—with Marvel confirming Garner as Shalla-Bal, a female version of the cosmic herald—this trailer marks the first time the character has appeared on screen. The reaction? Not what Marvel likely expected. Garner’s chrome-plated, CGI-heavy appearance sparked comparisons to early 2000s video game graphics. One fan quipped, “This isn’t the Silver Surfer, it’s the Aluminum Paddleboarder.” Another sarcastically remarked, “Marvel’s CGI looks like it was done on a PS3 dev kit.”

The article from That Park Place contains a link to a video from Jeremy at Geeks and Gamers. That is where I got the image above. I don't remember if he says where that comparison comes from, I suppose I could build my own from the 2 trailers. But the important thing is that a special-effects-heavy movie from 18 years ago looks so much better than what Disney can produce today.

And that is before we even get to the part where Disney says, "Let's ignore the cannonical character of The Silver Surfer, who has graced the comics for decades, that fans love, and replace him with a woman who was in the comics for four (?) issues, before proving to be so unpopular that the writers of Marvel comics killed her off." Yeah, because it is hard to work a message about gender politics into your summer, blockbuster, popcorn movie if we just give the fans what they want.

You would think that they would have learned the lesson taught by 2015's Fant-4-Stick disaster. But then I don't think Disney is capable of learning any lesson.

This movie might make enough money at the box office to justify its existence. According to what I've seen, it hasn't been subject to the endless rounds of reshoots that have plagued other movies, though there were apparently some. This means that the budget may have some relation to reality.