Then "Terror in a Tiny Town" would make a great follow-up!

(That would also give Doom a necessary one-movie rest.)

And you could explain it that way in a film version, too, if you wanted to, but the audience would still see the tiny tabletop community and scoff at the lack of surface tension difficulties in the presentation of water or the manner in which our heroes and their neighbors have to walk being so very close to the "ground" and having so little mass. "Well, Doom took care of all that for Doom is DOOM!" The water isn't water, it's... some super-low-viscosity substance that Doom made to act like water... and, um, the spark plugs in Johnny's car are, um, powered by microversal energy fluctuations... And, um... Yeah, whatever. 

Now, I've just reread "Legacy" (the Skrull Milk story) and ouch! It would be a terrible movie, I couldn't have been more wrong. Oh, it's a brilliant story, but let's face it, it spends almost 20 (wonderful) pages dealing with Sharon in the town, before the FF appears. The skrull cows could be dealt with in five minutes, but this can't. My mistake.

Rereading the FF, though, (spoiler: major thread drift ahead), I wondered: can there be a decent FF movie? I love the characters, love the villains, love the concept, but can we ever get a Thing as perfect as the one we see on the page, who will look as real as everybody else? Is there any way he wouldn't look silly? What about Sue? We accept her invisibility (and the force fields) because in almost every page in comics we see stuff the characters can't see (speech/ thought balloons, speed lines, etc.) It's part of the convention. But seeing her floating around or not seeing her at all just ain't the same.

To return to the original question, though, now I'd say "Wendy's Friends".

Fade to black.

JB wrote: "Definitely time for you to stop reading these silly comic books!"

The point of my original post which JB's selected out-of-context quote distorts was that the story, however incisive and enjoyable, does not work on a certain basic level that film producers might not find easily overlooked. That doesn't mean that it's not a great story. It is. Also on the list of stories modern producers likely wouldn't try to sell to us today: The 1939 Wizard of Oz. The premise is essentially simplistic; too much so perhaps for today's audiences to cough up money to go see. 

I'm not sneering at that. I'm not mocking it. I am recognizing it, however. I also recognized it back when I first bought the comic. The story is also flawed by the manner in which Doom brings the FF to him. He simply hypnotizes them all into flying halfway around the world and sleepwalking into his clutches. Why does this guy lose again? It's comics. I get it. I don't think as a movie producer, however, I want to give my bad guy a "walk into my trap" button to press whenever he feels like it. 

Willing Suspension of Disbelief does not insist upon a Completely Unconscious Suspension of Disbelief. I know as a reader the distance of the leap of faith I'm often asked to make to make a story work, and I'm willing to making that jump without making fun of the material I'm enjoying. This weird, completely false idea that as kids we never, never did that is wrong. The kids on my playground at school talked a lot about elements of the stories we weren't shown and whether or not they worked. Characters like Bizarro and Professor Zoom (both of whom I loved) were said to be stupid with stupid-sounding names. Superman was ridiculous, it was argued, whereas Batman was cool because he was REAL. How does the Flash run all the way around the world? I get that he's really fast and it doesn't take long for him, but does he still have to take every- single- step- that it would take to make that trip? Or is momentum throwing him forward so that he's really only touching the surface of the Earth every twelve feet or so? Twenty? Do his strides get longer the farther and faster he goes? The kid who grew up to be a drag queen wanted to know if when the Hulk changed all of him changed. Y'know, ALL of him... Kids don't simply throw open their comics as a cascade of colored lights emerge from the pages and holler "Golly Gumbucks!" in simplistic, all-accepting joy and its unrealistic to expect that from any reader. You pay your ticket fee, you get to ask questions. So sorry if that's somehow too much ennui for some to bear. And no, I am not falsely remembering those conversations from my school days. That one about the Flash took place as we were sitting on the grate on the side of the school and the one about the Hulk was really, really awkward.

"How the hell is Reed's arm bleeding?" and "How do those spark plugs work?" are valid questions an intelligent storyteller, producer, or screenwriter might expect the audience to ask rather than chastising them for their temerity and characterizing them all as yawning, bored simpletons out to destroy the joy of things for themselves and everyone else around them. Wacky thought, I know... We can hand-wave those concerns away with talk of synthi-clones and localized gravity fields if we choose to, but then those elements are free to be called into question as well. How much time do we want to spend explaining these things? None? Fine. You can do that if you want. "Just enough?" Also fine. 

But not every storyteller is going to feel the premise is worth the potential hassle and lack of "sell" to the consumer. The tabletop Liddleville is charming as hell. I'm just not sure that charm is going to outweigh the questions it presents for my film audience. I'd do it a lot more readily if our hypothetical FF film were a full-on CGI animated cartoon aimed squarely at the kids market. Different expectations there. Much the same expectations of a more-accepting audience that the comic itself enjoyed. When those questions came up, from kids or adults, however, I wouldn't blame the audience. I knew those gaps were in the design when I built it. 

And James? Yeah, they didn't rock my world. I did like the Atom and Shrinking Violet however. And Kandor. Freakin' loved Kandor. Thanks for asking.

******

I think the “hero’s journey” is especially important considering how weak the Fantastic Four has been portrayed in Fox’s previous attempts.

The general audience needs a story that let’s them know this is truly a worthy superhero franchise. "Terror in a Tiny Town"  would send that point loud and clear I believe. What I really like about the story is that it really conveys the dynamics of the characters' relationships to each other (Especially Ben and Reed, then Ben and Alicia) and how the events that gave them their powers effected them all.

Regarding Dr. Doom... and a follow-up movie based on Doom's attempt to reclaim Latveria from another ruler (#246-247) would add much needed depth to the villain that audiences really need to see on the big screen. Fox really messed up Doom and this storyline would fix that.

Then, in a third movie, Galactus should be introduced. He deserves a proper build-up in Marvel's cinematic universe on the level of Thanos and the events leading to "The Trial of Reed Richards" could cross over into a few different movies.

-C!