User blog:ProfessorKilroy/Fantastic Four film thoughts

So, a new (and hopefully much better) Fantastic Four film is on the way, rebooted from the last two, but as it is being made by Fox, and because of the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, apparently it is joining the "continuity" of the X-Men films.

In case you weren't already aware, Fox is indeed wishing to create their own cinematic universe including the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. They've hired Mark Millar to be their equivalent of Kevin Feige in a way, I guess... Which means that he will be overseeing the vision of the Fox-Marvel Cinematic Universe, and making sure it all fits. My first thoughts on this were despairing over the idea that Marvel may never get the rights back to these characters. We'll never see an Illuminati-type thing in the movies, we'll never see a civil war, we'll never see interaction between these two different sides of the Marvel Universe. However, it does mean that the quality of Fox's films may increase on a whole, and there's a glimmer of hope that continuity may be restored... somehow... I wasn't a huge fan of the original X-Men trilogy, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine was horrible, but X-Men: First Class was a step in the right direction (although it was still dragged down by setting up the trilogy of lesser quality, therefore becoming something a little different to what we might have hoped, and then made a lot of continuity issues), but this could be a means to improve the quality of the films, or at least, their continuity.

Now, my ultimate dream would be to see Marvel in control of all of their characters making the films they want to make, but as that is an unlikely goal for the relatively near future, and because they are making two movies a year (I hesitate to say "only two movies a year" because, that's still a lot of effort, and has potential to slip into making a quantity of movies rather than quality ones), I am open to the idea of a compromise.

Anyway I became more open to the idea of X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man rights staying where they are at the moment after reading Mark Millar's ideas behind Fox's universe: "Fox have said that they want to build a cohesive universe and I’d personally like this to work in complement to the Marvel one. It would be cool if these universes didn't contradict each other so if you went to see Spidey, The Avengers, the X-Men, etc, as a viewer you would have no idea that all three are coming from different studios. I’d love to make it look like they’re all just happening in one place."

So, if Marvel made a deal with Fox and Sony that meant that continuity was kept, there could potentially be references to movies from other studios, meaning that they're all kinda helping each other out. And considering the potential future quality of Fox's endeavours, and good quality of Sony's Amazing Spider-Man, they pass the test for me in being considered a part of a bigger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Having said this, Marvel should keep on going with their phases, and for the most part, each studio keep to themselves. But it would be great to see them all working together to create one big cohesive universe. It'd be hard to pull off, and might not even happen, but I think it's plausible.

I'm sorry that this rant turned a little further away from the original topic, but it's basically the reason why I chose "I'm excited to see it!" instead of "The rights should have gone back to Marvel" in the poll on the main page. So, anyway, what do you guys think of this?