Post by politicidal on Mar 1, 2017 18:09:27 GMT
I'd see that, definitely. Sounds like it would have been a blast. Hopefully Marvel takes some cues from it once they get the rights back or something similar perhaps.
TEXT:
Slater estimated that he wrote “10-15 drafts ... over a six month period” for Trank before he was replaced. Although he’s credited as one of the writers of the final film (Trank and producer Simon Kinberg are the others), he says just one line of his dialogue made it into the movie. (“Don’t blow up,” when young Reed tries his home-brew teleporter for the first time.) He also stressed that’s “fairly normal” for this kind of blockbuster, which “tend to go through a half-dozen writers on their way to the screen.”
Although Trank’s Fantastic Four would ultimately get darker and more serious, the story Slater describes sounds a lot brighter, with more material drawn from the comics. His screenplay opened, like the film, with Reed and Ben as children, followed by Reed’s recruitment by the Baxter Foundation, which in its original conception “was envisioned as a sort of Hogwarts for nerds: a school filled with young geniuses zipping around on prototype hoverboards and experimenting with anti-gravity and teleportation and artificial lifeforms.” There Reed was supposed to strike up a friendship with a “damaged young Latverian scientist” named Victor, who “slowly seduced Reed into bending the rules,” damaging his friendship with Ben.
There was still a portal device at the center of the Fantastic Four’s transformation, but originally it sent the kids to the “Negative Zone” (a classic Lee/Kirby comic-book creation) where they would have fought Annihilus (described by Slater as “a pissed-off cybernetic T-Rex”). Annihilus appears to kill Victor, and the rest get zapped with radiation on their return home. giving them their powers. Later, Victor returns from the Negative Zone, “having killed Annihilus and reshaped his Control Rod into a sort of living body armor.”
Minus Annihilus and calling Planet Zero the Negative Zone, the outline is basically the same as the finished movie. According to Slater, the difference is tone and structure. He preferred stuff with “lots of humor, lots of heart, lots of spectacle,” while Trank preferred something “grounded, gritty, and as realistic as possible.” And while all of the aforementioned events took place by page 45 of the early 130-page draft, in the final movie, they take up almost the entire runtime. Slater says their early screenplay had a lot more stuff after that point that never made it to the screen:
"In addition to Annihilus and the Negative Zone, we had Doctor Doom declaring war against the civilized world, the Mole Man unleashing a 60 foot genetically-engineered monster in downtown Manhattan, a commando raid on the Baxter Foundation, a Saving Private Ryan-style finale pitting our heroes against an army of Doombots in war-torn Latveria, and a post-credit teaser featuring Galactus and the Silver Surfer destroying an entire planet. We had monsters and aliens and Fantasticars and a cute spherical H.E.R.B.I.E. robot that was basically BB-8 two years before BB-8 ever existed. And if you think all of that sounds great...well, yeah, we did, too. The problem was, it would have also been massively, MASSIVELY expensive."
Though Slater admits he didn’t have any contact with Trank or the studio after he finished his six months of work on the screenplay, he assumes the exorbitant price tag squashed this ambitious take on the material. He doesn’t blame Fox for that either. “Would you spend $300 million on a Fantastic Four film?” he asked. “Particularly after the previous two films left a fairly bad taste in audiences’ mouths? ... It’s understandable that everyone involved would take steps to minimize their risk as much as possible. Unfortunately, those steps probably compromised the film to a fatal degree.”
Read More: What Went Wrong With ‘Fantastic Four’? | screencrush.com/fantastic-four-2015-what-went-wrong/?trackback=tsmclip
TEXT:
Slater estimated that he wrote “10-15 drafts ... over a six month period” for Trank before he was replaced. Although he’s credited as one of the writers of the final film (Trank and producer Simon Kinberg are the others), he says just one line of his dialogue made it into the movie. (“Don’t blow up,” when young Reed tries his home-brew teleporter for the first time.) He also stressed that’s “fairly normal” for this kind of blockbuster, which “tend to go through a half-dozen writers on their way to the screen.”
Although Trank’s Fantastic Four would ultimately get darker and more serious, the story Slater describes sounds a lot brighter, with more material drawn from the comics. His screenplay opened, like the film, with Reed and Ben as children, followed by Reed’s recruitment by the Baxter Foundation, which in its original conception “was envisioned as a sort of Hogwarts for nerds: a school filled with young geniuses zipping around on prototype hoverboards and experimenting with anti-gravity and teleportation and artificial lifeforms.” There Reed was supposed to strike up a friendship with a “damaged young Latverian scientist” named Victor, who “slowly seduced Reed into bending the rules,” damaging his friendship with Ben.
There was still a portal device at the center of the Fantastic Four’s transformation, but originally it sent the kids to the “Negative Zone” (a classic Lee/Kirby comic-book creation) where they would have fought Annihilus (described by Slater as “a pissed-off cybernetic T-Rex”). Annihilus appears to kill Victor, and the rest get zapped with radiation on their return home. giving them their powers. Later, Victor returns from the Negative Zone, “having killed Annihilus and reshaped his Control Rod into a sort of living body armor.”
Minus Annihilus and calling Planet Zero the Negative Zone, the outline is basically the same as the finished movie. According to Slater, the difference is tone and structure. He preferred stuff with “lots of humor, lots of heart, lots of spectacle,” while Trank preferred something “grounded, gritty, and as realistic as possible.” And while all of the aforementioned events took place by page 45 of the early 130-page draft, in the final movie, they take up almost the entire runtime. Slater says their early screenplay had a lot more stuff after that point that never made it to the screen:
"In addition to Annihilus and the Negative Zone, we had Doctor Doom declaring war against the civilized world, the Mole Man unleashing a 60 foot genetically-engineered monster in downtown Manhattan, a commando raid on the Baxter Foundation, a Saving Private Ryan-style finale pitting our heroes against an army of Doombots in war-torn Latveria, and a post-credit teaser featuring Galactus and the Silver Surfer destroying an entire planet. We had monsters and aliens and Fantasticars and a cute spherical H.E.R.B.I.E. robot that was basically BB-8 two years before BB-8 ever existed. And if you think all of that sounds great...well, yeah, we did, too. The problem was, it would have also been massively, MASSIVELY expensive."
Though Slater admits he didn’t have any contact with Trank or the studio after he finished his six months of work on the screenplay, he assumes the exorbitant price tag squashed this ambitious take on the material. He doesn’t blame Fox for that either. “Would you spend $300 million on a Fantastic Four film?” he asked. “Particularly after the previous two films left a fairly bad taste in audiences’ mouths? ... It’s understandable that everyone involved would take steps to minimize their risk as much as possible. Unfortunately, those steps probably compromised the film to a fatal degree.”
Read More: What Went Wrong With ‘Fantastic Four’? | screencrush.com/fantastic-four-2015-what-went-wrong/?trackback=tsmclip