You lost me on the first part of your post, so I'll answer the main question.
I'm here because when I was around 5 years old around 1970, I started reading Fantastatic Four comic books and they enriched my life.
They transported me to other worlds and gave me fun stories of adventure. Every Tuesday I would go straight to the newsstand after school and see if there were any new FF's or Marvel Two-In-One or anything else that featured FF that I hadn't read yet.
In the mid seventies, when they were making TV shows of Spider-Man, Hulk, Dr. Strange etc. somebody wrote a letter to Stan's Soapbox and asked him if they would be making an FF TV show. He replied (paraphrasing) 'No, but we are looking into doing a big-budget FF theatrical release.'
From that day, the thought of seeing the FF in 'real life' on the big screen became something I hoped beyond hope to see.
But then things went stagnant.
By the early 90's, the fantasy film magazines of the time started reporting about a Roger Corman FF film. I was hoping for something bigger budget, but at least I would get something, and I thought it would be at least better than the Marvel TV shows.
So I bought every issue of Comics-2-Film and everything else I could find to get more details. Eventually photos started being released and for the first time, I saw 'The Thing' as something 'real'. Not the best, but it was something. In 1993, Roger Corman released a film called 'Carnosaur' and that film featured a trailer for the FF film, so I bought the VHS just for that trailer. Again, I wasn't thrilled with the quality, but I was still looking forward to finally seeing the FF on the big screen.
But then it never came.
I waited and waited but the film never showed up in theaters. Eventually I learned that the rights were being transferred and the film wouldn't be released. I was eventually able to buy a poor quality version on VHS, and while it wasn't a great film, it was the FF for the first time 'in the flesh', so I watched it several times.
Nearly 10 years later rumors started heating up about a new, big-budget FF film. By then, the internet was actually a thing, so I bookmarked sites and followed everything I could find. I created an account on Superhero Hype and began discussing the upcoming film with other people who were looking forward to it.
When we got our first glimpse of the Thing, I was disappointed. It didn't really look like the Thing, but other elements looked promising and I hoped he would look better on film. When we got the first trailer, I was over the top excited. It looked like the FF in a serious big-budget film. From there I anxiously counted the days until release.
When I actually saw it, I was a little disappointed, but it was still a decent film - and by far the best FF film I had ever seen, so I started hoping they would fix the problems in the sequel.
I again followed the sequel every step of the way and was pleased to see they had improved the look of the Thing. It looked like it might be a lot better, but when I showed up on opening day I was, again, disappointed - to the point that when Reed was dancing I felt almost physically ill and came very close to walking out.
And then, once again, things went dormant until Disney bought Marvel and the next day Fox announced a reboot.
SHH reopened the FF section and I rejoined with old friends to discuss our excitement over the new film. When Josh Trank was named as director, I was pleased. I had hoped they would have invested in a more experienced director, but for a young director, he seemed to have promise. There were also scripts reportedly being drafted by talented writers.
But things didn't go smoothly from there. We heard of script re-write after script re-write and eventually Jeremy Slater was named as the writer "Jeremy Slater? Who the hell is Jeremy Slater?" Around that time also rumors started heating up that it would be based on UFF, which was a big disappointment to me, but UFF still shared some elements with 616 so as long as they made the right choices it could still be made into a decent film that had the key elements I was looking for.
But when the cast was announced, that was a big disappointment - particularly Miles Teller. One of my biggest problems with the first film was that Reed was portrayed as an insecure geek instead of the strong, confident leader that Reed had always been.
More bad news followed leading up to the first trailer, but I was still very optimistic going in to that first trailer. We hadn't seen anything prior to that and if the production design was done right, we could still be getting a very good UFF/616 film.
But the first trailer was a huge disappointment to me. There was nothing even close to the FF in that first trailer and I began to lose hope.
But I tried to keep an open mind until the second trailer. And while the second trailer still didn't fix a lot of the problems I had, it at least showed characters interacting in a way that
could be the FF.
So that trailer prevented me from losing all hope, but I have read a lot of things and heard a lot of rumors that have made me very pessimistic about the 99.5% of this film that we haven't yet seen. But since we haven't seen 99.5% of this film, there's no way I can be sure it's as bad as it looks so far and where there's uncertainty, there's hope.
So as long as there's that hope, I want to see more. I want to see some photos or hear some comments from those involved that convince me this film could have some of the elements I've been hoping to see for the past 45 years.
So I come in here every day - maybe every hour - to see if there's anything new and anything encouraging.
But instead of seeing anything new and anything encouraging, I see "X-Men, X-Men, X-Men" with a little bit of "Race, Race, Race" and some "Trank, Trank, Trank"
So I may be an idiot, but until I see enough to absolutely convince me that this film will not feature what I want to see, I will continue to check in and hope that I will see something that will give me hope.
