Talk Show and OTHER interviews DISCUSSION

[Advanced Dark]

I haven't seen this before. If it's already up I couldn't find it. It seems like this was put together before Fishburn was attached but it does have some info on why the brow was an issue, the fantasticar, doom, silver surfer, etc...

http://www.comics2film.com/StoryFrame.php?f_id=27165

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]I left you last time just as Ralph Winters opened the floor to some questions. And, curious as reporters can be, we launched right into it with Tim Story, who was ready for all of our questions. Well, most of our questions … any and all questions about Galactus went over like a fart in the room. The quick glances and pauses made me hopeful. If there’s a big secret, how can I be anything, but excited? Let’s just hope the big secret isn’t the rumored storm cloud.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Kirk Petrucelli sits by quietly, there would be plenty of time to ask him questions later in the evening as we braved the unusually cold Vancouver air to see some filming. But for now, we get to pick the director’s brain.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]QUESTION: What was your biggest challenge with this movie so far? The most complicated piece to put together?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TIM STORY (TS): I guess it’s been figuring out what the Silver Surfer’s gonna look like and more importantly what his powers actually -- how they look, what they do -- the definition of what the Silver Surfer does in the comics is pretty vague to a certain degree. We knew a couple of things, but we don’t know much, so to bring him to life was to figure out … well, here we have a character that is all-powerful in a kind of a way we wanted it, he could pretty much control matter and when you give somebody that kind of control you can go wherever you want to go, so it’s really been figuring out his power and then of course bringing that to life in so much of the stuff we’ve done, so really building the action sequences for the most part.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: What did you decide, as far as the Silver Surfer is concerned?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: Let me be as vague as I can. We do take advantage of the fact that he can change matter, which allows him to have some really cool powers and you guys will see them in the action sequences and definitely the trailer that’s being prepared. He does have a very powerful force in the sense of, if Johnny has a fireball that he can throw, Surfer has a pretty powerful power blast as well. And then of course flight and his relationship with his board, we get some really cool advantages to being able to do some interesting things with his board that, once again I won’t give away, but we’ve been very creative in this way.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: Can you talk in just general terms about mounting a sequel to a film like this. It obviously looks a lot bigger, but beyond being bigger and more, what’s your approach to making this?[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: It’s interesting because, of course, first and foremost you think about the characters and their personal stories, where you can go with those. One of the biggest things that we all know about is that Reed Richards and Sue Storm at some point get married. And it seems pretty obvious that the next chapter would involve them getting married, because at some point they have kids and so forth and so on, so there were some things that were fairly obvious. I knew that Ben Grimm in our last story was all about him wanting to get out of this body that he’s been “given,” and now he is comfortable in it, so apart from him being comfortable, where else do you go with him and his girlfriend Alicia’s relationship. Johnny, who is the biggest playboy and cool kid that you can imagine, what responsibilities can you now throw on him that he actually has to deal with. And then some other surprises that we’ve definitely taken the liberty to go into that, and I definitely have to keep them a surprise, but there’s some stuff in there when you think about where else can you go with these powers and everything else to be taken full advantage of, so in getting to the sequel you first start there and then of course the next thing is the idea that I wanted more action. We wanted to bring back Doom and have Doom be a real issue, and bringing all of that together, I think we’ve accomplished a lot.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: Are we gonna see Galactus in this?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: You might. You may not. Who knows?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: How did you feel you had to visually push this film forward, to be better?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]RALPH WINTER (RW): It’s always about topping ourselves. We don't really look at what Spider-Man’s doing because we’re really trying to make it better for ourselves. One of the first things we did was look at the uniforms, 'Okay, how do we make these look better? Is there something that we do?' We jumped through a lot of fiery hoops only to make those better, and ultimately they turned out looking pretty much the same because we didn't want to get too far off base. I think we're own worst competitors, in terms of trying to beat ourselves, in terms of trying to figure out how we're stretching things for what works visually to really, I'm a fan, and I know these guys are as well, how do we get this in camera as much as possible, and not stretch it? What are the kinds of things we can do to get the action? So that takes a lot of effort and time and the team has had to work hard to think outside the box. It's harder.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: For Tim, were there specific elements of the mythology that you wanted to get into this film that you felt you weren’t able to get into the first one? Obviously, the Silver Surfer …[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think that the first film, as much as I wanted to be able to expand a lot of other things, I think for the most part it kind of hit on the family element. There was a big issue with the Fan Four taking advantage of their stardom and making money and being ... what's the word for it? I guess the best word is rich. I wanted to bring up this idea that now they actually are in business and they’re well off. For the comic book characters we have out there, they’re one of the most well off as far as just running a corporation. There was a lot of that I wanted to get involved. I wanted to bring the high-tech world to it in terms of Reed Richards, because in the first one the story really revolved around him not making a lot of money and I had more of an industrial space, and in this case I wanted the Baxter Building to be a little bit more prone to what we know him for, which is technology. So it was all of those, and then of course like you said the Silver Surfer, bringing that in and hopefully we have an opportunity to take Victor and Reed’s relationship somewhere else as well, so there was all of that.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: Did this corporate reality, the fact that they’re hugely successful in a corporate world -- generally in this genre the corporate world is generally the source of all evil -- to make it work that these are good people and still they’re rich and they have corporate power, did you find that you had to sort of finesse things, or push a little or …[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: No, we actually used exactly what you said to our advantage in the story, that these are good people and when it comes down to a group of people that have every intention upon being good, once you have to deal with running a corporation and what headaches that brings to being who you are, I think any of us, you know, they say money is the root of all evil, whatever the saying is, I don’t know if I agree 100% with that, but we took advantage of using the fact that now they have all these other responsibilities in terms of business and everything else. We used that to our advantage and incorporated it into the storytelling of this next film. So, we did have to finesse it but at the same time it really brought a good little layer to the personal story that these four superheroes are working.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: Tell us a bit about the car and what made you want to get involved in the design of it.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: It’s just the coolest thing in the world. We tried to get the Fantasticar in the last movie and it just didn’t make sense for it to come that early, and I just knew when this first started to come to the idea of doing a second one, the two top things that I started working on were the wedding and the Fantasticar, because the Fantasticar is like the fifth character of the Fantastic Four, and it’s just cool to think about a flying car and it breaking up in pieces and them all having their own pod that they have to control, I just knew it would be as cool as it’s starting to look, at least to me, so I just got into it immediately.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: Based on fan response, what kind of changes did you want to make from the first film?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: There are a lot of things. Of course one of the biggest things that I heard and knew about was the fact that they wanted Ben Grimm’s brow bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and we had it rather large at some point and found that the biggest problem I ran into was that you couldn’t light his eyes, because anytime I lit a set, his eyes would be in shadow, and Chiklis, who was so amazing at being this character, the last thing we wanted to do was hide his eyes from everybody, so we actually had to scale back the brow from what we were originally thinking we were gonna go, and there’s that, they always wanted Doom to be more of a badass, and I’ve taken those ideas to heed. And then they wanted action. They just wanted action, action, action, which was the main point that I got from most, and I think we deliver on that 100%. So those are three of the top. There were other things that I don’t always respond to in my blogs or whatever the case may be, but I read. Not at this point, because now the movie’s kinda taken care of itself, but in the early parts of, through pre-production and the early parts of filming, I continued to read things on the Web and just anything that I can use and kinda bring to the screen, I would.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: Have you guys pretty much stuck to Don Payne's script, or has there been scenes that you had a challenge, where you needed to go back to him in order to rewrite or change things?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: We always, I find it in most of these types of films, you always look at a scene and go, 'Hey, we are going to have to add this subplot', or whatever the case may be, so we used about 75% of his original production script and then throughout the process, you get on the set with the actors and they bring up points that we didn't think about and we’d have to go back and Don sometimes is called right on the set, 'Don we need you to give me this and I need a line for this and I’m shooting in about two hours, so good luck.' He’s doing some changes to what I’m shooting tonight right now, so it’s always a rewriting process, it's just, ‘This line isn't as good as it can be, or there's a story point in here that we didn't tie up and we neet to tie it up in this scene,” so we're always going back. I’d be lying if I said we get the script and that’s it. We always go back and try to improve upon what we’ve done.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: Obviously these movies require a suspension of disbelief but everything seems to be rooted in a little bit of reality, from the car and the way it was explained to us. So how do you go about making a Surfer as believable as the original [film] was?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: It’s the situations that we throw him in. We’ve done a little situation where we’ve kept him away from human contact for as long as possible in the movie, just because we wanted to keep it more of a mystery and then when he does get into contact with people, there is something that I wish I could tell you but I can’t tell you guys or I’ll get in trouble, but there’s a certain thing that you guys will find out about soon enough that keeps it very based in reality, and at some point it’s a god in space so what are you going to do? But after that it’s the way we’ve gotten the character captured and even in the CGI that we do with him, how he moves, his speech and actually how he actually responds. He does have conversations in this movie, on two occasions particularly where you’re talking to a real person, it feels like, that has a history, that understands and you see him react to emotions and this and that, so we tried to just keep him, although he is a spaceman at the end of the day, he’s an alien, we keep him very grounded in reality and I think you’ll see that in the way we portray it in the movie.[/FONT]

continued...
[/FONT]

 

[Advanced Dark]

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: Why are you not using Doug Jones for the voice, or are you?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: The plan was always to use an actor to basically cast an actor for the voice. There is a chance we may stick to this, because I must admit in editing him it sounds very good right now, so who’s to know what’s going to happen but the plan was from day one to always voice an actor and let that come through. Yeah, our plan was even before Doug Jones was going to do the motion capture, we knew from then that we were going to cast it out.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: We've heard about how the powers are being advanced or integrated. Can you tell us a little about that?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: Not at all. I’ll just say that Johnny’s powers are enhanced at some point in the movie and I think it brings a very fun and very big twist to what happens in the movie.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: But was there pressure in terms of making them better?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: You know, we just kind of found ways to, how can we make them bigger and better. There’s things with Sue, that in the first movie, we weren’t able to go into. People know that she’s able to create forcefields and actually she’s able to hover on top of her forcefield, so there’s things like that. We didn’t get a chance to really, excuse the phrase, stretch Reed’s powers as much as we could have in the first one and then it’s always fun to just think about Johnny and think about what else can you do with his power. If you can go on fire, does it make you bulletproof in the sense that a bullet comes at you and will it blow up or melt before it gets to you. There’s things like that, and can you go through walls, because you can get so hot and supernova, you could pretty much melt through a wall and go through it, so we always discuss this and the fun part of doing these next movies or the next movie is where can you take these powers and go further with them.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: In making the last film, you talked about ideas for a second film. If you were to make a number three, do you have ideas?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: I definitely have ideas. There’s so many different characters. The ones that come to you immediately are Puppet Master, Moleman, the Inhumans, the Skrulls, any of those, you immediately think of some of those guys and think what would be the coolest one, but one of the things we always do with the new villain, and I think this goes for any comic book movie, you think of the visuals and what would be the coolest thing to bring to screen and how? So I definitely have a couple of storylines that have been swirling in my head that I’ve already talked to Avi [Arad] and Kevin [Feige] about and we’ll see what happens.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: It seems that there was a bit of enui in the general public, certainly not in this room, about comic book franchised films but in the general public it seemed that maybe the ideas had sort of, and this is for the producer as well. Was there any question of how do you keep the comic book idea alive? How do you keep improving on it when for the most part the mainstream audiences now are blasé about CG effects?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: Well, I think it begins with the characters. I think these movies …it’s cool to see somebody catch on fire and fly and this and that. At the end of the day I think you have to make the story compelling, because I think the audience, and we’re talking ten-year-old, they’re so savvy to it. It’s not enough to blow up enough stuff. You have to now always ask yourself the question, you’re the person with the power, even with the Silver Surfer having this "cosmic blast" that he has. The idea is not to have him use his hands when he does this. How can he emit this power without the normal hand gestures we’re used to? Instead of seeing it go from A to B, how does the power travel? You gotta constantly think of new ways, and we’re lucky that in a case with some of our characters, there's a lot of stuff we haven’t seen before and we were able to go with it, but I think it always starts with character. They’ve always said the secret to Batman is Bruce Wayne and I believe that. The secret to these kind of characters are giving the people behind the superhero the story, and I think once you do that, and you do that successfully, I think you’ll be okay.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: Will we see any other characters come out of the story? For instance, Frankie Raye is in there?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: Wherever I can I try to throw in characters that maybe the world is familiar with. There’s no other “superpower character” in this film. Frankie Raye is just if Johnny is going to have a relationship then why not? Why not go there and what happens with her in the future? It does open itself up for the third one. And then there’s some hints at a couple of other characters in the movie that are thrown out at some point and we’ll see if we're ever gonna take those leads and finish them in the third.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Q: Stan will be back, I take it?[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]TS: Stan does appear in the movie again and it’s a really funny homage to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and that, again, Stan was up there for one day and he was doing the wedding and it’s a really great piece of film.[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Thanks, Tim, for sitting down with us and telling some stories and dropping some hints. I still wonder about Galactus …[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]As for that Stan Lee cameo, we would actually get to see that very funny moment at the wedding when Scott Squires, the Visual Effects Supervisor, sat down with us. But we’re going to save that for the next installment.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Ralph, Kirk and Tim leave the room and we wait for just a moment before we are joined by Scott Squires, which we will visit in the next installment.[/FONT]

End[/FONT]

 

[Doctor of Doom]

Bah, more misunderstanding. Maybe I only speak fgor myself but I don't think we wanted Doom to be more of a badass necessarily... just closer to the comics.

To be fair, that was accomplished too, it seems undeniable he is closeR.

 

[Advanced Dark]

^ He needed to be more of a badass for sure. That was a huge complaint that he wasn't "evil" enough. He was too soft, etc...I think that is also closer to the comics.

 

[Doctor of Doom]

Maybe but personally speaking I don't think "badass" is the right word. More evil, sure, but I'd rather see my Doom in his castle hatchin' a scheme than out there kicking ass up close and personal.

 

[Kelly]

When was this interview, seems like alot of the same stuff we've seen previously....is it their set visit, when everyone was on set for a visit?

 

[Advanced Dark]

It was before Fishburn yeah probably during all of those set interviews. First time I heard Winter discuss the "brow". To me it was obvious that they didn't put the brow in for practical reasons. A comic book is one thing but filming a movie is much different. Not everything translates well.

 

[MattC]

Kirk, the production designer, was there as well. The complete transcript from that session can be found here:
http://www.f4movies.com/setvisit/sv_prodoffice.php

 

[Advanced Dark]

Was this ever on SHH???

 

[Retroman]

It has been posted before i think Wideawake.

Two new spots, one is 10 seconds the other 20. But no new footage.


http://www.visit4info.com/moredetails.cfm?adnum=46324
http://www.visit4info.com/details.cfm?adid=46290

 

[MattC]

Was this ever on SHH???

SHH posted theirs a while back...

 

[Kelly]

Someone posted IESB's set visit and it was promptly taken down......I don't know why.....

 

[Corben_Rulz]

How Tim Story gets work is beyond me. No eye or sense at all.

 

[Advanced Dark]

^ This movie looks awesome to me. He's done a fine job from what I can tell. It's not like FF was an easy franchise to tackle and intro 5 characters like that in one film. He did that in Barbershop so they helped him size-up. I think he's coming into his own. We'll see shortly huh?

 

[highguard]

^^ too true

 

[echostation]

i hope someone puts this up on youtube soon

 

[Advanced Dark]

I saw 2 small bits of new footage in here...or new to me but very short. One of the Reed looking back in the car, and another of the fantasticar in the background sort of hovering. You'll see it near the end. Mostly footage we've seen mixed in with the host's talk, along with footage from the new trailer too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUmXm0SDpv4

No this is NOT the TBS footage I'm talking about. Still looking for all of that.

 

[Advanced Dark]

I found another video and just posted it in these forums.

 

[Kelly]

Good stuff, it has combined alot of what we've seen over the past few months into one....cool.

 

[Xybalba69]

Q: We've heard about how the powers are being advanced or integrated. Can you tell us a little about that?
TS: Not at all. I’ll just say that Johnny’s powers are enhanced at some point in the movie and I think it brings a very fun and very big twist to what happens in the movie.


hey guys, can you enlighten me up a bit here ?...im not a F4 comic book reader, i just have the cartoons and i dont seem to remind anywhere when the F4 they shift powers ?...because on the last teaser trailer they do that, and frankly, it dissapointed me and a lot of my friends...the scene with Johnny and Ben...it was not funny at all...

..what i remember is the Super Skrull having the 4 powers combined...

..can you enlighten me ? thanxxx...

 

[TheComicbookKid]

During Waid's Unthinkable arc, Sue was tortured with Johnny's powers so she couldn't get her children from Doom. Johnny was tortured with Reed's stretching abilities by Doom.

On a sidenote, you and your friends should give it a chance. Just because something didn't happen in the comics, doesn't mean it can't still be good.

 

[Raiden]

Reading the interview gives me hope that this time they may get it right. Despite being a big Marvel fan I couldn't help but gotten disappointed with the first movie. At least they acknowledged that they didn't do Dr. Doom justice so I hope it's a sign that the good doctor will get the treatment he royally deserved.

I will go to see RotSS in theatre for sure. I hope it will knock my socks off.

 

[highguard]

Q: We've heard about how the powers are being advanced or integrated. Can you tell us a little about that?
TS: Not at all. I’ll just say that Johnny’s powers are enhanced at some point in the movie and I think it brings a very fun and very big twist to what happens in the movie.


hey guys, can you enlighten me up a bit here ?...im not a F4 comic book reader, i just have the cartoons and i dont seem to remind anywhere when the F4 they shift powers ?...because on the last teaser trailer they do that, and frankly, it dissapointed me and a lot of my friends...the scene with Johnny and Ben...it was not funny at all...

..what i remember is the Super Skrull having the 4 powers combined...

..can you enlighten me ? thanxxx...

The FF have switched powers several times most recently Johnny and Sue switched powers in order to fool an intergalactic race who was trying to kill her.

 

[Kelly]

Q: We've heard about how the powers are being advanced or integrated. Can you tell us a little about that?
TS: Not at all. I’ll just say that Johnny’s powers are enhanced at some point in the movie and I think it brings a very fun and very big twist to what happens in the movie.


hey guys, can you enlighten me up a bit here ?...im not a F4 comic book reader, i just have the cartoons and i dont seem to remind anywhere when the F4 they shift powers ?...because on the last teaser trailer they do that, and frankly, it dissapointed me and a lot of my friends...the scene with Johnny and Ben...it was not funny at all...

..what i remember is the Super Skrull having the 4 powers combined...

..can you enlighten me ? thanxxx...

Zius, leader of a group of Galactus refugees, kidnapped Susan to be used as a weapon to hide the presence of planets, from the arrival of Galactus. Reed found a way to make Zius believe that her powers were gone, by swapping powers between Susan and Johnny. After gaining respect for what Johnny goes through in his everyday life with his abilities, Reed reversed the swap.
This parallels an earlier torture by Doom, where Sue was given an extremely painful version of Johnny's pyrokinetic ability.

 

[The Apatow Crew]

i hope someone puts this up on youtube soon

Yes they do.

I wanna see this!