Zontar said:
I have to disagree, just look at the Guardians of the Galaxy, they went full camp with it and it worked out great. A Fantastic Four movie done in the silver age style could work, and hell if anything the market shows that would probably be the best it could do since superhero movies as of late seem to have their honesty to the source material directly correlate with their success.
Guardians of the Galaxy had an advantage, in a way, in that no one outside of a relatively small number of comic book readers knew who they were. That allowed a certain amount of leeway in redefining and re-addressing the characters for a new audience- and I agree, they came through in high style.
But I've expressed before that I'm not really convinced that fidelity to the comics,
per se, is the major secret of Marvel's recent success. God knows there's plenty in the Silver Age that's well best left there. I think it has more to do with an ability to focus on what makes the characters stand out and be relatable to an audience that
isn't necessarily familiar with the comic incarnations. For every "wink" that tells long-time Marvel fans that so-and-so is going to show up or such-and-such is going to be relevant later (much of that leading up to the Infinity Gems arc, naturally) there's a moment that allows the audience to work out for themselves something of relevance that the comics of the 50s and 60s would have spelled out with bald exposition, especially as far as "character" moments.
My understanding (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is that
GotG as a property was way, way on the back burner for Marvel until the movie again brought them to prominence. By contrast,
F4 have continued as a comic series pretty much up to the present day, but increasingly limped and under-performed, probably in part
because it hasn't had the same chance to retreat and re-evaluate.
I don't know that
Guardians was "campy" (that is, self-acknowledgingly theatrical) so much as that it didn't take itself all that seriously. By contrast, it seems like
F4 would fall apart if the elements of "family dynamics" that make up so much of its identity were treated similarly.
But, y'know, I could definitely be wrong. I didn't think Marvel was going to pull
Ant-Man off, at all. And that was certainly a case where there was a knife-edge to be walked between humor and self-mockery. I think it's entirely fair to say that Marvel could do it if anyone can. I guess I just don't know if the
F4 are all that
worth saving.