by Shane “Fantastic Forecasts” Hnetka
By the time you read this, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues has probably wrapped up its return to theatres — the one-week run ends (ended) Thursday, March 20, the day this issue comes (came) out. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Super-Sized R-Rated Version is an R-rated alternative cut built from hours of unused improvised scenes. While the re-release has the same basic structure as Anchorman 2, it now has a reported 763 new jokes.
A similar thing happened after the first film, too: that alternative version was called Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie.
In any case, it’s a whole lot of Ron Burgundy for the average fan. Maybe too much Ron Burgundy.
Fox’s Fantastic Four
Because superhero movies are all the rage, Fox Studios is rebooting Fantastic Four. Fox already released two Fantastic Four movies but they were terrible. Third time’s the charm?
Fantastic Four, of course, is a Marvel comic book, but it — along with X-Men, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Punisher and Blade — were licensed out to different studios when Marvel went bankrupt back in the late 1990s. Now that Marvel is owned by Disney and producing their own (very successful) comic book movies, everybody else wants to hang on to the little pieces they have. Shocking.
Regardless, the choice for director is promising. Helmer Josh Trank directed Chronicle — a fairly decent, superhero-ish found footage movie — and the studio just announced the cast. For the most part it’s pretty unspectacular. Someone named Miles Teller is going to be Reed Richards. Kate Mara is Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman. Jamie Bell, who played annoying cabin boy Jimmy in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, is a little undersized to be Ben Grimm, a.k.a. the orange rock pile known as the Thing, but I guess that’s what CGI is for.
The biggest name is Michael B. Jordan as the Human Torch, Johnny Storm. Controversy has arisen because Jordan is black, while Johnny Storm is white in the comics. The character was previously played by Chris Evans, who is now Captain America in Marvel’s cinematic universe. Jordan was in Trank’s Chronicle and he was pretty good.
I don’t think it’s really an issue. And at least Jordan won’t be killed off halfway through the movie this time.
Hooked On A Feeling
I assume by now everyone’s seen the trailers for Guardians Of The Galaxy and the new Godzilla movie? Excellent. Just checking.
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Shane Hnetka is a Regina film and comic book nerd. He writes Dog Blog’s weekly “Sunday Matinee” column at prairiedogmag.com.