Today I watched the new "Fantastic Four" movie.  Considering the reviews, I went away pleasantly surprised. 

One of the biggest warranted criticisms of FF (taken from Ebert's review) was that the characters weren't adequately surprised by their sudden mutations.  I agree with that to some extent, however if the movie had spent more time on that type of stuff, it would have taken even longer to get to the plot.  (The "origin" part of the movie took up nearly half of the film.  I couldn't imagine how much longer it would have taken if the characters were allowed to "practice".)

I think that if all of the comic book-based movies are seen as a whole, the learning process was already satisfactorily explored in "Spiderman".  If "Fantastic Four" explored that, they might have run the risk of audiences feeling it was redundant.

So besides the offense of my disbelief-suspension by having all the characters -and Thing's girlfriend-miraculously meet up on a bridge in New York (after returning seperately from a ski resort), and the relatively easy dispatch of Doctor Doom, I enjoyed this movie.  It is worth a sequel.

The villian of the sequel (in the initial buzz) is apparently some character named "The Puppet Master". (Not necessarily a giant in the Marvel pantheon.)  If it were up to me, I'd have them fight "Herald of Galactus" The Silver Surfer in number two, leading to the appearance of Galactus in part three.  If they go to part four, Dr. Doom could come back, or they could introduce Krull.

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Which leads to the second prong of my thrust:

One of the things that I liked about "Fantastic Four" was that their arch-enemy wasn't (necessarily) killed-off at the end.  (Sorry if that's a spoiler...)  I think that keeping a main bad guy alive is key to sustaining a series.  "X-men" kept Magneto, "Superman" kept Lex Luthor, and now "Fantastic Four" did the right thing with Dr. Doom.  (a.k.a. in Japanese: "Akuma Hakase")

Seeing the "Spiderman" and "Batman" movies, it always disturbed me that each hero's arch-enemy was killed-off in one movie.  To sustain Spiderman, Dr. Octopus should have more than one shot at Spidey.  In Batman, there is no way that either The Joker or The Riddler are only good for one movie each.  The only "survivor" in Batman so far has been Catwoman.  With Mr. Freeze and Scarecrow, the well-known villian pool is running-thin.  (After Scarecrow, I can't really name any more Batman bad guys.)

That's what's on my mind about super hero movies these days.  Summer time is good for that kind of thing.