FFINO? - Fantastic Four in name only?

For a hugely expensive Hollywood blockbuster, Fantastic Four (the reboot of the franchise) has failed terribly at the box office with an American opening weekend pulling in "only" $26.2 million. That's a huge sum of money, of course, but only about half what would be needed for a movie of this kind to be modestly successful. It is dwarfed by the record, currently held by Jurassic World, of over $208 million. In short, this looks like a disaster for the franchise and the producers.

I haven't yet seen the movie, so I don't know whether it's as bad as the word on the streets about it. Everything I hear, though, and everything I see in the marketing, gives me a bad feeling. There's a sense that we could call this movie FFINO - "Fantastic Four in name only". I'm averse to seeing it (though I'll probably drag myself along as something of a completist about these things), because I have no faith that the spirit of the original source material will be honoured, or that it will capture anything of what made Fantastic Four great - and so popular - back in the 1960s. I get a sense that no one involved really "gets" the source material, or has faith in it.

Perhaps I'm wrong. When I see it, maybe I'll change my mind.

But there's an issue here as to whether a set of ideas (and especially the character relationships) that worked so well in the 1960s can be translated to the 2010s. Perhaps too much of what is at the heart of Fantastic Four depended on the culture of its time. In particular, the signature villain of the series, Doctor Doom, may not translate naturally to the contemporary cinema screen. Although Doom became the model for other great characters - notably Magneto and Darth Vader - perhaps Doom himself is too over-the-top (evil dictator of a central European country, wears sinister-looking medieval armour, talks in a grandiloquent way, etc.), while the layers of complexity added to him in the diegesis of the comics are just, well, too complex for a movie.

Perhaps the lovable quirks of the Fantastic Four themselves - Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Girl (later Invisible Woman), the Human Torch, and the Thing - are too tied to 1960s culture, so movie makers choose to alter the characters drastically in an attempt to make them relevant. But all that said, the creators involved with the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been able to capture much of the original look and feel of The Avengers and related characters, and it has worked handsomely. I can't believe that it would be that difficult to create a viable version of the Fantastic Four and their supporting cast, while sticking fairly closely to the source material.

Savulescu on Steven Pinker's challenge to bioethics

Julian Savulescu has written a good piece in response to Steven Pinker - I think I can probably agree with all of this.

My own response on the Cogito blog is more long-winded, though in partial defence of that I was trying to set up a broader, more metaphilosophical argument. Savulescu needn't endorse that broader argument, of course, but I think these two pieces and the original op-ed by Pinker can all be taken to complement each other.

Another response that I recommend is Alice Dreger's: it has many useful observations.

Newest issue of The Philosophers' Magazine

The newest issue of TPM arrived here yesterday. It includes my review (slightly, but not horribly, technical) of Stephen Finlay's Confusion of Tongues - an important contribution to contemporary metaethics. It also has much other stuff that looks interesting, some of which I'll probably write about separately.

Axel Alonso addresses sexuality of Marvel's Hercules

Marvel's editor-in-chief responds to criticism in his weekly "Axel-In-Charge" interview. The bottom line is that Marvel does not have a closed mind on this, which is good.

New post at Cogito on Steven Pinker's challenge to bioethics

"Locking horns over bioethics: The challenge from Steven Pinker."

Pinker to bioethicists - "Keep out of the way!"

A provocative article by Steven Pinker here - I largely agree with him.

Atheist Revolution on public shaming

This sardonic post makes the point very well.

A review of Intelligence Unbound.

A nice review of Intelligence Unbound: The Future of Uploaded and Machine Minds published in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Part 2 of my article on "Cultural Marxism and our current culture wars"

Part 2 has been published at Cogito.

Or if you haven't yet read Part 1, go there first.

Another small storm about a bisexual male hero

This article by Robert Karjel is a bit self-serving, so I take it with a grain of salt (as I do much of what I read online). Still, it has a certain ring of truth to this extent: I think it's apparent that a lot of readers/viewers, etc., cannot yet handle the idea of bisexual male characters. No wonder that there might be some reticence from publishing houses, movie studios, and the like. These producers of popular culture can just about cope with gay men and lesbians - and even with female bisexuality (there's an obvious story about that) - but male bisexuality remains pretty much taboo.