Round trip Amtrak ticket purchased for my trip to Worldcon and the Hugos in Seattle next month! And there are finally some reviews for my little affordable VRBO booking near the Space Needle - it's always bit worrisome when a property hasn't received a single comment.
Just over a month to go!
- Sid
"This equation not only confirms alternate dimensions, it suggests that parallel Earths exist on different dimensional planes..."
Reed Richards, The Fantastic Four
We're three weeks out from the commercial release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and I'm wondering if it's going to be an epic catastrophe.
Let me be clear: in saying that, I don't mean to say that the film is going to bomb at the box office (although I have some misgivings about Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards*), or that the franchise is cursed (even if this is, coincidentally, the fourth attempt to boot the concept), but rather that I think that the Fantastic Four are going to fail in their duty to protect the planet. Galactus, an entity of immeasurable power who consumes the life force of worlds in order to survive, is going to destroy their world, and they will be the only survivors, trans-dimensional refugees seeking a new home on a parallel Earth.
In Galactus' original appearance in the Fantastic Four comic book**, he is defeated with the aid of Uatu the Watcher, a cosmic being who is charged with watching over our dimension.***
Uatu violates his oath of passive observation to help the Fantastic Four save the Earth by sending the Human Torch to steal the Ultimate Nullifier, a weapon of infinite destructive power, from Galactus' spaceship. Threatened with destruction, Galactus agrees to find another world to devour, and departs.
Why do I think that the movie's conclusion may be different? None of the trailers show anything suggesting that the FF are getting an assist from the Watcher, although they may be helped by the Silver Surfer, herald of Galactus, who rebels in the comics version and attempts to thwart his**** master's will but only succeeds in delaying him. (As punishment, Galactus imprisons the Silver Surfer on Earth.) Left to their own resources, it may well be that Reed and the gang might not be able to stop an all-powerful cosmic being.
Second, there's that tantalizing after-credits scene from The Thunderbolts, where the team's computer announces that it has detected an "extra dimensional ship entering atmosphere", and then displays a satellite image of a ship marked with the distinctive 4 symbol.
The same ship is shown in the First Steps trailers, and I can easily imagine Reed Richards frantically adjusting the ship's drive to create an interdimensional portal to allow the team to escape as Galactus consumes their Earth - yes, it could just be an exploratory flight, but drama dictates a more significant - and possibly disastrous - reason for the ship's appearance.
I could easily be wrong in my speculation. In the comics, Reed spends most of his spare time building portals into alternate dimensions (which, come to think of it, causes most of the problems that the team has to deal with). As such, it's not hard to imagine that they might end up visiting what we'll call the MCU dimension, for lack of a better term.
But, but, if I'm right, full points to the creative team - it would be a bold decision to introduce the Fantastic Four to the MCU as escapees from the destruction of a parallel Earth.
Regardless of how and why the Fantastic Four make their way to the MCUniverse, this raises another question. It's already been announced that Robert Downey Jr. will be returning to Marvel as Doctor Doom. Given that Victor von Doom is the most intimately connected foe of the Fantastic Four, who do not exist in the MCU until now, in what parallel universe does he originate? It may well be that the Fantastic Four are fleeing Doctor Doom rather than Galactus - it would certainly be a better setup for Mr. Downey's return than the destruction of Earth-FF.
But wait, there would have to be some reason that Doctor Doom was Tony Stark, or is it a huge coincidence that they look the same? And what about von Doom's disfigured face, the result of a failed lab experiment that von Doom blames on Reed Richards? Is Tony Stark somehow the hereditary ruler of the East European nation of Latveria as well? You know, I give up - it's only 21 days to First Steps, let's just wait and see what happens.
- Sid
* Pedro Pascal: fine actor, no question - but honestly, I agree with the people who think that John Krasinski would have been a better fit for Reed Richards, as already demonstrated in the second Doctor Strange movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
** Issues 48-50, aka The Galactus Trilogy.
*** Fans of Marvel TV will recognize the Watcher from the What If? animated series on Disney+.
**** In the trailers for the film, the Surfer is obviously female rather than male. In the comics, the Silver Surfer is Norrin Radd, an alien who strikes a bargain with Galactus to spare his home world in exchange for becoming his servant and seeking out other worlds for consumption. In this version, the Surfer may well be Radd's companion, Shalla-Bal.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
“It’s not like I’m using,” Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. “It’s like my body’s developed this massive drug deficiency.” It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke. The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese.William Gibson, Neuromancer
If you know, you know.
For existing fans of Neuromancer, William Gibson's groundbreaking 1984 cyberpunk masterpiece, seeing the glowing neon title at the end of the Apple TV production announcement was redundant - all we needed to see was the word "Chatsubo" and we knew what was happening.
In some ways, Neuromancer is the Holy Grail of science fiction adaptation, a quest which may well end badly for the participants. Paradoxically, the great challenge in adapting Gibson is that he's such a good writer, which make it's almost impossible to capture his distinctively sparse, laconic style* in another medium.
There have been several attempts to adapt Gibson to the big (and little) screen. 1998's New Rose Hotel, based on Gibson's 1984 short story of the same title, stars the epic combination of Christopher Walken and Willen Dafoe as a pair of freelance corporate extraction experts hoping that they've found the big score that will set them up for life.
It's perhaps not a great film, but it far more effectively captures the moody neo-noir feeling of Gibson's writing than 1995's flawed Johnny Mnemonic. Originally planned as a low-budget art film version of the original short story, the eventual studio release failed to match the quality of its source material on a number of different levels.
Amazon's episodic version of The Peripheral is a loose adaptation of the 2014 time travel-alternative reality novel, but does an acceptable job of visualizing the near and far future versions of the world that Gibson describes in the book. The casting of Chloë Grace Moretz as Flynn Fisher was a particularly good choice, and it's unfortunate that the series didn't receive a second season that might have allowed it to further develop its characters and storyline.
And now, Neuromancer prepares to take its place in the gauntlet. The casting looks good - I'm okay with Callum Turner as Case the hacker, and Dane DeHaan is an interesting choice for the psychopathic Peter Riviera - but ultimately, it's going to come down to look and feel. If it doesn't have the right flavour, the right style, it's not going to work.
As per Apple's teaser, the series is in production now, and it's expected not to be released until sometime in 2026 at the earliest. On behalf of the book's extensive fan base, good luck. And, to quote Ru Paul: "DON'T fuck it up."
- Sid
* if you ever have the opportunity to hear Gibson read from his work, I strongly advise that you do so. All other reasons aside, it means that going forward, you can quite clearly hear his voice when you read his work.
