Jessica Alba Confirmed for Fantastic Four ( Invisible Girl )

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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/brief_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000576307

Jessica Alba has been cast as the Invisible Girl for 20th Century Fox's upcoming Marvel Comics adaptation "Fantastic Four." Alba, whose features include "Sin City" and "Out of the Blue," beat out stiff competition for the role that included Rachel McAdams and Elizabeth Banks. She joins Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans and Ioan Gruffudd as the adventure-seeking quartet made up of scientist Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Gruffudd); his love interest, Susan Storm/the Invisible Girl (Alba); her brother, Johnny Storm/the Human Torch (Chris Evans); and Reed's best friend, Benjamin Grimm/the Thing (Chiklis). The four develop superpowers when their spaceship is exposed to cosmic radiation. Tim Story is set to direct.

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I like this choice. Alba is just goddesslike and has the star power that this cast lacked. She'll fill out the costume best both litterally and figuratively. Dark Angel showed she could be successful in this type of genre and she should be in the Marvel movieverse.

[St. Jarvitude]

1. She'll be Invisible Girl? NoooooooooooooooooooooOO!!!

All that means is that we'll see less of her less often :( :( :(

[Bombtrack]

2. Yeah but you're also going to see her in some sort of spandex-y suit

I doubt they'll go the leather route like X-men. They'll probably use the same stuff Spiderman used. Maybe with a bit more detail than in the comic and a 21st century twist.

[St. Jarvitude]

32. Sweeeeeeeeeeet

To be honest, I'm not all that familiar with the Fantastic Four.

Jessica Alba a+ Spandex body suit = :) :) :)

[Bombtrack]

33. Actually I think it'll be Lycra

whatever that is.

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3. pics of her with (admittadly a cheap wig of) blonde hair

[Xithras]

4. I'm still PO'd about them cancelling Dark Angel

:mad: :mad: :mad:

[Bombtrack]

5. Was it any good? I watched a few episodes the first season

I stopped when there were dog people.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

6. I love the FF comic, but this will suck

FF should be a flagship franchise like xmen. this is the series that launched marvel comics as we know it. but it's been given to a b-list director and filled with b-list teenybopper idols.

reed richards is supposed to be an older character than this. originally tim robbins was rumored for the role with charlize theron as sue and peyton reed directing, but all of that was scrapped and this movie has dropped down to the teir of shit like hellboy and catwoman

[tigerbeat]

7. agreed....

FF was a ground-breaking comic and they're treating it like the freaking Punisher. the director of BARBERSHOP for chrissakes! what's next.....the director of SOUL PLANE directs the DR. STRANGE movie?

just when you think they got a clue vis a vis comic book movies....

on edit: alba is definitely lovely. but the rumor of sarah wynter from 24 was a much better idea.

[Bombtrack]

8. I think that you are really wrong on alot of what you said

X-men didn't have 1 A-list actor when it was filmed or even when it came out. Halle Berry became an A-lister afterwords and now X3 might reap the consequences of that because she's become so demanding and might not even agree to be in it, which will be a big damaging element to the franchise, as Storm is easily the most popular and perhaps most critical X-Woman in the series(she became team leader after Jean/Phoenix died in the comics).

So having all B-Listers is really no different from the X-men movie. Certainly Alba is or will be at the same level of celebrity as Hugh Jackman is now and will be next year. And there is nothing "teenybopper" about the actors other than the fact that the 2 people who play the Storms have been in light teen movies like 99 percent of famous actors their age.

The director you named directed as his only hit "bring it on". Hardly something that trounces Barbershop in respectablity and good reviews.

And they are so NOT too young to play Johnny, who was in his late teens at the beginning of the comics, and Sue, who was in her early-to-mid 20's at the beginning of the comics. And for that matter the guy playing Reed is the exact right age as in the comics he was a decade older than Sue and the guy playing him is in his early 30's. And Tim Robbins was, and still is up for Dr. Doom, NOT, as you say, Mr. Fantastic.
The only people who aren't the right age exactly are the guy playing Johhny Storm and the Thing, BOTH of whom might be a bit too OLD.

Charlize Theron would've been terrible in my opinion. Way to old to play someone in the 21-25 age range. And, sorry if this is sexist in your eyes, she wouldn't have looked like the Invisible Girl in the comics, who truely filled out the costume with her...em... fullness.

Theron couldn't do that without alot of padding.

[tigerbeat]

9. NO a-listers in X-MEN?

perhaps you've heard of patrick stewart and/or ian mckellan?

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10. Perhaps you need an education on what an A-lister is.

The most money Ian McKellan EVER made for a movie was 5 million for the third LOTR movie. And that is on a movie were it could not have been made without him in any real feasability and was a garenteed goldmine from the success of the first 2.

Being on the A-list relates to your power in the industry and what you can garentee to bring in. It has nothing to do with being a Shakespearian character actor or having a Knighthood. Syvester Stallone made more 15-20 million on more than 15 films, but he isn't even an A-lister anymore because his career has gone down somewhat.

Patrick Stewart being an A-lister is a joke. He was in some crappy movie called Masterminds and that is pretty much his notable career outside of Star Trek and X-men.

He was also a pretty crappy choice to play the professor IMO. It's like Singer said, I'm a Trekkie, he's bald, let's do it.

Never mind he can't act without a freaking British accent which the professor didn't have. Same thing with McKellan, who played a Polish Holocaust survivor with a British accent.

[tigerbeat]

11. thank you for the "lecture"

i was thinking more of a gravitas/actual actor-in-the-community standing rather than how many zeros were in their paycheck. but i choose not to let variety or hollywood reporter determine my definitions.

my point still stands: the casting of patrick stewart (the ONLY choice to play professor x) and ian mckellan prove that bryan singer had a respect for the material and the talent to back it up.

the casting of all four of the FF has proven that tim story has neither.

[Khephra]

12. Chiklis is prefect though

Ever since I heard about him being cast, all I can do is hear his voice whenever I read a FF appearance.

[tigerbeat]

15. i think chiklis is a fine actor....

....and i'm sure he'll do fine with the role. but the original character of ben grimm from the comics was a good-looking football player-type who got turned into a monster, which lent much to the tragic aspect of his character. chiklis is already sort of misanthropic in physique.

but, he's the least problematic of the casting choices in my opinion. if they ditched the rest of them and kept him, i'd be perfectly happy.

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13. Brian Singer overall has made the X-films good but he's botched the

casting. Stewart was a horrible choice same as McKellan. Singer didn't chose Stewart because he was the best person who could possibly play a professor from a blue-blood family turned peaceful ideological leader of mutantkind. He picked him because he worked with him before and he was bald. And he picked McKellan because he had worked with him before in Apt Pupil, again a person who wouldn't come to the minds of 99 percent of people who thought of a Eatern European physically intimidating powerhouse who could take on all of the X-men at one time.

Hugh Jackman was also a pretty lame choice in my opinion as Wolverine was the polar opposite of a naturally skinny, tallish, metrosexual.

Wolverine described himself as a short ugly guy. And he was at least short at 5' 3". I would have asked Joe Rogan but that's besides the point as is the whole Jackman tangent.

You're dead wrong on Singer being some overwhelming respect for the material or atleast that it's not up for debate. He really screwed with it alot and he admitted on the X2 DVD(the reason I know TOO much about the movies) that he had never read the X-men and was not a fan before he took the job.

I'm not bastardizing the term A-list as you imply I am, as if to put some superficial spin on the true meaning. I'm using it in it's proper form from which it was originally used and is still used correctly. It comes from a method called "The Ulmer Scale"

[DoveTurnedHawk]

14. Totally, 100% Disagree

Stewart and McKellan were PERFECT for the roles, and the fan community has, almost uniformly, agreed. I like Jackman, too, and I think the idea of a relative unknown cast as Wolverine was probably best, since he's such a unique character.

And Halle Berry was big before X-Men. Everyone else, much less so.

DTH

[Bombtrack]

19. You totally disagree yet you make my same point about being known/unknown

The person I was originally arguing with said that FF would be completely unlike X-men because it's a bunch of B-listers. And my main point was that X-men WAS all B-listers. Halle Berry is the closest to an A-lister in the entire cast but she still didn't fit it until after it came out.

You're never going to convince me that 2 guys who can't even put on a non-British accent were the best for an American Blue-blood and a Polish Holocaust survivor. And it just gives the movies a bigger nerd factor than they need by having Captain Picard and Gandalf as the the arch-rival leaders for Mutantkind.

[tigerbeat]

20. actually...

....my appreciation for mckellan and stewart have nothing to do with trek or LOTR. but their shakespearean chops and their undisputed talent.

i'm sure stewart and mckellan could have done accents if directed to. they were not directed to. personally i could give a rip if xavier is american or british. and as far as magneto.......isn't it just entirely possible in the span of 60 years he lost his polish accent?

[DoveTurnedHawk]

21. I Wasn't Paying Much Attention To Your Argument About the FF

Your subject line about Singer botching the casting just caught my eye.

Minor liberties with things like accents don't bother me. Ultra-adherence to the canon probably bothers me more for its anal-retentiveness, especially for something with as convolunted continuity as the X-Men. All filmmakers will take some liberties with the written work.

As for the nerd factor...we're talking COMICS, fer the luvva Pete. ;-)

DTH

[Bombtrack]

23. yeah but alot of fans of marvel comics movies like myself

would prefur to not associate the appreciation of that with Trekkies and LOTR, specifically because I think they both of those "world's" blow big time.

I know I can't really take the time to go over all the differences and maybe I'm wrong but I believe that there are alot of guys my age who first got really into this stuff in the early-to-mid 90's on the X-men and Spider-man Fox cartoons which got us to collect(and for at least some of us, read) the comics and it was never nerdy at all. Not in anything close to the way Trekkies and LOTR fans are. I'm not a mean-spirited person so I'm not into bashing those people at all, but I recognize the fact that I wouldn't want to be one of em.

[tigerbeat]

17. guess we gotta disagree.

while singer wasn't a fanboy before he got the gig, he says that he gained a respect for the stories after reading them. having respect for the material doesn't necessarily mean being a fanboy.

the changes he made for the movie were okay by me because he kept the vast majority of the story and the themes of the comic. putting them in black leather just doesn't seem to matter that much in the scheme of things. and this huge x-men fan from way back happens to think that stewart, mckellan and jackman were fantastic choices for these roles.

the only thing i curse singer for is the casting of halle berry as storm and the handling of that character as a whole. angela bassett or gina torres seem genetically built to play that part both in appearance and acting chops. yet we get berry. blech.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

18. Totally Agree With Everything You Just Said

I was rooting for Angela Bassett for Storm, too. And Singer really did justice by the X-Men, in the opinion of this long-time fan.

DTH

[Liberal Veteran]

25. If you were to pick up the X-Men Graphic Novel: God Loves, Man Kills

..which was written in 1982, Both the Professor and Magneto were written as middle aged men (and look much like their counterparts in X-Men movie...the second movie was even based on this graphic novel). Being an X-Men fan since the beginning of the "New X-Men" in the mid-70's, I found the choices to be quite good (although Hugh Jackman is WAY too tall for his role, and Jean a little too old for her role). I think he did a fairly good job of bringing the concepts to life.

Let's be honest. In order to have a decent backstory for this comic book and stay true to the character of Magneto (who's opinions are colored by his memories of the Nazis), we needed a somewhat OLDER Magneto, because quite honestly, no one was going to suspend disbelief to the number of times Magneto has been "de-aged" to explain why he's still in his late 30's physically when he should be pushing his mid-60's at least.

You know, you just couldn't fit Alpha turning him into an infant where he was raised by Dr. Moira MacTaggert on Muir Island until Shikari (a Shi'ar spy) disguised as Erik the Red re-aged him to his physical best in order to thwart Lilandra from reaching Xavier.

So therein lies the problem: A Magneto with his history intact without all the other baggage of 40 years of writing.

All in all, Ian McKellan was an ideal choice.

[Bombtrack]

27. I did read God Loves Man Kills

Although I'd prefur a Magneto a bit closer to what we've seen him in every other incarnation than what he how he has been rarely portrayed in a less imposing light. I don't think even in that Graphic Novel that he was close to as skinny and feeble and old-looking as McKellan. There are plenty of good older actors who could really "fill out" the costume better and seem more intimidating. And how do you explain him having a British accent though? Oh well, we turned an Alba/FF thread into an X-men movies thread.

[Liberal Veteran]

28. Well, Magneto did spend a great deal of time overseas.

Accents (with the possible exception of the younger and less travelled mutants, like Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus) have never really been a hallmark of either Xavier or Magneto. Both of them were fairly well traveled men, so why shouldn't either of them have an accent? We know that Xavier spent a great deal of time in Europe in his young adulthood (which is how he met Moira). We also know that Xavier and Magneto met in Israel. According to the backstory of the movies, Charles and Eric worked together for many years before they finally went their separate ways (and Magneto was the one who helped build the original Cerebro in the movie).

And really the strength of Magneto was never in his ability to bench press, but the fact that he an agenda, a charisma, a ruthlessness that was the flip side of the coin of Xavier who had essentially the same qualities only used in different directions.

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29. Whatever, I was a fan of the Animated Series

and I think they shoulda gotten someone who sounded like that dude. Like some really well educated WASP type.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

16. Oh Well

Not sure how this will turn out. I am probably too used to the image of Sue Storm as an archetypical blonde-haired, blue-eyed, light-skinned Nordic type.

DTH

[Nlighten1]

22. What the hell?

The invisible girl is BLONDE. However, I lust for JA so I don't mind her taking the role.

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24. It's called hair dye. She's played blonde -haired people before

I saw a clip somewhere of her in the new Sin City movie where she's blonde. She's also gone onto letterman as a blonde.

[TroubleMan]

26. Damn....I was betting on Queen Latifah getting this part

nt.

[Paragon]

30. Chris Evans isn't blonde, either; here's Jessica sorta blondish (big)

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31. man

I wonder how many "we don't want her invisible" type jokes we can expect.

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34. bump