Extra, Extra: Our First Look at Fantastic Four's Thing

In which I report on the latest entertainment news.

It seems like everybody came together to show off their made over superheroes and villains on the same exact day.  Not only did we get our first looks at The Suicide Squad's Joker and Fantastic Four's Thing, but Daredevil's iconic red costume, Ant-Man's antagonist Yellow Jacket and X-Men: Apocalypse's Archangel.  They even chose yesterday to release Vision's character poster for Age of Ultron.

Normally, this would have been a week's worth of news by itself.  But for God only knows what reason, we got every last one of those on a Thursday.  So please bare with me as I parse through these at a less than ideal rate, given everything else that I had planned to do between yesterday and today.

 Like the Incredible Hulk, Thing has always been a visually problematic character for the big screen.  He's so distinctively non-Human that you're left with few good options on how to render him alongside more ordinary characters like Mr. Fantastic.  Do you stick the actor in a suit and pray for the best, or do you CG in the effect and pray that the effect holds up over the span of 90 minutes?

Remember this atrocity?  Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Even those who'd written off the upcoming reboot still held out hope that Ben Grimm would at least fare better than with Fox's last swing at the character.  And having now seen him, I have to say that I'm impressed.  This is probably the best version of the character that we cold have hoped for, physically at least.

Rather than a cartoonish orange, he favors a stonier pallet: earthy browns and slight touches of rusted red.  Rather than looking like he just has an especially bad case of Shingles, he actually looks like a golem: a creature made from stone and earth.  Rather than just being bulky, he actually has a dominating physical presence within the frame.

I for one am glad that they tackled Thing mostly from a CG angle.  While I normally will happily take anything I can as a practical, in-camera effect, there are just some things that don't work in-camera.  Most of those come from comic books: iconic character designs that you just can't do justice to with a physical costume.

While I still have my reservations about the overly altered Fantastic Four reboot, this is at least one thing that I can cross off of that list.  Thing looks amazing, and is likely to be the best visual that the movie has to offer.  As for the rest... well, we'll just have to wait and see.

So what do you think about Thing's new look?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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