Two years ago Marvel busied itself apologizing for the Hulk movie. Earlier this year Marvel was apologizing for the Elektra movie. Now Marvel has a new movie it should apologize for: this summer's Fantastic Four .But it won't. As the Beat points out, the movie brought in lots more money than many expected in its opening weekend, so from the corporate standpoint, there's nothing wrong with it. And, to be fair, there are comics pros whose opinions I respect, like Fred Hembeck in his latest IGN Comics column , who very much liked the FF movie.As for me, I lean more towards Roger Ebert's statement that "the really good superhero movies, like Superman, Spider-Man 2 and Batman Begins, leave Fantastic Four so far behind that the movie should almost be ashamed to show itself in the same theaters".Regular readers know that when I see comics-based movies, I always search for a credit for the people who created the original comic. The line "Based on the comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby" appears third in the list of credits at the end of movie, only two steps after the credit for director Tim Story. I would have felt much happier about this if I hadn't felt so deeply disappointed in the movie, which is only a superficial rendering of Lee and Kirby's creation. Would anyone unacquainted with the original Fantastic Four comics understand from this shallow, unimaginative movie how the comics revolutionized the superhero genre back in the early 1960s?The most important part of that revolution was in characterization, transforming the cardboard stereotypes so common in action-adventure comics into figures with multidimensional personalities. So let's consider just how the Fantastic Four movie handles its five principal characters: Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Susan Storm (the Invisible Woman), her brother Johnny (the Human Torch), their best friend Ben Grimm (who becomes the monstrous Thing), and their nemesis Doctor Doom.In Back Issue #7, I conducted a "round table" interview with over twenty comics writers, artists and editors associated with the Fantastic Four. One concept that came up again and again was what FF editor Tom Brevoort called "the family dynamic between the four characters." My impression is that every comics pro who writes, draws or edits the FF recognizes that the Fantastic Four is a family, even though only two of them, the siblings Sue and Johnny, are related by blood. The family metaphor had become obvious to everyone, it seemed. "FAMILY," Karl Kesel wrote in all caps, adding, "'Nuff said." But it seems it wasn't so obvious to the makers of the Fantastic Four movie. Their version of the FF is a team, all right, but do they seem like a family? In the round table, Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman and Alex Ross each correctly designated Reed Richards as the team's father figure. The movie's Reed Richards isn't even old enough to serve as a father figure: he looks as if he is the same age as Sue and Johnny, and there are even points at which I thought Johnny looked older than Reed. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made Reed Richards and Ben Grimm into World War II veterans: hence by 1961, when the series debuted, they were probably meant to be in their early 40s, just like Lee and Kirby themselves. That's why Reed has the white hair at his temples (a look I took on myself as I grew older). But in the movie, Reed gains his trademark white hair as a side effect of the changes the radiation wreaked on his body: it's a mutation! Apparently despite the precedents set in movies over the last few decades by such action stars as Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis, and even senior citizens like Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery, the FF moviemakers found it incomprehensible to have a forty-year-old action hero.A father figure should also be an authority figure and a leader. In his recent documentary about 1950s science fiction movies, Watch the Skies, which premiered earlier this month on Turner Classic Movies, its writer/director Richard Schickel points out that with the coming of atomic weaponry and the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, American popular culture took a new attitude towards scientists: they were either heroes, producing wonders that benefited humanity, or villains, devising deadly new weapons.Reed Richards and Doctor Doom fit into these opposing archetypes that Schickel identifies. In the round table Alex Ross acknowledged basing his portraits of reed in Marvels on Russell Johnson, who played the Professor on Gilligan's Island, who was not only the smartest person on the island but the most sensible and mature. Ross also likened Reed to Guy Williams' character on Lost in Space: another scientist/father/authority figure/hero. In the 1960s this archetype was part of the pop culture zeitgeist.In fact, many of Stan Lee's Marvel heroes of the 1960s have been described as "scholar-heroes," men of intellect as well as physical power: scientists Reed Richards and Henry Pym, inventor Tony Stark, surgeons Don Blake and Stephen Strange, lawyer Matt Murdock, and scientist-in-the-making Peter Parker. This may reflect the mindset of Lee's Depression-era generation: one studied to better himself, and teachers, lawyers, doctors and scientists were regarded as admirable, successful role models. Now, you might think that in our time, with personal computers, cell phones, iPods, DVDs, and other fruits of advanced technology pervading our lives, that scientists--or educated, smart people in general--would still be considered worthy of respect. But no. As with the world of comics, the "geek" stereotype has taken over.The movie's Johnny Storm calls Reed Richards "the dumbest smart guy" in the world. In the movie, Sue, of all people, tells Reed to his face that he is a "dork." Certain movie reviewers march along in lockstep. Online critic James Berardinelli, who demonstrates knowledge of the FF comic, nonetheless pronounces Reed "the geek of the group." The movie likewise demeans Reed, portraying him as a callow youth, who may nominally be the leader of the Fantastic Four but seems to exert no real authority over his teammates, and who infuriates Sue with his naivet¿ towards their personal relationship. Bruce Kirkland of the Toronto Sun complains that "We are supposed to believe that sensuous Sue loves this brainy buffoon. But, in the movie, their chemistry is even more of a mystery."It's no mystery in the comic book. Ben, and Lee and Kirby, may kid Reed for his pomposity, and Lee and Kirby's Sue may become exasperated at times when Reed becomes preoccupied with his latest scientific research. And yes, each of the other three members of the FF has quit one or more times in a disagreement with Reed's leadership. But they recognize he is a leader and an authority figure.