Along with being one of the dopest rappers and producers in the town, Matt ‘Spek’ Watson is one of the most well-versed Marvel/superhero aficionados I know. We had a chance to talk about his suspicion of the new Fantastic 4 movie, his love of Deadpool and our shared curiosity at why there’s hardly ever any good bad guys in these big superhero flicks. 

–Jake Uitti

When I saw the preview for the new Fantastic Four I got excited! The Thing looks realistic, I like Michael B. Jordan and the dude who plays Mr. Fantastic (from Whiplash) but you seemed to think it was going to be a flop of a movie – why is that? (It should be noted that I thought the first two Fantastic Four movies were decent, by the way, so I’m even more excited about this re-boot.)

I just think the world needs a dark, gritty reboot of Fantastic 4 about as much as the world needs a dark, gritty reboot of Toy Story. The tone and approach of the project doesn’t really align with the Fantastic 4 comics that I’m most familiar with…there’s a sense of almost-whimsy in the comics that’s really lacking from all the promotional material I’ve seen so far…something that I think the 2005 franchise really nailed, despite it’s many other flaws.

I also just don’t have a lot of faith in the director, Josh Trank, who did Chronicle…that movie really fell apart in the last half, and I think a lot of that is because it took itself too seriously. I’m just not sure he’s the right guy for the job, or that grounding the franchise in such a dark, realistic world is going to be able to let the audience suspend their disbelief enough for it to be a fun ride. It might make for a decent sci-fi movie though, so I’m still holding out hope for that.

I do like the fact that they cast Jordan though. He has the right balance of cockiness and naivete to pull off Johnny Storm, and I hope the script is light enough that he can have some fun there and not be the Human Torch of Emotions that we see in the previews. I hope Fox doesn’t rest on their laurels here and continues to diversify their casts, but looking at this picture, I’m not very hopeful.

On the flip side, last we spoke in person you were optimistic about Ant Man, which I recently saw. It was a good movie – Paul Rudd is charming, of course, and Michael Douglas was good, too. But I saw some people calling it one of the best superhero movies ever, which seems a bit far off. What were your thoughts on Ant Man and, since we’re on the topic, what are your favorite superhero films? 

I really enjoyed Ant Man, but it felt old to me. I know it was in development for a long time and had a change of directors and stuff, so maybe I’m just projecting, but it felt a lot more like a Phase 1 film. Especially after Winter Soldier and Guardians, it felt like we’d turned a corner and we could start telling more interesting stories than the standard origin story films.

At the same time I think it suffered from the same cancer as Ultron, where Marvel devotes an increasing amount of screen time to setting up its future films and it really detracts from the main story. I thought the scene at Avengers headquarters was really shoe-horned in, despite the fact that it was pretty cool to see Falcon fight Ant Man (and to see Ant Man win). I just felt like it could have been a more graceful tie-in.

Overall though, I laughed a lot and I think it was a total middle-of-the-road Marvel movie that I’ll watch over and over again. And I think Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang is the best addition to the MCU in a long time, and watching him banter with Robert Downey Junior and the rest of the Avengers is going to be great going forward.

My favorite of the Marvel films have been Iron Man, Winter Soldier and the first Avengers, but aside from Iron Man 3 I’m really fond of them all. Days Of Future Past was also really fun, but I think Fox is having a hard time nailing the universe down in the same way Marvel has done. As for DC, I’m all about their TV lineup, but their movies haven’t done much for me aside from The Dark Knight.

There is still hope for Fox yet though… 

I’ve actually been surprised with the number of superhero films that I haven’t liked – this coming from someone who read the comics and collected all the cards. It doesn’t seem THAT hard to me to make a good one. I’ve yet to like a Spiderman movie (which is sad for me, because I adore the character), the only Batman I loved was the one with Heath Ledger as the Joker. Ironman 1 was incredible but it seems the movies never really get the bad guys right. I’m odd though, I guess. I didn’t hate the first Daredevil and, like I said, the original Fantastic 4 movies were good – probably because my expectations were low. I also wasn’t a fan of Guardians and thought the first Avengers was meh. I’m such a downer! Sorry! The first two X-Men were marvelous though, and the new cast is stellar. What do you have hope for as the new age of superhero movies comes on? 

I’m in the same boat with Spiderman, but I’ve got a lot of hope for the new reboot because it seems like they’re really embracing the fact that he’s a kid with new superpowers…as long as they can keep Sony from meddling too much I think it’ll be dope.

I’m looking forward to a lot, actually… Now that Marvel (and to a lesser extent DC and Fox) have built these established universes, they can start really telling some compelling stories without wasting so much time defining the world. Winter Soldier was the pinnacle of that freedom so far, a really tight action flick with real stakes, that ended up effecting characters across the universe. The changes in that movie made Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s second season super entertaining, added layers to Black Widow’s character, and made me give a damn about Captain America as a character. Like you mentioned, it’s also one of the only movies that didn’t involve a throw-away villain, which has become a really tiresome trope that needs to go away.

What I’m most looking forward to though, are the TV shows…I think Daredevil is the best on-screen Marvel property so far, and I think it revealed that serialized television is actually a much better way to tell these kinds of stories. Movies make a lot of sense for budget reasons, FX, and scheduling, but television just gives them so much more time to develop the characters and the mythology that make these properties so loved. I don’t think an Agent Carter movie would have been very successful, but I loved the first season of the show and Peggy Carter has become one of my favorite characters in the entire MCU.

I dig what you’re saying about serialized tv – thats what made those X-Men cartoons so good. What’s one franchise you’d like to see be made that hasn’t been already? For me, I’m interested in the new Gambit and I wish more was done with Nightcrawler from X-Men 2 (that opening scene is one of the best openers in years). Also I’d enjoy a Silver Surfer movie if they used Galactus and other characters germane to his story. 

Nightcrawler is going to factor into next year’s Apocalypse a lot, so that’ll be dope…seems like he’ll be a more fleshed out character than the earlier films too. I have some hope for Gambit because Channing Tatum seems really invested, and that’s the way these movies become successful (RDJ in Iron Man, Reynolds as Deadpool, Evans as Cap, etc). I have no doubt that if Fantastic 4 doesn’t do well, they’ll feature Silver Surfer in the sequel…though Galactus is going to be really difficult to pull off on screen.

If they could pull off the FX, I’d love to watch a She-Hulk show on Netflix. I think it’d have the right balance of fun courtroom drama and action, though I don’t know how they’d do it on a TV budget. I also think Black Widow deserves her own film franchise. That character gets more and more badass with each film, and there’s no reason why they couldn’t pull off something like the Mission Impossible franchise with her at the center. I’d buy all of the tickets to that movie.