About the writer for the Fantastic Four Movies

I think that they are hiring the same writer (which is what counts the most for movie quality) for Fantastic Four 2 as for the first movie. Zak Penn. (That sounds like a name the studio made up to hide a stable of hack writers!)

Here is Zak Penn's track record on IMDB.com and my opinion of it.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006): Only fair. Enjoyable due to the performances and the special effects, but the story did not feel as good as X-Men 1 and 2.

Fantastic Four (2005): Sucks and blows, he dissed Doctor Doom for no good reason whatsoever (making him an American yuppie was not an improvement), and what's with the 20-foot-high Jiffy-Pop lid?

Elektra (2005): Sucks, sucks, and a cute little girl to rescue does not add heart if the story sucks. Read the damn comic book, and take out the dumb CGI ninjas (bleh)! Electra is the world's most feared assassin who would make Hitler, Stalin, and bin Ladin wet their pants if they knew she was on their trail; she's not a CGI slicer. Saw it on Cousin Ben's TiVo, so I did not pay any $$$, and I still feel ripped off.

X2 (2003): X-Men 2. Pretty decent story. But he had help with this script. Maybe he only added a little suck.

Inspector Gadget (1999): Crummy. Dumbed down for little kids, with about 20 seconds of almost PG-13, half-assed, cutesy adult jokes, but no adult brains. Watched most of it on the Disney Channel. I said that considering the source cartoon, they had nowhere to go but up. Looks like they are afraid of heights.

Last Action Hero (1993): I liked it better than the critics. But without Arnold, it would have been lots worse.

Suspect Zero, Incident at Loch Ness, Behind Enemy Lines, PCU: did not see them. I am not rushing to Blockbuster.

My verdict is that FF 2, if this guy heads the script, will BLACK HOLE SUCK.