Mark Beall's Geek Beat: Ten Things I Learned From The Fantastic Four

For regular readers, it is no big secret yours truly adores The Fantastic Four. The comic book, mind you -- although I do secretly enjoy the movie far more than I have any right to. While the first flick was something of a disappointment, I continue to hold out absurd and probably entirely ungrounded hopes for the second film. After all, Doug Jones is in it, which alone should raise the standards of the movie considerably. For a while there, we were getting hit from all sides with new Fantastic Four movie information -- plots, casting, etc., but recently it has quieted down to nothing more than a parade of set pictures. And so in an effort to fill the Fantastic Four void I decided to jot down some things I'd learned from the original film in what may become the first of a sequence of "things I learned from comic book movies" installments of the Geek Beat.

Keep in mind, this is based solely on the movie version of the Fantastic Four, and not the World's Greatest Comic Magazine. Some of the principles would hold true for the comics as well; some would not.

The Geek Beat Presents: Ten Things I Learned From The Fantastic Four ...

1. If you are ugly, the only chance you have at love is to find a blind person. Because, you know, blind people don't care about kissing brick or being crushed to death while making love. Okay, so the second statement is only applicable if you are The Thing. Nonetheless, people with sight are shallow, people without it truly understand humanity.
2. Always be a team player. If you run around at night in a weird costume climbing buildings and such, the media and the general public will find you a highly suspicious character. If you get two or three other people dressed in the same weird costume to run around with you, you will be beloved by millions.
3. Pay attention in science class. Not only can basic scientific principles be used as a way to torment your nemesis or defeat a super villain, they can also be used as zinging one-liners in the heat of a major battle. See, kids? Science can be fun! For your next science fair, why not freeze an elastic man?
4. Do not be afraid of radioactive or cosmic waves. They do not result in horrible diseases or face melting, they instead grant you super-humanity. Want to be a superhero? No sweat, just find out when the next major atomic testing will occur, and ask for a front row seat. Really, ask the people at TMI or Chernobyl, it works GREAT.
5. It is important to make good friends. You never know when you are going to need somebody to create an enormous electric machine to turn you back into your original human form, free you from the clutches of an evil villain, or pilot your spaceship into the great unknown. Those good-for-nothings you hang out with aren't going to take care of those things for you, are they? You need better, smarter friends.
6. As grandma advised, always wear clean underwear. You never know when you're going to have to turn invisible and leave your undies out on the street in front of dozens of people.
7. If forced to choose between a good-looking suitor with intelligence, ambition and self-confidence (and lots of money) who lavishes attention on you, and a panty-waist genius who tends to ignore you in favor of gadgetry, go with the latter, because the former is obviously plotting something maniacal.
8. If forced to choose between a good looking suitor and gadgetry, go with gadgetry. The suitor will come back when they realize you're the best they can do. Besides, that gadgetry will come in handy when your best friend needs you to build him a machine which can restore him to human form. Could your suitor do that? No.
9. Play with fire, because it is really cool. Lots of fire. Unless, of course, people who dislike you happen to have access to heat-seeking missiles. In that case, you've made way too high-class a level of enemy.
10. Don't sweat the big stuff. You may be the type of person who double, triple and quadruple checks every last decimal point in every math problem you ever do, but when it comes to enormous projects of the utmost importance -- say, killing a man bent on world domination -- you really don't need to bother making sure you got it correct. There's no way it will ever come back to haunt you.

You and I both know there are some great lessons missing from this list. We also both know you have the potential to be far more clever than I, so why don't you add your own lesson(s) to my own? Together, we can create a mega-list of helpful pointers from the Fantastic Four movie.