So far, Tim Story has made a career out of directing, fun, fluffy, lighthearted popcorn movies. His Fantastic Four movie takes a lot of flack, but I and millions of others enjoyed it. For me, it’s just a nice departure from the other modern superhero franchises like Batman or X-Men, which go out of their way to take themselves over-seriously. Fantastic Four stands for none of that, instead it’s fun and gleefully silly. It gets back to what superhero movies used to be, people with cool powers doing cool stuff. If that were the only thing out there I’m sure I’d be sick of it, but as an alternative to the other movies we’ve been getting, Story does superhero popcorn movie really well.
So it’s strange to see that for his followup to the upcoming second FF movie Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, he’s adapting a gritty DC comic called The Losers. Tim Story is so far from gritty it’s hard to imagine him even attempting something like that, but Variety says it’s a lock.
The original DC/Vertigo comic followed is about a team of special forces soldiers in WWII. Betrayed by their own government, they declare war on the CIA after their Agency handler tries to assassinate them. Story is taking it out of WWII and setting it in modern times. The concept should port over pretty well. Contemporizing it makes The Losers sound sort of like a team version of the Bourne movies. Or it could end up like ‘The A-Team’.
Actually, with Story doing it ‘The A-Team’ seems the more likely scenario. I just can’t see Story doing a heavy war movie or for that matter anything more dark and serious than a backyard barbecue. His two biggest hits have been Fantastic Four and Barbershop, a far cry from The Losers.
