"Fantastic Four" Review

Title: Fantastic Four

Directed by: Josh Trank

Screenplay by: Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg, Josh Trank

Year: 2015


This adaptation of the classic Marvel comic book series is the fourth Fantastic Four movie. The first one came out in the early nineties and was never released in theatres. The next one came out in 2005 and was followed by a sequel in 2007. All three of these films were critically panned. Does this film coin the term "fourth times the charm," or does it follow in the footsteps of its predecessors?

Reed Richards (Miles Teller) is a brilliant scientist who cracked inter-dimensional travel when he was only a child. Given a facility to work in and a team that consists of Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), Susan Storm (Kate Mara), and Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell). They decide to travel to the other dimension, along with Reed Richard's best friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell). While there, some energy goes unstable, and when they return to Earth, they find they now have special powers.

It is safe to say that the Fantastic Four have had a very bumpy road with their film career. Sadly, this latest reboot does not stray from the path. Fantastic Four is a colossal mess and an incredible disappointment. For the past year, we have been hearing of complications on set and of reshoots and such. This explains much of what went wrong with the film, but not all of it.

The cast is actually a talented one. We have Miles Teller playing Reed Richards, a scientific genius and eventually Mr. Fantastic. Teller does his best with the role and shows more emotion than anyone else in the film (which isn't saying much really) but around the third act of the movie, he seems to lose interest. His delivery becomes stale and boring during the climax. Kate Mara looks the part and is convincing in her role as Sue, but she is a very one-note character. If Teller gives the most emotion of the film, then Michael B Jordan gives the most attitude. He plays Johnny Storm, Susan's younger brother. At first, he is rather a likable character, but that quickly changes once he gets his flame powers. After this, he becomes a very annoying person and as one-note as his sister. Jamie Bell does not get anything to do as Ben Grimm. He only ever has one facial expression and he barely gets a line. When he becomes The Thing however, things improve. But I'll get into that later.

Reg E. Cathy plays Dr. Franklin Storm and he is fine in the role. He doesn't do anything spectacular, but he is more interesting than some of our main characters. And finally, we have Toby Kebbell as Victor Von Doom, or Doctor Doom. This seems like a good casting choice, and it is at first. Kebbell makes Victor one of the more engaging characters of the film but once he becomes Doctor Doom, things go downhill pretty quickly. More on that later.

This film fails on many levels, but one of the biggest ones is the story. The plot of this film doesn't really go anywhere until the last 30 minutes. Until that point, they are telling a story that everyone knows by now. Aside from a change in tone and the age of the characters, there isn't anything new. Everyone knows the origin story by now; scientists make a journey, get hit by cosmic rays, return with superpowers. Very simple. So why does this film take forever to reach this point? It isn't until about the halfway point that these characters receive their abilities. This wouldn't be a problem if the previous 45 minutes focused on developing good and intriguing characters, but they don't. And for a superhero origin story, one of the key elements is to see these characters learn to control their new powers. But what does Fantastic Four do? Fast forwards one year. This is a huge mistake as most of the appeal of an origin story is to see people learn to control their new abilities. It effectively removes one of the key components of an origin story.

In terms of its concept, I like what the movie was going for. It took a grittier tone and darker atmosphere. The Fantastic Four are known for their fun nature, and it would be nice to see them get an excellent and fun movie one day, but gritty and dark comic book films and shows have worked before. Just look at The Dark Knight and the new Netflix series Daredevil. Both are dark and gritty realizations of comic properties and they are phenomenal. But Fantastic Four does nothing with this new direction, save for one thing. The way The Thing is portrayed I feel is very well done. They turn him into a more tragic tale. He is not the joking hard headed character from the previous films. He is sad and brooding over the fact that he is no longer human. I think this was executed very well and needed more screen time.

For some reason, every Fantastic Four film, with the exception of the 2007 sequel obviously, feels the need to make Doctor Doom the first villain. I feel this is more of a studio choice than a director's. Nevertheless, Toby Kebbell plays the iconic villain and he does a good job when he is Victor. But when he transforms into Doctor Doom, things get bad, laughably bad. Doom's appearance is a joke, with horrible effects and a downright awful design. The dialogue he speaks is even worse. And he has zero motivation. There is no reason for him to do what he is doing. Doom is never a convincing threat and a waste of a potentially great villain.

The visual effects are here and there. Sometimes they are pretty good. The Human Torch looks great and I love the design of The Thing. But the rest of the effects are dodgy at best. Reed's stretching abilities are okay at most, but are often very bad. The worst effect is when Reed warps his face to appear as someone else. When he changes his face back to his own, it looks horrible. It also doesn't help that the film spends most of its runtime in only two locations: a government facility/research lab and the other dimension, which is a wasteland. As a result, the movie becomes very jaded to the eye and the color scheme hardly lends itself to any variety.

It is also very hard to believe that Reed and Ben are best friends. Aside from the fact that the movie consistently reminds the audience that these two are best friends, there is no indication that they are even close to each other. I never bought the fact that Ben helped Reed design the first teleporter because he never did anything to help, at least, the movie never shows it. He just feels like a tacked on character that is only in the film to be the fourth member of the team. This should not happen in a Fantastic Four film. The team is known for being more than just a team, they are known for being a family. But this film never gets that point across.

In addition, the action is very sloppy. Nothing is exciting, nothing is tense, nothing is enjoyable about it. As a climax, it fails because the scientists' first journey to the different dimension was infinitely more interesting and thrilling than the final battle. The effects are also quite muddled at times and Doom, who clearly has the power to kill any of the team members with a single stare, never resorts to doing so. A few moments ago he killed a number of people by making their heads explode. Why didn't he just do that here? Doom's plan is to suck Earth into a black hole. The issue is, there is no tension because we only ever see cars and trees being sucked up. Never do we see human lives at stake. Therefore, we do not care what is happening on screen.

Marvel's first team just doesn't have good luck when it comes to film adaptations. Fantastic Four is an amazingly horrendous film, with only a few glimpses of positivity. A few character moments stick out as genuinely good, like when Reed takes a picture of himself next to the model for the machine. We instantly know that he is proud of his work and it is done effectively. But moments like these are not enough to redeem this movie's absurdly bad quality. Though this is a terrific cast, they cannot do anything with the horrible script they are given. The editing is poor, the action is anything but exciting, and the characters are blank slates most of the time. The film spends most of its time spewing lines of exposition that ultimately don't lead up to anything. I know Fox is capable of making a great Fantastic Four film. Just look at how well the X-Men franchise is doing. But if they are not up to the task, then I think it is time for them to return the characters to Marvel Studios. But until then, the Fantastic Four remains a disastrous film franchise.

Grade: D-