Fantastic Four

 Reviews from the Dark Side presents
    Fantastic Four
Released 8/7/15

We've all heard the stories and seen at least some of the reviews.  Let's address the 800-pound gorilla in the room.  No preamble.  No pomp and circumstance.

Director Josh Trank's reboot of Marvel's First Family is...decidedly mediocre.  It definitely doesn't deserve praise.  But, it didn't come from the bowels of Hades either.  It doesn't carry a quarter of the excitement of even the lowest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  But we have seen superhero wretchedness greater than this.  It's no Batman and Robin, Blade: Trinity, Ghost Rider:  Spirit of Vengeance, any Christopher Reeve Superman movie after Superman II,  or even the previous FF movies.  For me it's more along the lines of X-Men: The Last Stand, Daredevil, or even Elektra.  Just kind of "meh."

Rumor has it that Trank told his main cast not to read any Fantastic Four material while this movie was filming.  Big mistake.  Not so much for the actors, but, for Trank himself.  Like Tim Story before him, he doesn't quite get all of what should make the FF tick.  In some aspects, he did get some things half right.  He didn't imply the Power Cosmic was only in the Silver Surfer's board and he's powerless if separated from it, at least ( I will NEVER forgive that).   Galactus wasn't a giant cloud (another cringeworthy moment).  So, he had that going for him.

The film follows 5th grade science prodigy, Reed Richards, in the beginning.  Reed is pretty much stuck in his own little scientific world.  His parents and teachers don't understand him.  Surprisingly, he finds an ally and friend in classmate, Ben Grimm, when Reed raids the Grimm family's junkyard to find parts for his latest project, a teleporter. 

Flash forward seven years later and we find 19-20 year old Reed (Miles Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) at a science fair demonstrating a working model of the teleporter. After a successful (and destructive) demonstration, Reed is offered a scholarship by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) to join the Baxter Institute, a think tank of brilliant young scientists.  At the Institute, he meets Storm's adopted daughter, Susan (Kate Mara), a mathematical genius whose specialty is finding patterns.  He also meets Storm's hotheaded, drag racing, rebellious son, Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), "who can build anything", and the arrogant Latverian super genius, Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell).  Of particular note, an instant "friendly" rivalry begins between Reed and Victor as it's revealed Victor came up with the concept of the teleporter even before Reed.  Reed, however, was the first to build a working model of the device.

Reed, Victor, Johnny, and Sue succeed in building a large scale teleporter that can transport living matter to a strange, and, as it turns out, hostile parallel world eventually dubbed "Planet Zero."  When the government steps in with a plan to use NASA astronauts as the first humans to travel to Planet Zero, Reed, Johnny, and Victor decide to hijack the transporter themselves and be the first humans to set foot on the new world.  Reed doesn't forget his old buddy, Ben, and convinces him to come along with the trio to make history.  Sue is left out as she would never go for such a stunt with her by-the-book nature.  The four would-be adventures make a successful jump in the transporter.  While exploring the new world, disaster strikes as a strange pool of green energy bombards them.  Doom is lost in the melee (or is he).  Reed, Johnny, and Ben are irradiated before their pods in the transporter send them back to Earth.  Residual energy caught within the device's sphere washes over Sue, as well, when the pods come back.  Thus, legends are born.

  So, let's talk about the good.  It was a good call to tweak the origin story away from the outer space/cosmic ray bombardment that is the canon of the FF.  That doesn't really work any longer.  Interdimensional travel to find new resources for Earth's benefit still maintains that sci-fi element which is a staple of this superteam while making it relevant for the current millennium. 

I said earlier that Trank gets the Reed/Doom dynamic half right.  The conflict between the two is based on an intellectual rivalry.  It was a nice touch to make each genius equally responsible for the creation of the teleporter.  Add to that Doom's unrelenting arrogance and you have the makings for a huge antagonistic conflict.  This was something the previous Tim Story movies didn't broach successfully.

Now, we come to the bad.  When I said the Reed/Doom dynamic was half right, that means it's also half wrong.  For some strange reason, the film introduces a half-baked love triangle (sort of) between Reed, Doom, and Sue to create more discord among the two super geniuses.  Even though this is breaking protocol with canon, it might not have been a bad twist had there been any chemistry between any of the three actors.  There was definitely none between Doom and Sue (plus it was pretty much one-sided on Doom's part).  The casual flirtation between Reed and Sue was laughable.  If a sequel to this movie is greenlit, are we supposed to believe in any way these two will become lovers and eventually be married?  And, Sue was kind of a cold fish anyway, so why would either of the guys bother?

Speaking of chemistry, there wasn't much on display between the entire cast.  With the exception of some interactions between Reed and Ben, the actors seemed to interact because the script said they should.  In the Avengers, there was more warmth amongst the team and they pretty much hated each other until the end!  Reed and Ben are friends yes.  But, it would have been nice to see a little more explanation as to why this was so.    The history of their bond is Ben catches Reed in the family junkyard, Reed shows Ben his prototype transporter, and Ben pretty much goes along for the ride.  Not a bad start mind you, but again, you're not even sure why they became such good friends in the first place after this initial interaction.  I know there's only a limited amount of time to tell the story, but a little more in this area would have gone a long way.

Let's talk a little bit about Miles Teller as Reed Richards.  I know actors can be versatile enough to change depending on the roles they're given.  And, to his credit, Teller tones down his usual smart-ass, obnoxious frat boy persona in FF for the most part.  But, I still didn't quite buy him as one of the most brilliant minds on the planet.  I tried.  I really did.  I wanted to.  It just didn't work for me.

And, please can we stop this one thing from happening if another attempt with the FF is made?  Can we not directly tie Doom's origin in with the other four?  It's been done twice now.  It doesn't work.  I'm not sure what's wrong with sticking with the original storyline.  Doom's power comes from his own scientific genius.  It's an origin story that can run parallel with our four heroes, but, it doesn't have to be forcibly tied to them.  Doom's mystical prowess has never been explored in these movies either.  Maybe if Marvel has anything to say about it in the future, that part of the character can be explored.  The line between science and magic can be a blurry one.  Can you imagine the possibilities of tying Doom in to Dr. Strange or maybe even Thor at some point?

While this is an origin story, you expect the action to be toned down a bit in favor of a lot of set up.  At a running time of about 100 minutes, more than 60 is devoted to the set up.  This may be forgivable if the payoff was an eye opening smackdown to end the movie.  The final fight between the newly formed FF and mega-powered Doom is not only short, it's lackluster at best.  Number one, Doom, who earlier in the film is believed to have died on Planet Zero, is found to still be alive.  His ultimate goal is to suck the Earth into the Planet Zero dimension through a black hole.  That's fine.  It's what bad guys do.  What doesn't make sense is why he goes back to Earth in the first place to kill people and place everyone, including the FF on red alert, when all he's going to do is kill everyone anyway.  Why not just pull Earth into the new dimension so no one knows what's happening?  It's pretty much silly James Bond villain-type logic coming from one of the smartest people in any reality.  And, the final resolution to the battle is just as head-scratchingly bad as the one in Rise of the Silver Surfer.  One where you're not quite sure what the Hell happened before everyone stops throwing punches.

Then there's the special effects.  You know, in this day and age of CGI and Industrial Light and Magic, it's inexcusable for this aspect of any genre of movie that relies heavily on these items to be this cheesy awful unless it's intentionally done so for a laugh.  The Human Torch's effects fluctuate from being kind of cool to being as horrible as a '70s cartoon.  And the Thing?  Does it say something that I long for the days of Michael Chiklis's pudgy orange rock suit?  The Thing just looks awkward and laughable.  And are they implying that Ben Grimm's swinging bachelor days are over?  He always at least wore underpants.  Here, he's naked sans genitalia.  So tell me what's he supposed to do when Alicia Masters comes along?  The worst thing?  He doesn't seem to notice.  Now, maybe this is just the product of the film being PG-13, but, again, there's another 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone in the film is ignoring. 

As far as the superhero genre is concerned, you can do worse than this rendition of Fantastic Four.  You can do a lot better, too.  For all its flaws, it is getting a bit of an unfair rap critically.  That's not to say the movie is worth more than a Red Box or Netflix viewing.  The bottom line is after three attempts (four if you count the Roger Corman effort that was never supposed to see the light of day), 20th Century Fox has proven they have no clue how to make Marvel's First Family relevant or, at the very least, entertaining.  The time has come for Fox to either give the property back to Marvel Studios or to come to an agreement with them as Sony has done with Spider-Man.  I know many say the FF just doesn't translate well to the big screen and is just out of touch with today's audience.  I refuse to believe that.  If Marvel gets their hands back on the property, how can you say the magic can't be captured?  Look at what Marvel Studios did with a group of D-List characters last year in Guardians of the Galaxy.  Look at what was done this year with Ant-Man.  Did everyone hear that?  Ant-Man!  Look at what was done with Daredevil.  You go from the mediocre Ben Affleck effort to one the most talked about and highly regarded episodic series' on TV/Netflix.  There are just too many examples of what can be done when a story is placed in the right hands to write these characters off completely.  All it takes is the right combination of writers, director, and cast.  It may not be easy, but, it can be done.  Here's hoping the cold war between Fox and Disney comes to an end.

I wish I had a rating between two and half and two and three quarters, but...

The Dark Lord of the Sith says:

**1/2 stars


Ratings Legend
Zero *= Don't waste your time. Pure dreck! Dreck is too good for this! Blind me please!
1 *= Fuggedaboutit!
2 *= Average, Mediocre, Nothing Special
3 *= Worth a look.  Better than a poke in the eye.
4 *= Great. I'm doing my happy dance!
5 *= Pure eye candy. I have seen the top of the mountain, and it is good