REVIEW: Fantastic Four
Well, here we are with yet another adaptation of Marvel’s First Family the Fantastic Four. Considering Marvel’s later success stories involved an irreverent film featuring a talking tree and raccoon as well as a decent adaptation of a hero known as “Ant-Man,” it’s certainly possible for this movie to be good. Possible, but unfortunately it doesn’t work out like that. Fantastic Four, point blank, isn’t good.
The plot’s simple enough. Young prodigy Reed Richards with the help of his childhood friend Ben Grimm constructs a model teleportation device which catches the eye of Dr. Franklin Storm. Dr. Storm is interested in Reed’s help in developing a connection to an alternate dimension known here as “Planet Zero” with the help of his hotheaded technician son Johnny, his adopted scientist daughter Sue, and his former partner Victor Von Doom (yes, they kept the name).
After getting a little too drunk, the men take to the gate themselves and transport to the alternate world where they are doused with unknown substances in the form of green lava and rocks. Victor’s left for dead while Sue brings the guys back and becomes exposed herself. The four then begin to mutate and develop new powers as expected from a superhero film. However, when the government intervenes, Reed escapes and acts against the system in order to try and find a cure for the mutations. From that point, the other three are left with the military for a year.
That’s right, for a story that’s supposed to focus on a team, the group is separated for a year before finally being thrown together at the last minute. Even the Avengers spend more time together as a group than the Fantastic Four in this movie. There are a lot of things wrong with this film, but that one’s probably the worst crime of all. The Fantastic Four have enough substantial problems as a story with the four of them together, but, after separating them, they’re almost impossible to really support. They’re just…there.
I suppose it would be easier to list the things, if any, that I liked, but it’s all just feels like one big pile of stuff. I liked the final fight, but it feels like an afterthought compared to the long, dull setup, much like the use of “it’s clobberin’ time.” I liked the introduction of the Negative Zone in an effort to distinguish itself from the previous films, but if it leads to us waiting over a half-hour until superpowers kick in, then I don’t care. Anything even remotely good gets smothered in some other half-hearted idea that could have worked but didn’t.
Maybe it could have worked if the movie was longer than 100 minutes. Even Ant-Man was longer and that film was skirting across the origin story line. These are four characters they needed to introduce to us, give them a plot, and make us care, but, in the end, none of that happens. Instead, the story just does things and expects people to follow, even when the characters do incredibly stupid things.
They get their powers after doing something incredibly stupid while being drunk. The heroes actually go work for the government. They trusted a guy with social issues who was fine with watching the world burn. You know why they don’t normally do these things in good superhero films? This is why: because they are terrible. I’m not feeling the characters, and the plot decides to take it five steps back. It would be one thing if they were average folks, but most of them are supposed to be smart.
Not only is this whole thing incredibly frustrating and awful, it’s also incredibly disappointing. The Fantastic Four is difficult enough without the entire story making it worse for both the characters and the actors. Everything has stepped up in the superhero world since the last Fantastic Four movie, but this movie ignores all of it. The actors are young and skilled, but they have nothing to work with here. They’ve gotten to a point where the Thing can be computer-generated, but everything else just looks bland, even the alternate dimension.
Actually, bland’s the wrong word for it. Bland implies just an even pattern of nothing happening. While that’s true, it’s worse than that. The movie’s too confusing in its tone to just be bland. This is a movie that wants to scientifically explain things like another dimension, but still want to acknowledge superhero codenames like “The Thing” or “The Human Torch.” This is also a movie that tries to go dark in their mutations (something that could have been interesting) but then quickly moves into the saving-the-world plot. There are barely smiles, yet they expect us to laugh at the few minimum jokes.
When it comes down to it, there’s nothing fun in it. The final fight has its action, but the whole movie takes away any meaning in having superpowers. The color’s gone, the team name’s gone, about the only thing from the comics are the characters’ names and abilities. I thought we had moved to a point where the audience could accept anything that happens in a superhero movie so long as it’s good, but this movie had no faith in the comics. It’s one thing to ignore the poorer choices from the stories, but it’s another to try and ignore them down to the lack of a Stan Lee cameo. If you use the Marvel logo, you should be prepared to go full Marvel.
I can’t tell whether or not it would be better with a sequel, although given that they killed off Dr. Storm, Harvey Elder, and Doctor Doom, I can’t really picture what that sequel would be. I also can’t tell if it’s better or worse than the 2005 movie either although they both have their lousy qualities. All I can say is that this movie could have been better, and it certainly doesn’t compare to the other Marvel films of this time or even this year. Maybe they could try again in another eight years.
