Fantastic Four (2015) 20th Century Fox/Action-Adventure-Sci-Fi RT: 100 minutes Rated PG-13 (sci-fi action violence, language) Director: Josh Trank Screenplay: Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater and Josh Trank Music: Marco Beltrami and Philip Glass Cinematography: Matthew Jensen Release date: August 7, 2015 (US) Cast: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson, Dan Castellaneta, Tim Heidecker. Box Office: $56.1M (US)/$167.9M (World)
Rating: *
As evidenced by Fantastic Four, the “Three Strikes Law” should be applied to movies as well as habitual criminals. It’s the third attempt to bring the super-foursome to the big screen and, for the third time, it fails.
While I liked the 2005 version and its sequel, not everybody shares my fondness. They weren’t exactly blockbusters which is why Hollywood thought it necessary to reboot the franchise. This would be fine if it resulted in a good movie, but it doesn’t. It might have been decent if Marvel had been more involved, but Fox actually owns the screen rights to the Fantastic Four (in addition to X-Men), a point so contentious that Marvel recently cancelled the comic book series in order to hurt the movie. Don’t wait for Marvel creator Stan Lee to make his customary appearance here either, he never shows up. Who can blame him? If I was him, I’d want to keep my distance from this stinker too.
There are many problems with this Fantastic Four, but I think the biggest is that it’s no fun. It’s one thing for a superhero movie to be dark (e.g. The Dark Knight, X-Men: Days of Future Passed); it’s quite another for a superhero movie to be completely devoid of levity and humor. Even at a comparatively brief 100 minutes, Fantastic Four is incredibly dull. That it essentially has no plot only hinders the project more.
Reed Richards (Teller, Whiplash), along with childhood best bud Ben Grimm (Bell, Snowpiercer), finally achieves his lifelong dream of creating a device that teleports matter to an alternate universe. While it gets him disqualified from the high school science fair, it also earns him the recognition of Franklin Storm (Cathey, House of Cards) who recruits him to join other young geniuses at the Baxter Foundation where he’s tasked with completing a “Quantum Gate” (an entrance to alt-universe “Planet Zero”) started by prodigal Baxter protégé Victor von Doom (Kebbell, The East). Doom is brought back into the fold to help Reed.
Also on Team Reed are Sue Storm (Mara, House of Cards) and her brother Johnny (Jordan, Fruitvale Station). They finish the project, but get denied the chance to be the first to explore the now-accessible alt-universe. The four guys decide to travel there on their own and that’s when the you-know-what hits the fan. Doom is seemingly killed while attempting to collect samples; the others return alive but with altered molecular structures. It also affects Sue who was helping them via computer.
Is there anybody out there that doesn’t know that, as a result of exposure to Planet Zero, Reed has an elastic-like body, Sue can turn invisible and create force fields, Johnny can turn into a flying, flaming torch and Ben becomes this rock-like behemoth with superhuman strength? For the purposes of this Fantastic Four, one need only know what powers the characters gain as they’re never referred to by their superhero names.
This Fantastic Four is long on origin and short on action. It takes nearly an hour for the characters to gain their powers, after which they’re confined to a secret isolated facility so the government can use them as weapons of mass destruction. They don’t actually do anything until a team of astronauts bring Doom- he, too, a changed man- back from his year-long exile on Planet Zero. Their battle with their first foe takes all of 10 minutes. Talk about anticlimactic!
Where to start, where to start? I’ve already addressed the near-total absence of a plot, so why don’t I start with the near-total lack of action. The 2005 version had this great sequence on the Brooklyn Bridge about midway through. All we get from this version is the fight scene at the end. Big deal. The visuals are drab and murky. It’s kind of an ugly movie. The effects are far from special. It has too dark a tone and surprisingly graphic violence for a PG-13 movie. It’s very slow-moving and heavy on techno-jargon.
The characters are poorly developed. The writers provide very little in this area with their individual powers being their sole defining trait. Ben Grimm is handled especially badly. He never strikes me a tough guy pre-transformation. The acting is terrible. There’s zero chemistry going on in Fantastic Four. Although there is real talent involved (e.g. Teller, Mara, Jordan and Cathey), you wouldn’t know it judging by their lackluster performances in this dud. They seem bored. Not one of the actors looks like they’re having fun. Kebbell looks more like a coffee shop hipster than a megalomaniacal villain. They might as well have cast Josh Groban in the role. Bell is simply awful. He reacts to his transformation like one would react to a bad haircut.
The narrative is a mess. While one may tempted to blame it all on director Josh Trank (Chronicle), that’s the one thing he’s not entirely responsible for. It appears that the studio cut Fantastic Four prior to its release with his approval. Half the scenes in the trailers aren’t even in the movie. This is a misfire from start to finish. It ranks slightly above the 1994 version (at least that one was campy), but far below the ones from last decade. According to Wikipedia, a sequel is planned, but I think it’s safe to say that audiences won’t be clamoring for a second serving of this superhero sludge.
