{"id":12592,"date":"2025-07-22T22:45:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T02:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=12592"},"modified":"2025-07-22T22:45:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T02:45:35","slug":"fantastic-four-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/07\/22\/fantastic-four-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantastic Four (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Fantastic Four<\/strong> (2015)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century Fox\/Action-Adventure-Sci-Fi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 100 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (sci-fi action violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Josh Trank\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater and Josh Trank\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Marco Beltrami and Philip Glass\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Matthew Jensen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 7, 2015 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson, Dan Castellaneta, Tim Heidecker.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $56.1M (US)\/$167.9M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0As evidenced by Fantastic Four<\/strong>, the \u201cThree Strikes Law\u201d should be applied to movies as well as habitual criminals. It\u2019s the third attempt to bring the super-foursome to the big screen and, for the third time, it fails.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While I liked the 2005 version and its sequel, not everybody shares my fondness. They weren\u2019t 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\u2019t. 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\u2019t 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\u2019d want to keep my distance from this stinker too.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are many problems with this Fantastic Four<\/strong>, but I think the biggest is that it\u2019s no fun. It\u2019s one thing for a superhero movie to be dark (e.g. The Dark Knight, X-Men: Days of Future Passed); it\u2019s quite another for a superhero movie to be completely devoid of levity and humor. Even at a comparatively brief 100 minutes, Fantastic Four<\/strong> is incredibly dull. That it essentially has no plot only hinders the project more.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Reed 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\u2019s tasked with completing a \u201cQuantum Gate\u201d (an entrance to alt-universe \u201cPlanet Zero\u201d) started by prodigal Baxter prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Victor von Doom (Kebbell, The East). Doom is brought back into the fold to help Reed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Also 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Is there anybody out there that doesn\u2019t 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<\/strong>, one need only know what powers the characters gain as they\u2019re never referred to by their superhero names.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This Fantastic Four<\/strong> is long on origin and short on action. It takes nearly an hour for the characters to gain their powers, after which they\u2019re confined to a secret isolated facility so the government can use them as weapons of mass destruction. They don\u2019t actually do<\/em> 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!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Where to start, where to start? I\u2019ve already addressed the near-total absence of a plot, so why don\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s very slow-moving and heavy on techno-jargon.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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\u2019s zero chemistry going on in Fantastic Four<\/strong>. Although there is real talent involved (e.g. Teller, Mara, Jordan and Cathey), you wouldn\u2019t know it judging by their lackluster performances in this dud. They seem bored. Not one of the actors looks like they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The narrative is a mess. While one may tempted to blame it all on director Josh Trank (Chronicle), that\u2019s the one thing he\u2019s not entirely responsible for. It appears that the studio cut Fantastic Four <\/strong>prior to its release with his approval. Half the scenes in the trailers aren\u2019t 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\u2019s safe to say that audiences won\u2019t be clamoring for a second serving of this superhero sludge.\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fantastic Four (2015)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century Fox\/Action-Adventure-Sci-Fi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 100 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (sci-fi action violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Josh Trank\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater and Josh Trank\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Marco Beltrami and Philip Glass\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Matthew Jensen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 7, 2015 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Fantastic-Four-2015-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12592"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12620,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12592\/revisions\/12620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}