Fant4stic

It’s only been eight years since we last saw the Fantastic Four on screen. 2005’s attempt to spark the franchise and 2007’s sequel were ambitious, and cheesy in the way that Marvel superhero movies tend to be, but they were perhaps a bit ahead of their time effects-wise, and a bit too niche for the mainstream audiences. Well, audience tastes have become a bit more refined and a bit less fickle in the last ten years, and now anything superhero is palatable (See Ant-Man).

The film starts with the unlikely friendship between brilliant Reed Richards (Miles Teller) and the enforcer best friend, Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell). Their bond grows through high school, where they are recruited to work for a think tank because of their creation of a teleporting device that happens to go to a resource-rich planet in another dimension. Whew. Almost ran out of breath. Sue Storm (Kate Mara) works there too as a pattern recognition specialist, and Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) is brought in to weld to pay off his car. I know, right? Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey, whose voice puts James Earl Jones’ to shame) is running the think tank, so there’s absolutely no nepotism there. They bring in the genius but volatile Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbel) to assist, because there’s literally nobody else in the world who can complete this project except for Reed and Victor. They successfully make a machine, things go wrong in the other dimension, they get their superpowers, and then they fight the bad guy who really has no valid reason for being evil in the first place. The end.

This rendition of the F4 gives us a slightly different origins story, but still wastes more than the first hour showing us how they gained their superpowers. It was déjà vu all over again like I was watching another Spider Man or Batman. They spend way too much time on character development for five individuals who make up the core group. You just can’t waste that much screen time with an ensemble cast. We get it. Reed is a nerd genius. Johnny is a reckless hot-head, and his adopted sister, Sue is a computer whiz who is just as good as the guys. Ben is the strong, loyal friend, and Victor is the cynical megalomaniac. We don’t need over an hour to figure that out without any action.

The cast looks great on paper. Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell. All young, fantastic actors in their own right, but all tend to make some questionable choices in roles more often than they should. This is the type of film that might have seemed like a good idea, and probably earned a decent paycheck, but ultimately I think everyone knew it would bomb. What I’m trying to say is that all four lead actors were given a terrible script to make a lowball superhero remake way too soon. The bar was just set too low, and opening just a few weeks after Ant-Man seems like a head-scratcher to me, unless Marvel was trying to catch the tail end of the box office frenzy.

Director Josh Trank (Chronicle) does his best with the source material, but even the effects aren’t particularly impressive, which in 2015 is unacceptable for a film of this pedigree. Marvel should have shelved this one for a few years, minimum. It might make a little money, but it’s not worth the hit to the reputation in my opinion. Marvel has the right idea moving into the Netflix streaming series genre. They have some coming out in the next year or two that just might be worth watching. Stay tuned.

Writer Simon Kinberg takes the brunt of my frustrations with this film, although he had some help ruining it. Just because it’s a superhero movie doesn’t mean you get to cut corners. Obvious gaps in believability are irresponsible, even with some bending of the rules implicit in the genre, and there needs to be a bit more in terms of character flaw exposure, peril, and climax.

This is one Marvel film that you can absolutely skip. I give Fantastic 4 a generous 4/10.