THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
When you see a bad movie, you would think nothing could top such poor quality until you see something that’s either worse equally bad. In 2015, 20th Century (Fox) Studios made something that was just the worst thing they could do yet that is remaking Fantastic Four.
PLOT
The film gives a retelling on how the iconic superhero team. Reed Richards and Ben Grimm were childhood friends due to the idea on wanting to make a teleporter that can travel to other dimensions. As young adults, this gets the attention of Professor Franklin Storm, director of the Baxter Foundation, who hires Richards to make a more stable version as he has gotten similar results to get rocks from another dimension. Richards gets the assist of Franklin’s children Susan & Johnny to help, as well as his wayward protege Victor Von Doom to complete the most efficient ‘Quantum Gate’. Johnny is involved as an engineer while Sue focuses on manufacturing environmental suits for the other side. Victor only gets involved due to desiring to enter another dimension and still having a crush over Sue, which only makes him jealous whenever she interacts with Reed. Their experiment becomes a success when sending a chimp to the other side & back unharmed, and get video images to prove its existence. However, their supervisor Dr. Harvey Allen prefers sending NASA astronauts to be the first group of humans to step foot on ‘Planet Zero’. Too proud of what they’ve done, Reed convinces Ben to join him alongside Victor & Johnny to have an unsanctioned voyage to the other dimension. Sue has no idea of their actions until they’ve already done so and when she brings them back, Victor falls into lava like substance he interacts with and gets left behind by the other three. But in the process of their return, the Gate explodes and the four have their bodies genetically altered: Reed’s body becomes elastic, Sue becomes invisible & can generate force fields, Johnny can engulf his body on fire and Ben becomes a giant rock-like figure that grants him strength & durability. Reed escapes in shame of being responsible for this outcome, motivated to find a cure for them all while they are in government custody to be studied. A year after this, Reed is a fugitive seeking refuge in Central America who ends up getting captured by the US military who have since used the other three as assets; They’ve all been using specialized suits to control their powers. When brought to Area 57, Allen offers to give Reed the needed resources to build a cure in exchange of rebuilding the Quantum Gate. Once he does, Allen sends explorers and ultimately find Victor alive but now fused with his spacesuit & has gained telekinetic abilities. Within the year since being left behind, he believes the human race should be completely destroyed and wants to rebuild Planet Zero to his liking. When he chooses to go back to begin his plan, he kills multiple people in the process that include Allen and Franklin. Reed, Sue, Johnny & Ben follow him and are able to defeat him by punching into the energy beam which disintegrates him. Afterwards, the four protagonists are rewarded by the US military for their heroics, a base of operations for them to study their powers without government interference. The film ends with the group deciding to use their powers to help people and officially adopt their titular mantle.
THOUGHTS
When Josh Trank previously directed a well crafted sci fi film out of Chronicle, I couldn’t help but have high expectations on how this would turn out. I basically set myself up walking into failure because the bar is too high when it comes to quality of superhero films, especially with how stronger of a trend the MCU made them by the second half of the 2010s. It’s not like I wanted this film to have the same formula from those movies, I just wanted it all to make sense but it’s all over the place to do so. It is extremely distant from the source material compared to the 2000s adaptations and it riles me up because the original ideas by co-writers Simon Kinberg & Jeremy Slater don’t match the vision Stan Lee & Jack Kirby left behind. The visual effects are admittedly good when the powers are in effect from the likes of seeing Johnny on fire, Sue putting her force fields to good use and the Thing in all his gigantic glory. What I don’t like for starters are the costumes because I don’t like the idea of how they need the suits to control their powers. Just because they’re hard to learn doesn’t mean a suit they can’t take off will solve everything. What I can agree with everyone on the worst aspect of this movie was the depiction of Doctor Doom. I was hopeful things would get creative with Toby Kebbell performing as one who is deemed by fans as one of Marvel’s most iconic villains. Instead, the set up is a fucking disaster. You make him a character left for dead that motivates him to destroy the world? Way too easy of a motive. His design isn’t even frightening when it could’ve been and his powers honestly don’t look impressive compared to what I’ve seen in the pages. The second he was found, I just knew the movie was about to wrap up which saved me from a headache. The rest of the cast is a problem because I don’t think they have any kind of chemistry. Miles Teller & Kate Mara are a terrible mismatch as Reed & Sue because the way they’re polar opposites is so cringe; the former trying to be outgoing while the latter is anti-social. She’s such a buzzkill when she denies having powers only to say the definition of them right after and ruins music by calling them out for being patterns. I actually respect Teller trying to maintain the aspect on how Reed’s the most passionate of science and doesn’t care about financial glory compared to others. And that humble mentality is what drives him to look out for his friends and lead them to multiple layers of success. Michael B Jordan was honestly annoying as Johnny because he came off way too arrogant when needed to be, even when just befriending Reed. And his delivery of ‘Flame on’ because he doesn’t even sound excited about it. All of this makes him a goddamn brat and he is supposed to be far from it. I’m even so conflicted on how to feel with Jamie Bell as Ben. Because he doesn’t feel tough, I don’t think he can act tough here which is so weird to say when he’s done action before and felt tough then. He doesn’t come off gruff which is exactly what Michael Chiklis nailed the first time around and I felt like if Bell was given more time to create that feeling, it could’ve been better. I don’t even like how “It’s clobbering time” originates from his abusive brother because I felt uncomfortable on how he turned trauma into strength by the time he says it to Doom. No catchphrase needs such a backstory. Tim Blake Nelson was way too simple for me in making Allen a stingy guy who made empty promises, so I didn’t care too much about him whenever he was onscreen. Ironically, the only one I actually built an interest in was Reg E Cathey as Franklin. You felt all the compassion he had in the wanting his children to be the best versions of ourselves, as well as protecting them from being taken advantage of and had sincere intentions with Planet Zero compared to Allen. So when he died, that was indeed a bummer. With not every character being investing like they should and a plot feeling so convoluted, there’s more than a handful of bullshit that didn’t make sense to me. From the very top, how the fuck do both Reed & Ben forget about bringing a toy car when they spent 7 years working on the transporter and know they need a test subject to prove it works. It’s like they wanted to embarrass themselves before meeting Sue & Franklin. It’s even weird for Franklin to share classified information with Reed about the Quantum Gate at the Science Fair of all places. They could’ve had the conversation outside to avoid the wrong people overhearing. It’s also real fucking stupid Reed doesn’t even fight for Ben to have a scholarship when he helped him make the damn device. That’s like Steve Jobs refusing to acknowledge the team that helped him make Apple II, it makes him look like an asshole. The same can be said in the ending when he comes up with the team name just before the movie finally wraps up. And why exactly does he get to be elastic? Johnny gets his powers because he was caught on fire, Ben becomes the Thing because rocks got trapped in his capsule and Sue gains her powers when she gets smacked with a force field, so it’s quite a trip if you’re not gonna answer that. Also, why the hell was Ben watching videos of his service being a military asset? He doesn’t seem to be proud of what he’s doing compared to Johnny, so I don’t see any good reason for that to be on instead of a show like The Simpsons or anything that doesn’t remind of his situation. And how the hell did Reed escape undetected? If Area 57 didn’t have cameras before he escaped, that’s embarrassing. And where did Victor get a cloak? He didn’t have it on him when he first left so if there is an actual species he found, that would’ve been worth explaining. With all being said, I find it impossible for anyone to ignore all issues to have casual enjoyment. To get this over with, 2015’s Fantastic Four is one of the worst films of its genre for lacking all the depth and creativity that made these characters special when first written. It shouldn’t exist and I don’t understand how studios allowed to be released. If you’re a fan of this fictional team, stay away from this movie and save yourself the trouble.
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