Fantastic Four

At this stage in the game, giving Fantastic Four a bad review seems a little redundant and mean spirited, but sometimes you just have to press on. We have already seen tweets by the director claiming that this is not his vision on screen, and reports of studio surveys asking viewers what they would do to salvage the brand. Whatever the actual story might be, there is little doubt that Fantastic Four is heading towards being a critical and commercial flop and probably a franchise-killing film.

The origin of Marvel’s First Family is pretty well known by now. Scientist Reed Richards (Miles Teller), his friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), his fellow scientist Susan Storm (Kate Mara), and her hothead brother Johnny (Michael B Jordan) are bombarded by cosmic radiation, gaining strange powers and becoming the Fantastic Four. Then there is also the other member of their team, Doctor Victor Von Doom (Tobby Kebbel), who is left for dead in the other dimension. Finally, instead of slapping on the spandex and being superheroes, the four subjects are viewed as exploitable military assets, until Doom once again raises his ugly metal head and threatens the world. 

This is a joyless experience that manages to fail on multiple levels: pacing, script, even just a basic understanding of the core characters they are attempting to bring to the big screen. At a hundred minutes this is not a long film, and yet it drags. After an initially promising set up that establishes the relationship between a young Richards and Grimm, the film devolves into a string of poorly scripted dialogue sequences delivered in windowless rooms. The final fight sequence, when it eventually comes, is rushed and tired, lacking any dramatic tension despite its apocalyptic stakes. 

It is hard to point to one specific thing that makes this film terrible, rather it is the aggregate of hundreds of poor decisions – from The Thing’s catchphrase arising from childhood abuse, to Doom’s magically appearing cape. The result is a film that turns superheroes into monsters, both physically and - worse still - spiritually, demonstrating them all to be morally corrupt at some point as cowardice, anger and betrayal become the basis for the group dynamics. 

Ultimately this is an extended origin movie to set the stage for more to come. It is just that by the end of this film, no one is wanting any more of these four. 

Originally published in X-Press Magazine