Fantastic Four Fails Fantastically
Comic book movies have become amazing over the last several years. Comic book characters coming to life in new ways like never before. Who would have thought we would ever see the Sentinels on the big screen, or the Avengers team up to save New York City? Even a giant space epic about a team of outlaws?
We even have two superhero icons going up against one another in live action next year. We have an entire connecting universe in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the upcoming DC Movie universe — even Fox has managed to make a couple of impressive movies here or there. Even when a movie may not have been as amazing as others they weren’t awful. These movies soar in popularity compared to earlier superhero movies to bring to us a whole new genre of movies that are not only amazing action movies but great movies in general. However, Fantastic Four does not live up to the current standards of these new comic book movies.
A warning however — to explain why it fails so much, I will have to explain plot elements so SPOILER WARNING. Not that it would affect this movie at all to know everything about it in advance.
Fantastic Four, the 2015 reboot, is the fourth live action movie of the comic book team. Directed by Josh Trank, director of Chronicle, and from the studio that brought us X-Men: Days of Future Past, Fantastic Four is easily the worst comic book movie ever made.
Yes even worse than Batman & Robin or Superman 4. I’d rather willing watch those again to be honest. At least I can get a few laughs in or even enjoy the campiness of Batman & Robin. The major flaw with this movie comes down to these points — the entire movie is mainly setting up this standalone universe that can be used for future sequels, and the majority of the dialogue is exposition to something that never happens in this movie. This movie is so focused on setting up for future sequels that this movie can’t stand alone to deliver an experience on its own. Nothing in this movie is memorable, and fails at so many different aspects. The dialogue, characters, even the action is so bland that I can’t even pick out a certain part of the movie in which I am suppose to care what happens.
The story (or lack thereof) focuses on the titular team. Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Sue Storm (The Invisible Woman), Johnny Storm (The Human Torch), and Ben Grimm (The Thing) … a.k.a the Fantastic Four. Starting off at Reed’s childhood we see the “bond” he and Ben make as kids leading up to their high school lives. After that they begin forming together a team to build a machine that allows them to teleport to a parallel dimension, in order to explore and learn more about this Planet Zero.
After doing so they decide to explore it themselves. An accident happens and gives them their powers, they learn to use them, and in the end save the world. This story has no context. You don’t care for anything that happens on screen — honestly even from the first few minutes of this movie I was uninterested.
The characters have nothing to show for a bond. We are introduced to Reed and Ben as kids. This was suppose to show how close they are, but as it goes along, you learn nothing. They show nothing that resembles a brotherly bond like they should have. This trend continues through the whole movie, and falls for each member of the cast. Even Sue and Johnny (who are adoptive brother and sister) have nothing resembling a bond. They never have any bonding moments that are memorable or feel real.
Character development is not present in this movie. Every moment the team shares screen time together feels forced, and unnatural. Even in the final fight in which they realize they need to be the team, they don’t even seem interested. Every one of the main characters shows no personality at all. They are all so bland that you really couldn’t care for them. Even at the end of it all you don’t really feel like they are a team. And to be honest if it wasn’t for their powers you probably couldn’t tell me one thing about them that stands out.
It doesn’t help that the supporting cast is just as awful if not worse. They are so cut-out character types, I’m surprised I didn’t hear all the cliches in the book come out of them. Even worse is the villain Victor Von Doom, however I think I’ll save him for later.
The special effects are just awful. Probably some of the worst I’ve seen in a very long time. The effects in the previous Fantastic Four looked better. They managed to make the effects worse and even less impressive. When I heard the Thing was going to be CGI I was happy. He’s suppose to be this huge rock monster, almost Hulk-sized mountain of a man. However he looks so bad … like really bad. He looked like early 2000s CGI. Doesn’t help that the rest of the team’s effects look just as bad. A clear example of this is during a scene in which Mr. Fantastic is fighting off some troops trying to capture him, the “stretching” he does looks like a glitch in a video game to be honest. Invisible Woman’s force fields look horrid, like they aren’t fully rendered right. They feel so off in scenes that it makes me wonder if any time was put into this movie’s effects, which is sad because they had over $120 million to put toward a decent effects team.
The Human Torch is no exception. We have had three other movies in which fire-based superheroes appeared. Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise Of the Silver Surfer, and X-Men: Days of Future Past. The effects for fire in those movies look way more convincing and look way better than this. When he flies he looks no different than the “fireballs” he throws during this movie — all five of them. His “flame-on” form looks so cartoonish it’s disgusting. Even the parallel world they travel to is unimpressive. It looks so bad and blatantly green screen that it’s isn’t in the least bit convincing. It looks more like a level you would see in Halo than something unique.
Lastly I want to talk about my biggest gripe of this movie; Victor Von Doom a.k.a Doctor Doom. Easily one of the best villains in the entire Marvel Comics history, yet again not done justice.
Is it really that hard to follow source material? Doctor Doom, Ruler of Latveria, super genius, master of magic, power hungry, urge to conquer the world, feels he’s always right, looks down on everyone, selfish, arrogant as ever — none of this is present in Von Doom in this movie. Instead he’s just some guy who happened to be working on the same thing as Reed was. He looks bad, he acts horribly, and honestly this is the worst incarnation of Doctor Doom we’ve ever gotten.
I like the Doctor Doom in the other Fantastic Four movies — even in Rise Of the Silver Surfer. At least the actor playing him (Julian McMahon) in that previous movie looked threatening, he had a dominant demeanor, he felt like a force to be reckoned with. Sure the eventual look of Doom wasn’t that great but this one in the new movie is a billion times worse. He looks like a reject Resident Evil character, or a boss from Evil Within. It’s like they took the T-1000, added some green lights, and gave him a green cloak.
They put no effort into making this character. Everything that made Doom great is absent. Also in the story he falls off the rock wall while they are trying to escape the parallel dimension. Then a whole year passed, when they go back to the parallel world he’s there in an injured state with a metal crystal style body, in the next scene he’s up killing everyone — I felt a lot should have been explained there, however we never got anything out of him, he simply states “the power kept me alive,” but his powers are never explained. One moment he’s making people’s heads exploded, next he’s creating force fields, then exploding electronics, then the parallel dimension is bending to his will. Even worse it seems like he already knows how to disable the Fantastic Four’s individual abilities with his powers. However he had no clue on their powers since he was gone for a whole year and didn’t see them until he is about to return to the parallel dimension in his new form — none of it makes sense, even his motivation is unknown. He basically just starts destroying Earth because.
At least in the comics his abilities, powers, and motives are explained and shown. His suit of armor gives him multiple powers while machines and devices have their unique functions as well as him knowing magic. But this Doom is just ridiculous, and honestly possibly the worse villain in comic book history. I’ve seen better cosplays of Doom than the Doom in this movie, and this movie fuels my urge to make a Doctor Doom cosplay even more — a PROPER Doctor Doom.
My only hope for this movie is for the rights to handed back over to Marvel. At this point Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is huge, and it’ll only get bigger. Especially with Doctor Strange coming out, the MCU will see magic entering it, and since Guardians Of The Galaxy is already shown in this movie universe the idea of space integration isn’t so far fetched anymore. Maybe if they give the rights back now, we can have a proper Fantastic Four movie that can come out before the Infinity Wars begin. A movie where the Fantastic Four have that family connection, bonds are really shown, actual character development, having personalities that match their comic book counterparts, with proper action scenes and effects, and a Doctor Doom that is not only done justice but can be a real threat to the world, not just the Fantastic Four.
They could even tie it into Marvel Cinematic Universe existing canon. They could make it so that Dr. Doom distrusts any superhero and SHIELD due to the events of Age Of Ultron. The Avengers fought in Sokovia which is in Eastern Europe, Latveria is in Europe so since this incident is in his area so to speak, Doom could have been somewhat established in this universe already. Just something I thought up, but it’s a lost opportunity at this point.
This movie fails on so many different levels. It’s not accurate to its source material, spends far too much time explaining things that never happen, has awkward relationships for the team, no jokes, and focused solely on trying to make its world for future sequels to take place in. The characters are bland, boring, and uninteresting. On top of all that there’s basically no story, character development, the crappy CGI that is inexcusable, and leaves a sickening feeling after viewing.
I can’t recommend this to anyone. If you want to experience the Fantastic Four, I say find the cartoons somewhere, pick up some of their comics, or honestly after viewing this watch the 2005 movie. It’s better than this. At least that one is a little campy that you can get a few laughs out of and there’s actually action in that movie. This isn’t even a good action flick because there was hardly any action outside the end fight against Doom — and that four minutes of it wasn’t even action nor was it worth it.
This movie gets a zero, an F, no stars out of 5, two thumbs down. Do not waste your time or money, I can’t even recommend watching it for free. It’s a complete waste of time. I’m hoping that the planned sequel for this gets canceled, and they give the rights back to Marvel. Maybe then we’ll finally get a good Fantastic Four movie, because this is not the movie for the Fantastic Four. No wonder Marvel killed off the cast in the comics.
