Fantastic Four (2015)
Fantastic Four (2015)
Directed By Josh Trank
Screenplay by Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater and Josh Trank
Rated PG-13
For those few who have been following my reviews since I have started back in April of this year, you will notice that I occasionally go against the popular consensus. This isn’t a gimmick and it’s not a case of me being needlessly contrarian or iconoclastic, it just shows that I am a human being with opinions of my own and I don’t let others (not even my own family and friends) influence me. I have defended movies like Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice or even Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets which usually get mixed to negative responses but I feel have good qualities about them that some would often miss. But there are plenty of times where there is really no arguing with the popular vote. Movies like House of the Dead (2003), The Last Airbender (2010), Catwoman (2004), Gigli (2003) and even A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) are universally maligned for very good reasons and are films that even if I tried I wouldn’t be able defend them with any degree of credibility. Fantastic Four (2015) is another example of such films.
The 2015 reboot of Fantastic Four is the kind of terrible movie that makes you scratch your head and wonder what in the world happened. It had a good cast, a promising director with talent and a good previous film (2011’s Chronicle) and a top notch team at Fox and Marvel. Director Josh Trank claims it was taken away from him and there have been reports of numerous reshoots but it seems rather moot to point fingers now. The film was released to the world and it really is a turkey.
Reed Richard and Ben Grimm (Miles Teller and Jamie Bell respectively) are childhood friends who have been developing a teleportation device. At a school science fair, their work attracts the attention of Dr. Franklin Storm and his daughter Susan (Kate Mara who luckily starred in Ridley Scott’s The Martian later that year). They recruit Reed into their program (Ben comes later) to work with them plus Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan who luckily starred in Creed later that year) and Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell) to develop a full size teleporter to another dimension which they call Planet Zero. They teleport there, things go wrong and now Reed, Ben, Johnny, Susan and Victor all have amazing powers that the military of course wants to exploit. Ben, Susan and Reed want to be cured but not Johnny. But when Victor (aka Dr. Doom) wants to destroy the Earth to further develop Planet Zero, the Fantastic Four must team up and save the day.
That doesn’t sound like a plot you could easily screw up. But this movie does it spectacularly! First, the film takes way too long to gain any momentum. There is way too much explanation and setting up for plot points that ultimately have no real payoff. There is so much time spent on the development on the teleportation machine that we never see any real camaraderie with Reed, Johnny and Susan. Ben doesn’t come into play until they actually teleport to Planet Zero so why would he have any friendly feelings with Johnny or Susan? The Fantastic Four are supposed to be a kind of odd family of sorts and there are lines clumsily thrown into the film to try and cement that idea but even when they get their powers, they spend so much time away from each other (1 year in the film actually) we never see them grow to love each other as a family. So much of the movie is spent in laboratories and military installations that when it gets to the end and Earth is in peril, I almost forgot other humans and things such as trees existed in this movie’s universe.
Second, the cast is very good but they have nothing to work with. The script is written in such a way that characters say and behave only what they need to in order to move the plot forward. There doesn’t seem to any moment where the actors were allowed to make the characters their own and develop them 3 dimensionally. The closest thing I got was Michael B. Jordan’s Johnny Storm. He was kinda entertaining and looked like the only one that gave a crap. Combined with a stillborn script with dialog that redefines average, it would be difficult if not impossible for any actor to make memorable.
Third, the movie is wrapped up really fast, almost too fast if I do say so myself. When Dr. Doom (who just looks awful. Yeah…they screwed him up. Again) shows up in the last 20 minutes or so, he automatically starts killing everyone (Scanners style) and goes to Planet Zero to absorb the Earth. So when the Fantastic Four finally come together to stop him, I don’t care. The movie gives me no reasons to care other than it’s the Fantastic Four, the Earth is in danger and Doom is evil. There is very little build up for the final battle and it was so lackluster and unexciting it was like a slap in the face. It’s too little and too late.
Fourth, and probably the biggest sin of all, it’s boring. Nothing interesting happens in the film. Movies with the most absurd plots can be good if you are invested and you care. I was reduced to staring at my watch repeatedly to check when it was going to be over. Really nothing in this movie got me invested and given this film’s reception it appears nobody else was involved either. It’s about a 100 minutes long but it feels longer than that despite how quickly it’s wrapped up. The only action scene is at the end but I doubt if any others were added they would make the movie more exciting or even remotely better. On top of it being boring, it was at times surprisingly violent and disturbing. One of Trank’s influences was David Cronenberg and anyone out there that is familiar with Cronenberg's body of work will know that it is a mismatched pairing.
As far as I’m concerned, all cinematic potential for Fantastic Four movies is officially dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was another cynical attempt just to keep the license away from Marvel. All recent Fantastic Four films feel like cash grabs with the lowest effort put into them possible (and no I don’t really count the Roger Corman version as that one was never released and he worked with what little he had. It wasn’t good but it wasn’t boing either so it has that going for it). Even if Marvel gets the rights later, it may be far too late. The well has been poisoned and any other renditions of Fantastic Four would be dead on arrival.
