W
hen the Fantastic Four reboot was announced, the internet collectively groaned in ambivalence, as it should have. Nobody asked for this movie. We were quite happy leaving it dead, as Marvel continued to pump out hit after hit. After a less than stellar PR effort, and the director Josh Trank slamming his own movie on Twitter, I should have known better. The fatal flaw is the tone, contracting the ‘Dark Knight disease’ where everything has to be gritty and depressing. There is no fun in this comicbook movie, which is a huge mistake considering the campy superpowers and characters. The main actors are shockingly wooden, which is especially disappointing for Miles Teller who gave a great performance in Whiplash (2014), but it’s not entirely his fault.
The script feels like a first draft, with a severe lack of chemistry between the unfantastic four and the boring government officials. After an interesting opening where a young Reed Richards (Miles Teller) and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) invent a prototype teleporter, the pair are eventually picked up by Prof. Franklin Storm to help the government achieve inter-dimensional travel. Teamed up with Sue (Kate Mara) and Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), along with Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell), they travel to an alien planet. After receiving their powers from a convenient green goo, the movie stalls horribly as the team discover their powers.
Maybe the team has the power to slow down time because it felt like I was sitting there for hours. Pointless drama and inconsequential dialogue follow until Dr. Doom makes his appearance, looking ridiculous in a hooded rubbish bag. The movie falls apart towards the end when Dr. Doom begins his plan to destroy the world (how original), and is immediately killed. Seriously, the character appears for about 15 minutes at the end, and after his death the movie ends. There is no Third-Act in this film at all, no real resolution – it just sort of ends. The conflict between the studio and Trank becomes very apparent here. Almost a third of the movie was reshot with noticeable effects (e.g. Sue Storm’s hair changed between scenes, and action shots in the trailer are not in the film).
The soundtrack is generic, the cinematography is bland, the characters are dull, the plot is boring and it slaps comicbook fans in the face.
With a Rotten Tomatoes score of only eight per cent (the worst rating for any comicbook movie in history), it’s clear that critics and audiences alike hated this movie. As a result, plans for several sequels are now under review, and they should hopefully be scrapped completely. Go and watch The Incredibles (2004) instead. Go and watch anything else. But for the sake of good movies, do not watch this. It’s better left buried beneath its terrible legacy, where it belongs.