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Another week, another superhero film. It’s no secret that it is a genre I am starting to tire of quickly, and my hopes weren’t particularly high when I heard a new Fantastic Four was in the works after the pretty abysmal efforts thrust upon us in the mid-2000s.
However, after reading early, and unanimously scathing, critic and audience reviews of this iteration, I found myself becoming more intrigued. As my loyal readers might have deduced if you’ve been reading my column long enough, it’s much more fun to lay into a movie than it is to praise it, so after a recent run of top-notch movies, I was looking forward to a juicy carcass to unleash my sarcastic witticisms upon.
Before you read this entire review, I’ll set the tone for you. To sum up in a sentence: I walked in hoping to see something so-bad-that-it’s-good, but ultimately I ended up with so-bad-it’s-horrifically-terrible.
The two major areas which a film needs to get right is what is happening on screen, and what it looks like. Fantastic Four is aesthetically drab, free of any of the visual vibrancy associated with comic book movies, and as for drama, well … there’s more of that in five minutes of Coronation Street than there is in this two-hour stinker.
After all the work done in the past decade to put superhero films on the map and make them by far the most profitable and popular movies with audiences worldwide, not to mention the fact that there’s such a vast portfolio from which to draw inspiration, it’s frankly staggering that this movie can fail to capture any of the family-friendly fun or spirit of the classic Marvel comic.
This is yet another origin story, telling the tale of how the team came to be. It starts off with best friends and science nerds Reed Richards (Teller) and Ben Grimm (Bell) working together on a prototype teleporter named the ‘Quantum Gate’. This attracts the attention of a major research institute, respected scientist Sue Storm (Mara), reckless technician Johnny Storm (Jordan), and one final design quirk offered by Sue’s ambitious protégé, Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell).
The group use the machine to visit Planet Zero, which they learn is a world filled with otherworldly substances. Victor gets a little too curious, causing a major earthquake and the destruction of the Quantum Gate, which alters the team’s molecular genetics, affording them super-human abilities. Reed can stretch like rubber, Sue can become invisible and generate energy force fields, Johnny can engulf his entire body in flames and fly, while Ben becomes bigger and develops a rock-like body which dramatically increases his strength and makes him uglier.
Victor gets lost in the chaos, but of course it isn’t long before he emerges with a vengeful eye to threaten Earth, meaning our titular quartet has to stop him before he can enact his bizarre and illogical plan.
The film reeks of missed opportunities at every corner. Reed and Ben are supposedly lifelong pals but only have a couple of short scenes together, and even they are purely for exposition purposes. The film is almost entirely humourless, so there could have been some cool ‘buddy’ moments and moments of levity that other superhero films do so well.
There is no chemistry or interplay between the foursome at all and two of them don’t even speak to each other until the final scene of the movie. Whatever bonding they had happens off-screen, so when the team finally gets together for the final battle against Doom, there’s no sense of fun, excitement or achievement. It feels unearned and totally by-the-numbers.
What’s even worse than missed opportunities is that the film feels plain unfinished, which is incredible for a franchise this famous and on such a high budget.
For example, the brief moment of horror at their physical transformations is entirely undercut by the deadpan delivery of the dialogue and by the film smash cutting to a year later when they are accustomed to their powers.
Some exploration of how they were emotionally or mentally affected by the incident would have been nice, particularly Ben who is now a walking boulder and can’t be inconspicuous like the others can. The film is only 100 minutes long, it’s hardly Ben-Hur. Even a five-minute montage could have shed some light on what is a critical year in terms of character development.
Furthermore, studio-ordered reshoots are painfully evident thanks to some glaring continuity errors. They aren’t even subtle or ones that would require trawling through the IMDB trivia page to notice on repeat viewing. Sue’s hair changes between camera angle, not only between styles but also shades of blonde. And, in the only moment in the film which drew a hearty laugh from me, Reed’s facial hair disappears as he walks from one room into another, and grows back again when he walks into the next.
Shoddy digital effects that look at least a decade dated litter the film, and Doom’s costume is so laughably bad that it must have been the winning entry in a primary school competition.
The palette of brown and grey combined with the whole film appearing to be shot in a storage unit doesn’t inspire any confidence either. Even Batman saw more than four seconds of daylight in his recent trilogy.
The only good thing I can say about this reboot is that it makes the last two Fantastic Four films look like Citizen Kane. Marvel’s most famous family deserves a lot better than this as they’ve never been done right on screen. It’s hard to shake the nagging feeling that the franchise can never escape its mundane, mirthless and mediocre reputation.
Showing at Seef II, Saar, Novo Cinemas and Dana Cineplex
