There was no good reason to make the new Fantastic Four film. The first franchise, which starred Chris Evans and Jessica Alba, launched ten years ago — but quickly tanked after only the second film, due to disappointing box office and poor reviews. Now, eight years later, we have a reboot that nobody asked for, only so that 20th Century Fox could retain the film rights to these characters instead of letting them revert back to Marvel. What’s more, the new film’s director, Josh Trank (Chronicle), has reportedly criticized the final cut of the film, saying that the studio had forced him to do extensive re-shoots and a complete re-edit of his original vision. What we’re left with, then, is an expensive mess that no one is happy with. And, while Fantastic Four is not a terrible film, it definitely feels more like something that’s been assembled in a factory by corporate overlords than a work of art.
The film opens on fifth-grader Reed Richards, a misunderstood kid and scientific genius, who begins a friendship with classmate Ben Grimm when the latter becomes interested in Reed’s efforts to invent a teleportation device. Flash forward seven years, and Reed (Miles Teller, Whiplash), having completed his machine, unveils it at their high school science fair. His invention catches the eye of Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey, Netflix’s House of Cards) and Storm’s daughter Sue (Kate Mara, also from House of Cards), who offer him a full scholarship to the research organization they work for to complete a full-size version of the device. However, their first attempt to send humans across to the other dimension goes horribly wrong. The group gets blasted with energy and develop special abilities — Reed can stretch his body, Sue can become invisible and create force fields, Sue’s brother Johnny (Michael B. Jordan, Fruitvale Station) becomes a human fireball who can shoot fire from his hands, and Ben (Jamie Bell, Snowpiercer) becomes a massive rock-like creature with super strength. Their colleague Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), meanwhile, is seemingly killed in the accident.
By the time this incident occurs, we’re almost one full hour into the 100-minute film and nothing more than this has happened. This reboot spends so much of its running time establishing the characters and their origin story that very little room is left for an actual plot with dramatic stakes. What we’re given instead is a supporting cast filled with many anonymous scientific researchers with no names or personalities, a one-dimensional government/corporate villain-type (Tim Blake Nelson) who serves no real purpose, and a climactic battle to defeat the still-alive Victor, who has become an all-powerful metallic being who wants to destroy the world more for plot device reasons than for anything character-based. What’s more, this climactic battle is actually the first and only time the Fantastic Four ever go into battle together — have you ever seen another superhero film where the big epic battle at the end is the film’s sole action scene?
Rather disappointingly, the central characters are so thinly sketched that no actor manages to stand out, since everyone has so little to work with here. Teller and Jordan and Bell have all given fantastic performances in earlier, far-superior films — I firmly believe that all three are among the most promising young stars we have today. Sadly, all three are fairly wasted with their nothing roles here. Cathey puts on his best inspirational Morgan Freeman voice to play someone who is both a stock scientist character and a stock concerned father character. Kebbell, alas, is the weak link among the principals (though the screenplay does him no favours — Victor is about as clichéd as a comic villain movie villain can get), and he struggles mightily with his American accent.
The origin story told in Fantastic Four is actually pretty engaging and well-executed; the film, though, is ultimately pointless. Superhero narratives work best when the villain or issue at stake serves as a metaphor for something deeper — that’s supposed to be the whole point — but this film has no thematic depth at all. The villain is so lazily written and the film so empty overall that it becomes clear the studio has no artistic goals at all with this franchise. The Fantastic Four are clearly not working as the stars of their own franchise. It’s time for the studio to do the right thing — abandon plans for a sequel and allow Marvel to reclaim ownership of these characters, so that they can be incorporated as needed into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I surprisingly dug a lot of this film, and it’s a shame that it devolved into such a disaster. Trank’s clearly very talented and inspired. The body-horror transformation scenes were heartbreaking and beautifully composed and the not-so-subtle nods to Akira were welcomed. It really made me wish that the studio had allowed Trank the creative freedom to fully flesh out his vision rather than rushing the third act into an incoherent toy commercial.
I totally agree. I thought ‘Chronicle’ was great. This is basically the same movie, but with a much bigger budget and all the art removed. Trank has enormous potential, and I hope he can recover from this. It would be such a shame if his very vocal criticism of this film and the studio (as warranted as it may be, though unwise) hurts his career. And it’s definitely hard to imagine a better cast for this particular film.