K-SCORE: 6
Director: Josh Trank (kind of)
Writer: Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg, Josh Trank (kind of)
Starring: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Tim Blake Nelson, Reg E. Cathey
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“That professional filmmakers are putting out this product in this age of cinema is pathetic, and those responsible... should be completely ashamed.”
Before watching the Fantastic Four I did a refresher course on the Alba one, a quick reminder of what kind of bar was set for the film. Let me be clear. The source material is not very good. By that, I mean the comic. The stretching power is pretty dumb, even if Pixar did a good job with it in The Incredibles; the powers are imbalanced and not of the same style, and four heroes against one villain isn’t as exciting as one hero against four villains. So I’m not looking for much. That said, the Alba film is still a huge disappointment, borderline unwatchable, science-word nonsense, with an uninteresting Marvel story. This latest Fantastic Four is much much worse. It’s barely a film. As Graham said, “this is the equivalent of a chef serving you a plate of raw chicken.”
“Sue Storm receives powers in spite of never having been with the other four in the alternate dimension that grants the Fantastic Four their powers”
Almost nothing about the film works. Whatever arguments, failures, and production disruptions occurred on set are transferred over to the viewer, resulting in a final product that is some spliced together abomination of superhero scenes with an overly long introduction. Rumors are that Kate Mara was discouraged from reading the comics beforehand as research for her role. If that’s true, whoever told her that should never work as a storyteller or as a financier of storytellers ever again. What I would give for the opportunity to work with an actress half as successful as Kate Mara… and then for someone to have the audacity to tell her how she should prepare for her role, or worse, what she should and shouldn’t be allowed to read!
Here’s an incomplete bullet-pointed list of the film’s failures
The characters are uninteresting
It’s never funny
The dialogue is awkward and inauthentic
No research was done on any of the science
There’s no chemistry between any of the actors
There is a tremendous imbalance to the pacing of the plot
15 minutes on Reed Richards as a young kid
30 minutes on the team before they get their powers
15 minutes on the team going to the alternate dimension
15 minutes on the team newly having acquire their powers
15 minutes on the team getting back together after the power trauma
15 minutes on the entire conflict of the film that needs to be resolved
The film jumps ahead 1 year in time, and that is the most important year in the development of the Fantastic Four as characters - in other words, it skips the timeframe where it should have spent 85% of its time
The plot is riddled with the following holes:
Reed and Ben Grimm have no reason to suspect the dirt from their teleported cars comes from China or another dimension
The scientists that recruit Reed claim they have “test materials” that have brought back dirty from other dimensions, but also claim they’ve been “unable to bring anything back”
Completely unacceptable scientific process regarding the testing of the “other dimension” to the point where you cannot believe that there is anyone in the room who would call himself or herself a scientist
Reed Richards and Sue Storm have the time to read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and chemistry textbooks from the 1950s (which can’t contain good information) and also have spent their whole lives becoming the best and brightest hackers/engineers/particle physicists/quantum mechanics
Everything about the other dimension is broken - the concepts of gravity, atmosphere, and resources being especially confusing. They appear in the beginning with full space suits on to survive the area and then return later wearing flimsy blue jumpsuits and no helmets
Reed leaves the group for a year in spite of expressed devotion to the team and an obsessive habit of tracking their movements
All of the “genius” kids spend the entire film making grievous life-threatening errors from street-racing to saying “we’ve got to go over that cliff to get to the source of the concentrated energy”
Sue Storm receives powers in spite of never having been with the other four in the alternate dimension that grants the Fantastic Four their powers
Ben Grimm has no qualifications and no devotion to the rest of the team, but decides to go along with every plan presented to him even though each one brings him only increasing peril and pain
Sue Storm’s powers are the most versatile, most useful, and easiest to hide and yet she is the character who wants to “undo” them
Von Doom survives a year somewhere unexplored and misunderstood, away from Earth without anyone asking him how that happened or him offering up any explanations.
Von Doom has the power to make people’s brains explode inside their heads but loses to The Fantastic Four because he’s weakly punched in the face by Reed and aggressively punched in the face by Grimm.
Von Doom never wants to return to Earth from “his planet” yet shows up when people come back to his world/alternate dimension
Von Doom’s planet evidently lacks for nothing, but he feels the need to destroy Earth for its benefit
The Fantastic Four feel the need to follow Von Doom when he returns to his world
Reed and Grimm need to be in Sue’s bubble to survive but Johnny doesn’t
Sue Storm can fly
I don't think any of the actors are trying after a certain point. Tiles Meller clearly gave up attempting to create a unique character after the day he almost got into a fistfight with Josh Trank
There is a never-established, never-explained giant vortex of lightning that supposedly bridges the gap between Earth and the alternate dimension where The Fantastic Four get their powers
29-year-olds Miles Teller and Jamie Bell play high school kids. Presumably Kate Mara is playing a character of a similar age, and she's 33.
The father figure sounds like he swallowed a voice modulator
Sue Storm is white, when her father and brother are black. Their father also keeps calling Reed “son.”
There’s never any sense of order to what the government is doing with the team before or after they receive their powers - how can they want to control / utilize someone like Grimm as a weapon in the military and not have the capability or oversight to control the “kids” before they impulsively and drunkenly decide to travel to the other dimension as the pioneer astronauts.
There’s never an understanding of where the money comes from, where the power comes from, or what the goal of anyone is
They abandon a developing relationship between Sue Storm and Reed Richards despite it being part of the essence of the source material
Neither Johnny Storm nor Sue are upset at the death of their father
The dramatic moments appear to have been lifted from my lists of cliches. “Promise me you’ll take care of each other… ahhhhhhh….” (dead)
The scene at the end where The Fantastic Four come up with the name “Fantastic Four” is cringe-inducing. Fantastic is not a fantastic adjective.
“This is the Cleveland Browns of films.”
I could go on and on like this. Listing the failures in the film is like trying to point out the regions of space that are empty. The film does not work on any level. That professional filmmakers are putting out this product in this age of cinema is pathetic, and those responsible, whether it be the director who couldn’t control his temper, or the producers who had to get their grimy fingers all over someone else’s script and scenes, should be completely ashamed. This is among the worst of what Hollywood has to offer. Even when someone else wrote the stories long ago, even when the very nature of the plot is exciting and fun, they manage to fuck it up on this level where it’s both boring and broken. Either learn from these mistakes or get out of this industry, you cheap, creatively bankrupt, ethically disturbed, screw-ups. I never want to see something like this again.