Debuting in November 1961 as the first major superhero team
developed by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Fantastic Four have been one of
Marvel’s most famous franchises as far as the comics are concerned. But as for
their track record on the big screen, Marvel’s First Family has not been as
successful compared to other Marvel franchises such as Spider-Man, The
Avengers, X-Men, or even lesser-known characters like the Guardians of the
Galaxy. It all began in 1994 when famous B-movie producer Roger Corman produced
a low-budget adaptation of ‘The Fantastic Four’. But because either the
production company behind it, Constantin Film, just made it to keep the film rights
or Marvel stepped in so that it wouldn’t ‘ruin the franchise’, that film was
never released in theaters and is currently only viewable on the internet in
bootleg quality. 20th Century Fox would eventually get a ‘Fantastic
Four’ film into theaters in 2005 with the Tim Story directed ‘Fantastic Four’.
The film was successful enough financially to warrant a sequel, ‘Fantastic
Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer’, in 2007. But while both films performed
solidly enough at the box-office, they were also generally disliked by both
critics and audiences, primarily for their overtly goofy attempts at humor,
some questionable casting choices (i.e. Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman),
and, in the case of the sequel, one of the worst changes from the comics in
superhero film history in regards to the portrayal of Galactus.
Cut to 2015, 8 years after the release of ‘Fantastic Four: Rise
of the Silver Surfer’. Fox is back again with their second major attempt at
launching a ‘Fantastic Four’ film franchise. And compared to the previous two
films, this one really showed some potential due to who was working on it. It
was to be directed by Josh Trank, who was fresh off of 2012’s excellent
found-footage flick ‘Chronicle’. It was to be produced by Matthew Vaughn and
Simon Kinberg, who were both fresh off of playing a major role in the
resurrection of the ‘X-Men’ franchise with 2011’s ‘First Class’ and later ‘Days
of Future Past’. And it would feature an excellent group of leads playing the
Fantastic Four in Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell.
But, as is typical with any film in the superhero genre, this one was subjected
to some heavy scrutiny by comic book fans in the months leading up to its
release. As is also common with this genre, the casting was one of the major points
of controversy amongst fans, primarily the casting of Michael B. Jordan in the
role of the Human Torch, who is usually portrayed as a white man in the comics.
Additional rumors including major deviations from the source material (including
the supposed change of Doctor Doom into a hacker), confirmed reshoots, and
rumors of Trank being ‘abrasive’ during the shoot also aroused suspicion that this
was going to turn out to be nothing more than a mess. And now that the film has
come out… well, unfortunately those fears are well-founded as this new ‘Fantastic
Four’ ultimately ends up being a ‘fantastic’ disaster.
In 2007, young Reed Richards dreams of becoming the first
human in existence to teleport. With the help of his best friend Ben Grimm
(Jamie Bell), Reed (Miles Teller) starts to develop a prototype for a
teleportation device. That prototype ends up attracting the attention of
Professor Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) of the Baxter Foundation, who recruits
Reed to help work on a special teleportation device developed by Storm’s old protégé
Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell). Along with Storm’s children Sue (Kate Mara) and
Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), Reed helps get the machine operational but is
disappointed to learn that he won’t be part of the initial voyage to the
alternate dimension (referred to as ‘Planet Zero’) that the teleporter is set
to head to. But the night before this is set to happen, Reed, Johnny, Victor,
and Ben end up taking an unsanctioned trip to Planet Zero so that they could
have their chance at using the machine that they created. Once there, chaos
ensues and Reed, Johnny, Ben, and Sue (who didn’t come with them but was
affected when the device returned to Earth) find themselves with strange new
abilities; Reed can stretch his body to great lengths, Sue can turn invisible
and generate force fields, Johnny can engulf himself in flames and can fly, and
Ben is transformed into a powerful rock-like creature. With these new powers,
the four must band together when Victor returns from Planet Zero hell-bent on the
destruction of the Earth.
Another big issue is that the film is also pretty darn downbeat
compared to, well, pretty much every other superhero film ever made. If I haven’t
made it clear before, I’ve been rather hesitant about DC’s more serious
approach to their superhero films to the point where they are apparently
enforcing a ‘no joke’ mandate. But after watching this film, I can safely say
that I’m pretty confident that DC will never go as far as this film did in terms
of its overall tone. Trank has stated that David Cronenberg was a major
influence in regards to how he approached how the Four would react to their
transformations; in other words, it’s very much reminiscent of body horror. Now
I do think that this is an interesting take on these characters and you can
definitely see that in the initial scenes of them with their powers, which are arguably
the best scenes in the entire film. But ultimately those are the only moments
where this concept is utilized. As a whole, the film is very drab in its overall
look and feel, lacking the humor and charm that one can expect from, say, the
Marvel Cinematic Universe. There are some attempts at humor throughout the film
but most of them end up falling flat. Hell, what I’d argue is the best line
from the trailer, where Johnny remarks about how he’ll need ‘a heat-resistant
workshop and a big-ass sunroof’… isn’t even in the film. Whereas the previous ‘Fantastic
Four’ films were a bit too goofy, this film is just too damn serious.
Now I wouldn’t be ‘too annoyed’ with the darker approach if
the characters were well-developed. But unfortunately they aren’t and again it’s
due to the film’s terrible pacing. Not long after the initial incident they
literally cut to one year later, glossing over what should have been essential
moments of character development. In fact, it isn’t even until the end of the
film when the Four are actually all together on-screen. As a result, you never
get a sense of the familial relationships between the main four that define who
they are in the comics whatsoever; the friendship of Reed and Ben, the romance
between Reed and Sue, etc. And it’s sad because, contrary to popular opinion, I
think that the film was well-cast in regards to the main Four. Teller, Mara,
Jordan, and Bell have all proven to be some of the best actors/actresses of
their generation but unfortunately they’re all pretty much wasted here. And I
think that they did a good job in casting Doctor Doom by going with Toby
Kebbell, who last year really stood out as Koba, the main villain of ‘Dawn of
the Planet of the Apes’. It’s too bad then that Kebbell is majorly underused
here. After the incident, Doom is not seen again until the end of the film and
by that point there’s absolutely no motivation for his actions other than ‘he’s
just evil’. For the record, that is the third straight time that one of Marvel’s
most iconic villains has been butchered on the big screen, from being an
absolute wuss in the 1994 ‘Fantastic Four’ film to the overly cheesy Doom of
the 2000’s ‘Fantastic Four’ films to finally the highly underdeveloped baddie
of this ‘Fantastic Four’ film.
Now let me be clear; while it’s obvious that Josh Trank was
majorly screwed over by Fox in regards to him losing creative control over what
would turn out to be a quite aimless final product, at the end of the day we
may never know if his ‘version’ of the film would’ve been any better. This may
have just been a case of a young director who was simply unprepared to handle a
big-budget blockbuster like this, hence why Fox seemed to have had little faith
in what he did with it. Ultimately though, I don’t blame Trank for the fact
that this new version of this new ‘Fantastic Four’ film that we got is… just
terrible. This film is just not entertaining and not just because it is
severely lacking in terms of action sequences, which is something that you really
don’t want for a film in the superhero genre, but because it’s also quite dour.
Ultimately, it’s just boring; thankfully the film is only 100 minutes long and
it actually does fly by rather fast. But at the end of the day, that also means
that the film fails to make any major impression whatsoever. And that’s really
sad given how many good people worked on it and while I know that a lot of
people were hesitant about this film, I was actually really optimistic and hopeful
that this film was going to be good and prove its critics wrong. But at the end
of the day, it just ends up being a major disappointment, continuing the
mediocre track record of the ‘Fantastic Four’ on the big screen. On the bright
side, maybe Marvel’s First Family will have greater luck when their film rights
are inevitably reacquired by Marvel Studios.
Rating: 1/5
(P.S. To put this
rating into perspective, I gave both the 1994 unreleased low-budget ‘Fantastic
Four’ film and both of the early 2000’s ‘Fantastic Four’ films higher ratings
than this… now that’s saying something)
