Movie Review: FANTASTIC FOUR (2015)

[youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAgnQdiZFsQ”]

There’s nothing worse than a half-ass attempt at film making. Use that WHOLE ass, not just one cheek. Do or do not, there is no half-ass. It was apparent with the first trailer for Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four reboot that Fox and the creative team involved wanted to get as far away from their first attempt at making the team come alive on screen (second if you count the Roger Corman version they’ve attempted to bury). Gone was the bright tone, in with the dark tone. Gone were the colors, in was the gray scale. No more practical effects, CGI for the win. No more jokes, we’re serious this time. Nothing whimsical will be seen, these powers are a horrific BURDEN. Tim Story’s two Fantastic Four films weren’t exactly fan favorites but they knew what the Fantastic Four was about, and their tone was campy, fun stuff for kids. Frankly that’s all I’ve ever seen Fantastic Four as: a silly, dysfunctional family. Those two aren’t good movies but they were at least a solid attempt. So if those two films were, say a base hit…this new one is like a bunt that just rolls back to the catcher. It’s the epitome, the definition, of half-ass.

A scientific prodigy from a young age, Reed Richards (Miles Teller) and best friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) have entered a science fair. The project is a device developed for inter-dimensional travel, which doesn’t impress the judges for no apparent reason other than because Dan Castallaneta is a douche bag. It’s here that Richards is plucked from obscurity by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his daughter Sue (Kate Mara) to help them finish their much larger scale version of his project. They’ve been working with a pompous, brooding prick named Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) who hit a road bump in development that’s now been unblocked. Dr. Storm lures his hot-headed son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) away from doing dumb shit to help build the traveling device. Once complete and tested with a chimp, government scientist (I guess) Dr. Allen (Tim Blake Nelson) informs the team that they plan to contact N.A.S.A. in order to test the device for human travel. This doesn’t sit well with Johnny, Doom, and Richards. With Grimm now in tow, the guys decide on a drunken evening to take a stroll into another dimension, unsanctioned. It does not go well. Doom is left for dead on this planet, and the remaining three guys are altered by an energetic force that hits Sue as well upon return to our planet. They are forever changed. A year later everyone knows their abilities, and are at odds with each other, and don’t know what they want. Then they get a building, and then the movie ends. No, seriously.

Trank’s only credit aside from this was with Chronicle, a “found footage” style superhero film that owed as much to screenwriter Max Landis for it’s success as anything. After being a modest, surprise hit for Fox, they handed over the reins to try and make the Fantastic Four cool and edgy like his other film. The problem arises in that the Fantastic Four aren’t cool and edgy, nor should they be. Make no mistake, this isn’t a movie for kids. There is nothing fun about the movie, barely anything humorous, and certainly not enough action to keep the kids entertained. This is a bleak film, and there’s a surprising amount of bloodshed towards the end. The movie lacks any kind of energy or enthusiasm from moment one and never picks up. Trank doesn’t know how to direct characters, and it shows. Every single actor starts at, appropriately, about a 4 and not even the giant, punishing rock monster The Thing manages to raise above a 5. The Thing should be at an 11, easy. Johnny Storm is a cocky bastard, which Chris Evans owned completely in Story’s flicks, but Jordan seems to be mildly angsty at best. Teller is electric on screen in things like Whiplash and The Spectacular Now, but doesn’t have even a spark of life in him here, nor does Mara (though she rarely seems excited to be doing anything). Kebbell is absolutely horrid as both the human and…the whatever Doom becomes, we’re never told in the slightest. He’s a one-dimensional asshole that isn’t developed beyond that one trait. The worst thing about the film is that since nobody cares, nobody has any chemistry, which is absolutely KEY to the Fantastic Four. There’s no character development to help the cast do this in the first place, only chalk outlines. They’re chalk outlines because they’re dead on arrival, you see what I did there?

Origin stories often come across as being unnecessary and fairly boring, often ending exactly where it should begin. Fantastic Four has to be the laziest, most boring origin film I’ve ever seen to the point where I didn’t care where it went beyond the ending. So many scenes from the trailer were nowhere to be found, and with a running time of around 90 minutes without credits it’s fairly obvious that the horribly paced cut we’ve gotten is a hack work, most likely because this was the best they could do with what got filmed. To be clear, there’s no second act to the movie. It’s set-up, fast forward a year, ending. It’s a grave mistake in storytelling at the most basic level, and it isn’t clear exactly where the blame lies so we’ll just have to call it a team effort. The script has a solid beginning but at the pace it runs this would have to be a three hour film to be fleshed out appropriately. The editing is snail slow, and with the actors being so uninspired and boring — which Teller and Jordan are most certainly NOT in every other picture — I had difficulty staying awake. The only action we get before the ending is less than a minute of Reed Richards taking out some soldiers in the woods. To make things worse after all the tedium, there’s no climax. After Doom reappears in the last 15 minutes — the antagonist, mind you, that hasn’t been mentioned FOR 45 FUCKING MINUTES — it’s a freight train to the finale, practically saying “let’s get this shit over with already.” Then we’re treated to about a 4 minute fight with Dr. Doom that’s so darkly lit and bland that it barely exists. Ta-fucking-da, folks. That’s it. Oh, and the ending scene was an exact copy of the final moment of Age of Ultron. Go fuck yourself, you didn’t earn that. Credits. No Stan Lee cameo. No stingers of any kind either, because they have less faith in this piece of shit than to hint at a future with it.

There’s a thought out there that Marvel nudged this thing towards being a disaster in order to get the property back home and out of Fox’s hands. Congratulations, guys!  It worked!!!  It’s a film for nobody — too dark for the kids, too boring for everyone else. The only bright spot I found is the gorgeous score from Marco Beltrami and Philip Glass which seems out of place with the film displayed. The Thing’s face is well captured and animated, but when he’s visible in full looks embarrassingly bad. Like, X-Men Origins: Wolverine bad. I was nostalgic for Michael Chicklis’ full body suit…and I hated that thing. I could go on forever about all the things wrong here. Fantastic Four is a disaster on just about every level.