The Fantastic Four. They were Marvel Comics’ premiere superteam – a mish-mash of powered peeps all coming together as a collective to bust crime and fight evil, all the while giving themselves a rather arrogant title (“Fantastic Four”? Why not hedge your bets and call yourself the Qualifiable Quartet and just wait for other people to deem you fantastic?). The foursome, who comprise of Reed Richards aka Mr Fantastic (Señor Stretchy), Sue Storm aka Invisible Woman (Seethrough Sue), Johnny Storm aka The Human Torch (Sizzle Supreme) and Ben Grimm aka The Thing (Sedimentary Sasquatch – see, I could totally rename all of them with some assonance to boot), are no strangers to the big screen and this is third iteration in total, making them close to Spider-Man in the reboot wars. Their rights belong to Fox, who now want to make them fit in with their X-Men universe for some future crossover glory further down the line, so it’s important to note that this ISN’T anything to do with the Avengers and co despite what the Marvel logo may make you think.
This time it’s directed by Josh Trank, who played cleverly with the superhero concept as a whole in his 2012 debut Chronicle. It stars a cast of Hollywood’s young rising stars in the form of Miles Teller (Reed Richards), Kate Mara (The invisible Woman), Michael B. Jordan (The Human Torch) and Jamie Bell (The Thing). It’s from the producers of X-Men: Days of Future Past and even Matthew Vaughn, director of Kingsmen: The Secret Service. Everything is in place for this film to be a cracker – a stalwart tentpole movie of the modern superhero genre.
Alas, it’s not. It’s a befuddled, stumbling mess.
The issues mainly lie with its absolutely staggeringly ill-considered approach to tone and pacing. The studio has obviously seen the light-hearted approach that Marvel Studios takes to its movies and the conversely dark/gritty approach that DC hope to have with theirs and tries to be both at the same time; with sequences that have the odd quip or two which fall on their respective bottoms or heavy-handed attempts at pathos which never really go anywhere or mean anything. It goes between these two gears like a pair of sugared-up children on a see-saw. As for the pacing, the film doesn’t know where to spend its minutes wisely. There are random and ill-judged time-jumps; characters disappear for scenes at a time (forgetting the nature of an ENSEMBLE movie); their evolution into working together and becoming a team is rushed through an incredibly underwhelming climax.
As for the story, parts of it are genuinely laughable – and not intentionally. The reason for the crew going on their doomed space journey in the first place is quite frankly ridiculous (especially the way that Ben gets involved too). You may think that a film that includes a man that can stretch like his last name was Armstrong is a strange place to complain about ridiculousness but in story terms it just bypasses any natural logic.
The actors really do try their best with the material that they’re given but are constantly shortchanged – the person who suffers most is Toby Kebbell and his character Victor Von Doom. In the comics, Doom is one of the most powerful and villainous baddies out there – here he is simply a “wake up sheeple!!!!11!!!11!”-style conspiracy theorist who has a little accident in space and turns into a bog standard deranged baddie with a completely illogical (as well as unexplained) plan and the appearance of an action figure dipped in silver nail polish and coloured in with splashes of a mint gel pen.
Overall, this reboot is a bland and uneventful experience that reeks of studio interference, something evidenced by the erratic marketing (the irritatingly obvious fact Fox paid popular Twitter accounts to tweet about it as well as the confusion of tone between trailers aren’t exactly good indicators here). There are positives here as the performers put in their all and the effects for the most part are pretty good (the use of mixing their powers in the end could be a lot worse), but mostly this film tries to be every kind of superhero movie and fails at being any at all.
<insert your own pun/joke about it being called Fantastic and it not being so Fantastic at all here>
Richards Reckons 