By Andrew Bard
The new summer superhero blockbuster was nothing more than a Fantastic Bore.
When director Josh Trank delivered an open apology and bashed the film and the studio for its shortcomings I knew this film was going to be a train wreck but what I got was somewhat unexpected. You would have to be living under a rock or traveling through time in the Tardis to not have seen the promotional prostitution this film shoved in our faces. The hope was this was going to be another blockbuster delivered by Marvel Studios. Though I really hated the X-Men films after the 2nd one they have had pretty solid success and with the insane numbers the power house team of the Avengers and all their spin offs brought in Marvel did the unthinkable. They chose to revitalize the Fantastic Four to incorporate them into the grand scene of the MCU but their execution was so far from good that I would actually had preferred the studio buy the rights to the 1994 film and just release that instead. At least that movie made some sort of sense and kept the characters true to the comic. This film however… Well not so much.
Warning, if you do want to watch this film and don’t want spoilers don’t go any further because I sprinkled spoilers all through this thing.
First thing that annoyed me more than anything was the timeline. The film opens in 2007 where Reed Richards (played by Miles Teller as older Reed, just looked tired and awkward through the whole thing) is a young child who is basically Lewis, the main protagonist from Meet the Robinsons. Side note if you’ve not seen that film you should, its fun. He is the cliche too smart for his own good and is made fun of by classmates and his teachers instead of being supported and encouraged. He is caught trying to steal a final piece for his teleportation machine by Ben Grimm, a classmate of Reeds who comes from trailer trash abusive father and drunk mother cliche out of their junk yard. They two become friends because Ben wants to escape and Reed says he can make it happen (I’m reading between the lines here). Fast forward to high school science fair. Reed has created a more stable table sized teleportation device. He shows it to the judges, proving it works buuuuuuuuuuut he’s disqualified because “This is a science fair not a magic fair!”… Yeah. Judges from a science fair don’t know enough about science to fathom that this kid created something highly scientific but instead have explosive verbal diarrhea all over him.
But wait! Could it be? Dr. Franklin Storm (Played by Reg E. Cathey) a man who spent years creating inter dimensional travel who needs the missing link to his work just so happens to be at the very same science fair to see Reed use his machine then offers him a full scholarship to the “Baxter Foundation” and building a machine large enough for humans. He of course convinces him with hot *cough cough* daughter Sue and a dirt sample? Wow this is the luckiest day of this kids life, talk about coincidences! So Dr. Storm Johnny Storms father who is decidedly African American in this film but somehow without background is also the adopted father of still caucasian Sue then begins calling Reed and Ben his children too. Like some bizarro world scientific version of Oliver Twist. They are introduced to Victor Von Doom, edgy douchebag too smart too cool Hipster who’s angry at the world who I can only imagine constantly has florence and the machine playing in his head. Fast forward a few minutes after they make one successful teleport with a chimp they are all jazzed and say they are ready for human testing before even checking the chimp for a few days to ensure nothing happened to it. Dr. Allen is excited and says he wants to contact NASA to start exploration. You know, trained astronauts who trained for years and have the skills to handle themselves, sounds reasonable yes? Nope! Our band of hero’s and Victor turn into whiney angsty teenagers who begin drinking and crying about how nobody will ever remember them, nobody remembered the scientists who built the rocket only Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. So they decide in a drunken stupor that they were more than qualified and travel but not before Reed contacts Ben who still lives in their crappy little town of Oyster Bay hammering into the audience that his life is crap to tell him he was there from the beginning so he deserves to go. Not Sue by the way who they stuck on the computers. Nope guys only for this trip…
Now before I go any further I have to say that all the way until they actually travel to the other planet and get their superpowers this just felt like a forced pathetic teen drama the CW cooked up with cringe worthy banter being forced out by the actors, Reed is into Sue but she and Victor have luke warm sexual tension. She finds him annoying but he is smitten by her. The whole thing is like a sad One Tree Hill episode set in a, dare I even say scifi superhero film. The utterly embarrassing performances by Toby Mcguire and Kirsten Dunst as awkward teens with sexual tension was Oscar worthy by comparison. To say there was any sort of chemistry between the cast of this movie would be a Benghazi level lie. I wont get overly furious and paint a wonderfully playful picture of how I would rather have my dick chewed off by a geriatric on bath salts then watch this again. Even though I do consider this to be about as entertaining as sitting in a bathtub full of abortion soup I just don’t have the energy on this one. It was literally so bleh, over used, tired and a lack luster effort giving by everyone involved that you could literally see the actors not giving a shit throughout this mediocre crap fest. In the quiet moments of the film you could hear a collective sigh of boredom.
Regardless of what Trank tried to say he was the director, he directed this film! The studio didn’t make the lack of chemistry happen, the studio didn’t tell the cast to act poorly and the studio didn’t tell Trank who’s only other directing gig was Chronicle to copy that piece of shit film! (I’m side stepping for a moment to offer comparisons) Chronicle was a film about 3 teens who fall into a cave find this powerful energy pool and discover they have powers soon after. One kid comes from an abusive home, one tries to understand it and the third is just kind of there. They spend a great deal of time arguing and fighting amongst themselves. This Fanatic Four movie has teens teleport to another dimension, find a pool of powerful energy, get superpowers, spend time fighting amongst themselves, one comes from an abusive home, one is trying to study and figure out what it is and the other two… I think you get where I’m going with this. For Trank to shit on the studio because the film sucked displays nothing more than continued childish and unprofessional actions that many reported him having on set which eventually led to him losing a directing gig for Star Wars. Now Back to the movie!
Okay so after they get their super fantastical powers and leave Victor (Dr. Doom) behind because he gets consumed by the power and “falls to his death” they get sucked back into our world at the last minute cliche they pass out then are taken into government custody. Reed escapes after a tense moment of the film forcing its rape hungry cock down the throats of the audience with out of place over dramatic music and Reed leaving his best friend Ben behind saying I’m sorry cliche. This movie is so full of bad over used cliches and inappropriate music its unreal. Imagine Sylvester Stallone writing a drama about the life of Anne Frank, Danny Elfman writing the music, Michael Bay producing it and Werner Herzog directing. Sounds like a mess
full of inappropriate music, dialog, and execution right? Yeah well…
A year passes and now the 3 remaining members are being forced to work on perfecting their powers to be used as military weapons cliche because they were lied to by the military saying they would help them be cured if they helped them cliche.
The machine the government and Dr. Storm built after the first was destroyed by our *holding back laughter* hero’s isn’t working so only now after a year they need to find Reed. Sue who can find patterns in anything because they needed to give her reasons for being there unlike Jessica Alba who’s only character development was giving fanboys hard ons is called to track down Reed, she of course does in no time because of a flimsy reference made earlier in the film regarding Captain Nemo. They track him down in a ghettoed Spanish speaking country, you know, kind of like Bruce Banner.
Why is it every superhero who needs to run off and hide goes to Spanish speaking countries to work on their science stuff and is only just found during a critical time? *Sigh* Anyway they find him and after we see about 12 seconds of action teasing us with the fact that Reed know’s how to use his powers by taking out some trained military guys by being bendy… Ben comes in and headbutts him. Yup… allowing them to take him back and forcing him to work on their science stuff kind of like what the Nazi’s did in WWII. So in this film the American government are basically Nazis. Blah blah Reed comes in and magically knows what to do to the point that its even written in the script to show just how awesome he is, whether it was intended to make fun of itself or not we may never know but the absurdity in this film could not have fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes could it? Not in Hollywood? Never In Hollywood!
Reed – “I might need 10 minutes.” Dr. Allen – “To Do what?”
Reed – “I need to make a couple adjustments to the source code you have a few steps that are out of order.”
Dr. Allen – “It can’t be that simple.” Wah wah waaahhhhhh…
So they finally, at the pace of a fucking slug trying to move with a nail driven through it on a salt lick decide to go back to the other dimension where they meet up with long thought dead Victor who comes back just to be like “Fuck you and your planet! Imma Kill all ya’ll yo!” and just fucking murders tons of people on his way back to the other dimension except of course our hero’s who he easily could have caught them off guard but nope just stuns them and takes off but not
before killing Dr. Storm who regurgitates the whole family is important, with great power comes great responsibility stick together cause you’re all family because I said so blah blah long sigh final breath which causes the four of them to rush in after Victor with zero strategy even after they saw him murder people without even touching them. Once inside Dr. Doom, who I have to say the CG sad attempt to make him look good was about as well executed as the Green Lantern. He looked foolish. So anyway his plan was to rip off the final bad guy plan King Koopa came up with in the Mario Bro’s film from the early 90’s. “I’m going to destroy your planet by bringing it to my planet joining both dimensions killing everyone! Muwhahahahahaha” Then he says “There is no Dana only Zuul” Uh ugh I mean “There is no Victor only Doom.” Yup… There is an actiony fight between the 4 and Doom after Reed gets inspirational by saying we can defeat him if we fight together!!!! It wasn’t that dramatic but Jesus the final battle speech by Kristin Stewart in Snow White and the Huntsman was more inspiring than this dribble. They somehow defeat Doom because, teamwork. And the crowd goes wild! “yaaay…”
I am not joking or over exaggerating by saying in this entire film there is maybe 5 minutes of actual action happening. Which if I wanted to watch a bunch of douchey teens talk about their problems and try to cope with life I’d watch Dawson’s Creek not a superhero film.
Finally the end shows the four of them sitting across a table from the military team who basically imprisoned them and said they are done and are leaving. The Military guy’s are like, what if we say no and in this movies PG/PC world Johnny Storm shocks us all with a line delivered in the trailer “Say yes.”
Which is silly. At this point the Avengers are established, other superheros are around yet that old prick is like yeah I’m going to say no, then what?! looking at the very people who he trained to be weapons. So at the end they’re given what they ask for, a nice place in Vermont to work, they’re overlooking their new workspace trying to think of a name for themselves and after silly forced banter between the cast Ben (The Thing) says “That’s Fantastic” Then Reed is like “That’s perfect!” aaaaaaaaaand roll credits. Which is exactly what they did.
As a whole this film was just tired, the casting choices were bad, the story was bad and I feel bad for watching it. The poor deliveries are a direct result of him and everybody else on this project just not caring about the subject material. This is the 3rd attempt at a FF film and I can say that they have 3 strikes against them. Those characters and story are bleh to begin with and this should be a clear sign that the audience does not want to see this “family” lead a film franchise. With all the well done superhero films out there I feel this one particularly not only missed the mark but have knocked Marvel down a few pegs. My advice, watch this movie when its out for rental if you really have a hankering to do so. It’s not worth going to the cinema’s to see. It’s boring unoriginal and the only “new” content they brought only hurt the film more. I give this film a 3/10 because it had a lot of potential to really breathe life into this storyline and introduce them into the MCU world where a crossover into Spiderman and other Marvel films could be possible but all it did was continue to disappoint by not only dropping the ball but deflating it and throwing it in a pit of fire.
