Movie Review: Fantastic Four (2015)

[Dave Gray]

Fantastic Four (2015)

Premise: A group of scientist teleport to another dimension and gain superhuman abilities.

Rating: This is a movie that exists.

I have heard this movie is hot garbage.  It is not.  It is merely bland, brings nothing new or interesting to the genre, and is incredibly outshined by pretty much every good superhero film that tries to push a boundary.  It's like cutting a piece of cardboard into a square and hanging it on the wall like a painting.  It doesn't have any content that will offend you, but it's not going to inspire anyone as art, either.

For all of the bad superhero films that make you cringe (like the 2005 and 2007 versions), this doesn't do that.  For the most part, this movie lacks any kind of fun or heart at all and takes itself pretty seriously.  The setup of the film (aside from a pretty dumb flashback intro) is decent and sets in motion the basics of the Fantastic Four origin.  I'm not an expert on this team, but I understand their basic powers.  Most of the film, you're waiting for this stuff to happen.  And it does, as you'd expect -- without surprises, without any noteworthy drama that you didn't see coming from a mile away.

The villain, Dr. Doom, is lame.  He is a modernized version of the classic character that gives us a practical reason for his look.  I liked the idea, but the character design is pretty terrible.  Also, I can't help but be bothered that the guy's name is Victor Von Doom.  The uneven feeling of a serious take on the character with a super hokey name feels off.  ...minor gripe.

The action is almost non-existent.  There is one cookie-cutter action sequence at the end of the movie, that has the "sky-laser" that it seems every movie these days has.  That fight happens on a barren landscape.  And there's action that's alluded to that show off each character's powers, but we don't actually get to watch much of it.

When I think of the Fantastic Four, this movie isn't really what I signed up for.  It's not even that it's awful -- if this were an original movie, I think it'd have been better received.  It's just to compare a film like Avengers to this is absolutely night and day.  This is as shallow as a puddle. 

All that said, there are some weird, body-horror elements where these characters are discovering their oddities.  You get to see Reed Richards contort his way through an A/C vent to escape a military facility, for example.  It's a neat way to show off his stretch abilities, but it comes at the cost of him using it for traditional superhero reasons, like saving people or fighting bad guys.   There is some of that, but this movie plays like a horror-inspired origin story instead, without the superhero part.

One last thing that I feel is worth commenting on is the race of Johnny Storm.  Johnny Storm is traditionally white in the comics and is played here (as is his father) by a black actor.  Now, I'm all for changing up character races in movies like this, because it ain't the 60s and everybody isn't white.  Nick Fury, Perry White...these things never bother me.  I do, however, take issue with the race-swapping for this specific character, simply because his sister, Sue Storm is also a member of the team, and she's still white.  I feel they'd have been better off changing the race of both children or another character (like Ben Grimm), if they felt they needed the diversity.  As is, now Sue Storm is adopted and it adds another layer to the character dynamics that doesn't need to be there.  They also use screen time to discuss the adoption, but not enough to really explore how being a white girl raised in a black family might affect a character, or what adoption into a family means (something that the FF is about anyway).  In fact, the characters of Sue and Johnny play like strangers.  It's just noticeable and unnecessary -- feels like they made the swap to check a box, without putting in the care to delve into it.  The actor, Michael B Jordan does a pretty good job at capturing the persona of Johnny Storm, so it's not an awful casting job.  ...just one that seems to distract.

The bookends of this film are kind of gross.  The setup makes me hate the characters in the world.  Reed Richard's is clearly a boy genius, but his teacher treats him like an idiot for some reason and his parents, as well.  And the end of the film is a ham-fisted "let's come up with a name" discussion. 

Overall, I can't recommend this movie, simply because it doesn't do anything worth recommending.  I'll probably forget I saw it by tomorrow.  But it's still the best Fantastic Four movie out there.

[Tenshot13]

I fell asleep towards the middle, and woke up right at the "action" scene.  Shit movie.

[Sunstroke]

I've tried watching this one twice...but both times, I stopped watching before the movie even got to the halfway point.

I gave it one star...and consider it to possibly be the worst comic book movie ever made.

[mecadonzilla]

It's horrible.  I wasn't aware a superhero movie could get worse after the heroes get their powers, but they were able to pull that feat. 

I couldn't help but think of the Netflix season of Arrested Development and Tobias whenever The Thing was revealed.

[Brian Fein]

I actually saw this movie this weekend, and was mildly disappointed.  I applaud your review, though.

I felt that the whole "research of another dimension" angle seemed to contradict the original storyline.  I also thought the modernized Dr. Doom was hokey and slapped together poorly, and had only a brief appearance at the end.  There was no real development of him as a villain.

I didn't care for how they forced Ben into it - he really had ZERO to do with the story other than they needed someone to be The Thing.   

I'd be shocked if they tried to follow this up with a sequel, and prefer the original Jessica Alba Fantastic Four by a lot.