I’m sure by now you’ve heard how much of a failure the most recent Fantastic 4 has been, in both box office performance and critically. Well, I have yet to subject myself to this movie... but my best friend has! He called me after he got out of a screening and was crying hysterically. Apparently, it was so much worse than what I’ve heard anyone else say so far. So, I’m going to let him write this review. The whole thing, besides this intro, will be his writing. If it looks like it was written with nothing but unbridled rage, that’s because it was.
“I wish I were dead.” These words were whispered to myself at around the hour mark of this hour-and-forty-minute movie. Now, we’ve all seen bad movies. We’ve all seen Legend of Hercules. We’ve all seen Twilight, or bits of it anyway. Because of this, you might think you know what you’re getting into with Fant4stic 4. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’re don’t. You might think you do, but then you see this… THING, and you realize that you didn’t even know what a bad movie was until you saw this. So, where to begin with this thing? Oh, SLIGHT spoilers ahead for those who care.
Firstly, I want to make it clear that this is not only a bad adaptation of the comic series, but that it is also, first and foremost, a bad movie on its own. As such, I will list the adaptational sins it commits before I talk about the movie itself to get them out of the way.
- The characters. It seems as if the writers looked at a mere one-sentence character description from the back of a lunchbox from the 70’s to “fully” develop the movie’s characters. Examples: Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) is smart and stretchy. Ben Grimm (The Thing) is a rock monster who can punch really hard. Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) is smart, sassy, sexy, and can turn invisible. Johnny Storm (Human Torch) is a rebel who can turn into a flame ball. Dr. Doom (apologies, VICTOR DOMSHEV) is evil.
- The sense of family. If there is one word that doesn’t fit in this movie, it is the word “family” and all that it entails. The Fantastic 4 are known far and wide as the first true comic FAMILY. They were a family first, and a superhero team second. There is NO sense of family in this movie. Franklin Storm (Sue and Johnny’s father) tells them to work together as a family in order to save the world, but THEY NEVER DO. Until the script tells them to of course, but that’s for later.
- COLOR. One thing that everyone remembers about the F4 (including the Tim Story 2005 and 2007 films with Chris Evans of Captain America fame and the unreleased cheese-fest that is Roger Corman’s film from the nineties) is their corniness and the vibrant color scheme that they had. You want to know the extent of the colors of this movie? BROWN, GREY, AND BLACK. Hardly any blues, oranges, whites, yellows, greens, or any other color associated with the Fantastic Four.
- THE TONE. This will be discussed more in depth later, but for the moment, here is this: the F4 are well-known as a light-hearted, heart-warming comic series. This movie decided to turn them into a (no pun intended) doom-and-gloom team that only talks about the bad and never the sense of hope or goodness in the world. ONLY the bad and gloomy.
- Dr. Doom. Arguably one of the greatest comic villains is butchered in such a way that the only way he resembles the original is in his name alone, which they only BARELY get right in the first place. On top of which, he doesn’t even become Doom until the last 15 minutes. Dr. Doom in the comics was the ruler of the country called Latveria, and he wanted to conquer the world. In this, he’s a hacker who wants to destroy the world.
- The Thing. This could go for everyone, but Ben Grimm is the character that got the worst treatment in terms of character and story. He, if you don’t know, is Reed Richards’ best friend who gets turned into the rock monster known as The Thing. He grows to hate Reed due to him seemingly abandoning him after they get their powers. However, they rekindle said friendship within one, singular scene with one, singular, non-topical line. Because that’s how that works. Also, his famous catchphrase, “It’s clobberin’ time”? That was what his older brother said to him before beating him up. Ben is given no motivation to ever say that himself, and when he does, it’s more wasted than “cowabunga” was in Ninja Turtles 2014.
So, that’s that. Now I shall talk about the sins the film commits as a movie in general, of which there are many. Firstly, the fact that NOTHING HAPPENS IN THIS MOVIE. Oh, stuff does happen, but nothing interesting. There is no character development; no time spent on who these people are outside of the one sentence description mentioned earlier. NOTHING. Even in Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2, they were playing chess. If that happened in this, I wouldn’t be complaining. TWILIGHT got a basic movie-making thing right over Fantastic 4! Let that sink in! You want to know how long it takes before they get their powers? An hour. An hour into this hour and a half long movie. That hour is spent sitting around doing nothing while the pompous cliched government officials who “just don’t get it” degrade our “heroes” with no meaningful development between them. After they get their powers, they do more sitting around doing nothing until Doom shows up, they battle for five minutes, and then the movie ends.
Secondly, the inconsistencies in this thing are off the charts. Like I mentioned earlier, the friendship that is broken between Reed and Ben is fixed with a single brief line, but there are also a few other holes as well. Sue Storm can create force-fields around her body that can also house other people. They establish briefly that she can’t breathe while she is in one, so she needs to learn to hold her breath for extended periods of time, which is actually a cool idea that could come into play later.
However, the next time she is shown making a force field, she and her passengers easily breathe inside of it, no breath-holding needed. One more example is how they get their powers. Have you seen the movie The Fly? If not, check them out, both versions are pretty good in my opinion. If you haven’t seen it, the main character gets turned into a humanoid fly when one of them gets inside of his teleporter device.
In this movie, Johnny Storm becomes The Human Torch because flames get inside of his tube when they warp back to our universe, and Ben Grimm gets rocks stuck in his tube. Reed… is given no explanation. He just… stretches. Sue Storm (who doesn’t go with them) gets hit by the blast of energy when they get back. As does most of New York City, so why the full population doesn’t get invisibility powers, I have no idea. Dr. Doom… falls into a pool of Nickelodeon Slime. You remember that stuff? Well, it apparently gives you the incredible superpower of… making things do stuff you want them to. Great power. Makes no sense, this movie is stupid, moving on.
Thirdly and finally, the tone of this movie is so far off what it should be and so unpleasant you don’t want to watch it. This movie tries to be so dark that it becomes BORING because all the characters talk about is how much the world sucks and should just die off, which is Doom’s eventual plan (using the Omega Lock from Transformers Prime to do so, by the way). Here is an excerpt of dialogue: “The world sucks, Reed. I want to die. You ever think about how everything is terrible? I do, all the time. Let me tell you about it.” Shut. Up.
Also, the tone and look of the movie reminds me of Divergent, or Maze Runner, or any YA Dystopian novel movie that came out after Hunger Games (which I exclude from that list). Even if Miles Teller (who was also in Divergent and Insurgent) wasn’t in this movie, I would still be saying that. It is full of teen angst (which, okay, the characters are supposed to be teens with the exception of Doom, which makes his perving on Sue REALLY disturbing), but it is the kind of teen angst that seems to scream, “I’m faking being depressed to make it seem like I’m smarter than I actually am when in reality I just want attention because I’m a self-obsessed brat!” Ugh.
That goes double for the dialogue, too. Not only is it full of that angsty BS, it’s also terribly written. Special mention goes to the line that Sue says to Victor (before he becomes Doom) when he offhandedly mentions that Earth is screwed: “Geez, lighten up. Dr. Doom over here, eh?” This movie needs to go die in a hole.
In conclusion, Fant4stic 4 is not only the worst comic book adaptation of all time, it is also one of the worst movies of all time. It has taken the top spot for me, over Moulin Rouge and Interstellar. At least those had bits of entertainment to them, this literally has nothing. The only way I can see this movie being any sort of useful is if you want to get revenge on someone and want to utterly torture them. You don’t even need a rating list, this thing is a 0 across the board, and you probably already assumed that. Don’t see this movie. You may think you want to, but trust me, as someone who thought that… don’t. For your sanity.
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Well, you heard it from my friend everyone. Fant4stic (the poster makes the title look that way), from what he describes, seems to be just a half-assed effort by Fox that was slapped together just so they could keep the rights to the characters out of Marvel’s hands. I’m shocked that such a poor-quality superhero movie has been made in this day and age. Even if you didn’t personally like the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, or Man of Steel, or even a few of the Marvel movies, there’s no denying that there was more quality care and effort put into them than what my friend has seen. He went on an hour long rant on the phone with me. What he wrote here didn’t even cover all of it.
So, with all that said, I would advise everyone to skip out on this movie. Go see Ant-Man again, or the latest Mission Impossible (which I have yet to see but have heard good things about it). If I ever see Fant4stic for myself, I’ll write my own review. Don’t expect it soon, though.
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