In case you were wondering, “Didn’t they just make Fantastic Four a couple years ago?” the answer is yes, ten years ago (eight years ago for the sequel) and that is most definitely not enough time for people to forget how lousy both of them were (for the record, I liked Rise of the Silver Surfer, but yes, it was lousy). Like Spider-Man, a remake was done not because they thought they could do better, but because they had to do it within a certain number of years since Surfer or lose the movie rights back to Marvel. You’d think eight years would be enough time to write a decent script, especially given that there are 54 years worth of source material to mine from, but you’d be wrong. Really, really, really wrong.
(Note: From here out, the 2015 version will be referred to by title. Also, this movie was as rotten as the bottom of a dumpster, so SPOILERS!)
Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater, and Josh Trank are the credited writers of this offense to pens, pencils, and paper, but I’m going to focus on Trank because he doubled as director. You’re probably wondering where you’ve heard his name before, but you should stop trying because you probably haven’t. His only other movie directing/writing credit is for Chronicle (2012), and while it was a very good/successful movie, it wasn’t in theaters all that long (February releases will do that). And, I’m guessing you won’t hear from him again after this movie releases and bombs (and if I’m wrong, the terrorists have won).
In the technical sense of the word – plot – Fantastic Four has one. Five people get super powers, one turns evil, the other four fight him to save the Earth. Unfortunately, that plot takes up roughly ten minutes (which contains 100% of the action scenes) of a ninety minute movie. The other eighty minutes are filled with exposition and some of the worst character development you will ever see (and not just in movies). Incidentally, it might be the shortest superhero movie ever made while simultaneously feeling longer than a three-day cricket test match in Calcutta in August.
You can tell right off the bat that the movie is going to suck because it starts with eleven-year old Reed Richards building a teleporter in his garage after basically being called an idiot by his teacher. Seven years later (it’s now 2014 in the film) and eighteen-year old Reed (Miles Teller) has improved the design and is showing it off at his high school’s science fair. For contrivance’s sake, Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his eighteen-year old adopted daughter, Sue (Kate Mara) – who just happen to be working on a government-sponsored, industrial-size version of the same device – chat with Miles and offer him a scholarship to the Baxter Institute to help them finish the device. As it turns out, Franklin runs the project, primarily employing teenage geniuses. This is where the movie obliterates your sense of disbelief because (a) why must they be teenagers and not just twenty-somethings? and (b) Teller is twenty-eight and Mara is thirty-two. I know casting choices do that all the time, but it’s impossible to believe Mara as a teenager after watching her get naked with Kevin Spacey in House of Cards.
The writing gets worse as the machine turns out to be a teleporter to a planet in another dimension rather than to somewhere else on Earth. Enter THE BIG, BAD GOVERNMENT and BIG, BAD BUSINESS EXECUTIVE (Tim Blake Nelson) who want to exploit Planet Zero (oh my god, is that really the best name Trank could come up with?!) for its resources (at least they don’t refer to them as Unobtanium). Reed, Sue’s brother, Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), and Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell) decide to take a secret trip after being told they couldn’t, bringing along Reed’s childhood friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) because, why not?
(Note: The project is government-backed and almost assuredly classified, yet Ben is allowed to waltz into the facility and laboratories because “he’s with Reed.” I’ve seen better security at a Starbucks.)
While on Zero, Victor stirs up a green energy cloud, it chases them, Victor falls in, and the rest barely escape, though all are mutated, including Sue, who was trying to bring them back to Earth. Keep in mind, this all happens around the one hour mark of the film. At this point, the movie shows us their powers, Reed wakes up and escapes the secret facility they were transferred to (Area 57, in another fit of creativity), but is captured a year later, rendering the seven minutes in between completely pointless. With the exception of Ben, Sue and Johnny aren’t even mad at him for leaving, and Ben gets over it quickly. Plus, Reed literally does nothing during that year except globe trot, so why bother having him leave at all?
The film winds down with the machine being rebuilt and an expedition bringing Victor back to Earth, where he immediately starts killing people. Victor goes back to Zero, opens a new portal to Earth, and starts sucking the matter from Earth to convert to energy on Zero. Why does Victor do this? I swear to you I’m not making this up – because humans are destroying the Earth and don’t deserve it, so he’s just going to destroy it all the way. I told you this was shitty writing.
The sad thing is just about anything would be better than what Trank and team shat out as their screenplay. First, they should have ditched the terrible opening with the children and just started with the team in the lab as actual grown-ups who have been of legal drinking age for more than a year (and give Ben an honest reason to be there for chrissakes). After the accident, it would have been more interesting to keep the four of them together, have them learn their powers and be used by the government as a tool, but have them all become resentful of being exploited. Then, in the climax, have them go on their final mission when something goes awry and Victor leaves the group. Wrap it up; end of movie. No big showdown between Victor and the others – that’s for another movie. FYI – it took me roughly three minutes to come up with that; they had EIGHT years.
Now, I want to go back to how poorly developed the characters were. In eighty minutes, we learn that Reed is really smart. Ben is not. Johnny is black and races crappy cars. Sue is white and does not race crappy cars (she also recognizes patterns; ooooooh). And Victor started the project as a child (apparently, only children are capable of inventing trans-dimensional wormhole machines) and gets mad at Reed for having a laugh with Sue. That’s it. No development of a relationship between Sue and Reed, an extremely weak relationship between Reed and Ben, and definitely no chemistry between any of them, especially between Sue and Johnny who are supposed to be siblings. Forget about the fact that she is white and he is black (a certain radio personality in Atlanta couldn’t); I’ve seen jurors act more familiar with each other than these two characters.
It should be obvious now that I thought this movie was full-on crap. Even with the red flags of the review embargos and eleventh hour screenings providing ample warning, going into the film my main thought was that it shouldn’t be too hard to improve upon the 2005 version; that it would at least be entertaining. I just didn’t think it would be possible to make a Fantastic Four movie with less action than Sister Act. But I was wrong. Really, really, really wrong.
Rating: The one thing I’m sure I’m not wrong about is that you should definitely ask for all of your money back and hope that Trank is never allowed near a summer blockbuster again.
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