Review 375: Fantastic Four (2015)

Fantastic Four is a complete Fantastic Failure and by far the Worst Superhero Movie, I have ever seen in my career.

Drawing inspiration from comic book series Ultimate Fantastic Four by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Miller and Adam Kubert. Whilst working on an inter dimensional teleporter, four outsiders, Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Susan Storm (Kate Mara), her brother Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) are transported to an alternate dimension which alters their forms in the most shocking ways imaginable. With their lives irrevocably upended, the team must learn their daunting new powers and work together to save Earth from a former friend turned enemy, Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom (Toby Kebbell).

Oh man, where do I start! Well I guess I should start at the beginning - It's a very good place to start or so I here.

This has got to be the most boring and lifeless Superhero film (not just I have ever seen) but also, in recent years. Every single acting performance is so...  dead. There's no emotion in any of these people  - the way they deliver the dialogue sounds like they’re not even happy to be in this film. 
This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given the movies troubled production.

For starters, there have been reports that Director Josh Trank was a major pain onset, he displayed erratic and isolated behavior onset, he got drunk and sometimes wouldn’t show up for work or even have a clean cut vision for the film.

The film was originally shot from May to August 2014, however 20^th Century Fox executives were reportedly dissatisfied with the footage Trank shot. Reshoots were eventually conducted in January 2015 in a vain attempt to save the project but as you more or less tell it just hasn’t worked.

The reshoot scenes are easy to spot because Kate Mara who plays Sue Storm, after filming wrapped, she cut her hair and she had to wear a wig for the reshoots. But the most evident signs that there were reshoots is the structure: To sum the movie up as a whole the first half of the film (or the first 40 mins at least) is a bore in which nothing happens.
The second half is a mess: The moment the title card: ONE YEAR LATER, appears on screen, you know something’s gone wrong as this film turns into an unmitigated mess.
It just seems the producers through out the whole middle of the movie in favor of something more simplistic or would easily wrap up the film as quickly as possible and it makes Fant4stic (as it was stylised in the poster) feel like two separate films.

All behind the scenes issues aside, Fantastic Four is a movie where (as previously mentioned) for the first 40 mins nothing happens. The only thing that's remotely interesting is initial premise and set up.
Once that premise is set up, you think "wow, that sounds interesting I wonder what's going to happen next." They do virtually little to nothing beneficial to the plot or lack thereof.
They try to build this Interdimensional Transporter and discuss...  scientific...  stuff. But none of it is interesting and none of it is really told or acted with an flair or emotion.

There are only... two action scenes in this movie and by saying two, believe me, I'm being generous, because more like 1 1/4 because the first one is over and done with in about 30 seconds and the climax only last about 2 mins. You never once feel like there's any tension in this film.

Also, this movie is just burdened with cliches i.e. The misunderstood teenagers who know better than the rest of us (Reed, Ben, Johnny and Sue), the neglectful parents and teachers who can't see the "brilliance" of their discovery (Reed's 5th Grade teacher Mr Kenny (Dan Castellsneta), Reed's parents as well as Ben abusive family).
These parents are only given brief appearances in the films opening prologue where they do something that's supposed to make us as an audience sympathies with our four protagonists and hate those aforementioned characters and it just feels so forced and preachy. They are not given a speck of depth.
There is also the kind hearted scientist who's the only person in the world who can see their brilliance and takes them under his wing to make their dream come true in the form of Sue and Johnny's father Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey). 

There is not a single aspect worth praising in this movie.

To sum up though. The pacing is sluggish (moving with the energy of a barge), the production design is drab, the cinematography is dreary, the lighting is lustreless, the editing is choppy (the film doesn’t have a natural flow i.e. a lot of the scenes don’t end they abruptly stop). The costume design lacks glitter, the special effects are at best lackluster and mediocre and terrible at worst .  

In fact the overall visual style is dark, unattractive, gloomy, ugly and unimaginative e.g.
The scene in the alternate dimension lack a sense of wonder, discovery, adventure and awe. Additionally Planet Zero lacks texture as well as depth. In fact overall visually, it looks like a Sci-Fi film from the late 1980's that's been digitally remastered for a DVD release coupled together with the overall set design from the mid 2000's.

Director Josh Trank’s direction is soulless, the characters are boring, the dialogue is stilted, the acting is lifeless, the character development is paper thin, the action is tensionless and forgettable, the score by Marco Beltrami and Philip Glass is gunk and not up to their usual standards and the whole thing comes across as if the actors were shooting the first draft of a screenplay: It’s all build up with ziltch payoff.

As previously mentioned, the acting is lifeless all round. Fantastic Four provides big roles for Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell as well as Tobey Kebbel as the villain Doctor Doom, who are very talented actors, but doesn't provide them with the material they need to pull them off convincingly. There is nothing interesting about them and you don't get to know anything about them. The "Fantastic Four" are anything but, they essentially a bunch of idiotic cardboard cutouts who gain superpowers. Lucky them. These characters pretty much have the personality of the dead corpse of Mr. Potato Head - or a lonely stone on a beach for that matter.

The film also shamelessly wastes the talents of Hollywood professionals such as Reg E. Cathey and Tim Blake Nelson. Cathey for the most part sleepwalks through the film and performs each scene he's in as though he were delivering some inspirational speech. But at least it was a smidge bit entertaining which is more than I can say for the rest of this film.

As for Time Blake Nelson, he mostly plays the douche of this film. That's about it, there's not that much to his character.

Let's hope the rights to these characters revert back to Marvel...  Need I say more? 0/5.

The Anonymous Critic.