Review by John Delia
Dropping below the level of the previous sequel, Fantastic Four fails to entertain. Slow moving, lacks excitement, fails to intrigue and for all intense and purposes, unremarkable. The movie that reboots the Marvel characters does nothing more than rehash the story of how they came to be and the introduction of Doctor Doom. The production does not match the Disney’s Avengers products that have taken the superhero genre by storm. Dismal sets, novice direction and 80’s TV special effects doom the film. Originally intended to be remastered for release in 3D, the producers must have realized the film as a failure and trashed the idea to save money.
In this poorly made sci-fi “actioner†(and I put that in quotes for the lack of any excitement what-so-ever) we meet young Reed Richards (Owen Judge) as a middle school student who has a brilliant idea of transporting matter to another world and back. He’s doubted by his teacher and his idea is unsupported by his parents, but his best friend Ben Grimm (Evan Hannemann) thinks he’s a genius. Years later we find Reed (Miles Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) at a science fair with their project. After a false start Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his daughter Sue (Kate Mara) meet with Reed and offer him a chance to show his abilities at his institute the Baxter Foundation.
At the institute Reed meets Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell) the master of teleportation that is on the brink of completing the Quantum Gate. The two go to work on the mode of transportation designed to send man to another dimension they dub Planet Zero. While there Reed gets introduced to Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), Sue’s brother. All this takes place in the first hour of the boring movie before any action begins. When the sci-fi excitement finally starts, it fizzles out in short order.
The film falls under the leadership of Josh Trank who had some success at directing and writing Chronicle a science fiction thriller filmed with handheld cameras to look like it was a documentary of sorts (and at a very low budget of around $12 million dollars). The film is actually pretty good and the special effects decent. In Fantastic Four his budget gets massively increased to an estimated $122,000,000 and for some odd reason looks as if it were an independent low budget film. Maybe the studio looked over his shoulder one too many times or Trank just doesn’t have the magic needed to turn straw into gold.
The filming of Fantastic Four has a very amateurish feel to it. Costumes are mediocre and the blue screen effects are way out of whack. The backgrounds of the Planet Zero set look like a photograph coupled with animation of what the world must have looked like in the mind of its creator or from pages of the original comic book. It may be what the original comic book had in mind, but with today’s modern techniques in the art of filmmaking, better CGI could have brought a world more palatable to science fiction lovers. As for Dr. Doom, his costume looks like a robot refurbished from films like Lost in Space or a Halloween costume someone made from things he found in his garage. If there is the use of CGI it’s not the kind you’ll find in Avengers. Mr. Fantastic’s (Miles Teller) stretchy body looks gross and his retractable rubber arms are very fake looking. Invisible Woman’s (Kate Mara) ability to disappear and the power to push things away look so hokey I just stared in disappointment.
Actually, Fox hasn’t been able to reboot anything Marvel. The attempt at The Amazing Spider-Man was a dull rehash of previous, more exciting releases of the superhero and should have sent up a red flag for the Fantastic Four retread. The cost of The Amazing Spider-Man listed in IMDb was $230,000,000 yet the USA box-office take for the film amounted to $262,000,000, another red flag. Although the Fantastic Four does have a following and die-hard Marvel superhero followers will want to add it to their must see list, I do not foresee a success. It should fall far below the recent Marvel’s Ant-Man, an introductory character that was not familiar to most sci-fi audiences, but had the mastery of Disney behind it.
A few comments on the acting. It’s a bad day for Miles Teller, the young rising star gets caught up here in a situation of weak directing and doesn’t give any energy to his role. Much like Taylor Kitsch who had to rise above his disappointing outings in the losers Battleship and John Carter, Teller will hope to get lucky on his next role. Hopefully he will rethink being part of the announced 2017 release of Fantastic Four 2, or maybe his luck will run good and Fox will scrap the project. Miles, stick to what you do best like The Divergent Series and dramas such as Whiplash where you were awesome.
Fantastic Four has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA for sci-fi action violence, and language.
FINAL ANALYSIS: A disappointing and dull reboot of the four Marvel not so fantastic super heroes. (D)
Additional Film Information:
Cast: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson, Owen Judge and Evan Hannemann
Directed and Screenplay by: Josh Trank
Genre: Sci-Fi, Marvel, Adventure, Superhero
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, and language
Running Time: 1 hr. 40 min.
Release Date: August 7, 2014
Distributed by: Twentieth Century Fox Corporation
Release Formats: 2D only