Originally published August 9, 2015 on FrontRowCentral.com
Watching Fantastic Four is like watching two trains collide in slow motion.
You can see where things are headed and you’re powerless to stop it. The only thing in your control is whether or not you’re going to witness the ensuing calamity, but of course you are, because who the hell doesn’t love watching a trainwreck? I’m not going to say “Don’t watch Fantastic Four,” because superhero movies are our new national pastime, so instead I’ll say this: I finally understand all the comic book fans who complain about movies ruining the things they love. Only this time, the things I love are movies, and 20th Century Fox is standing over this one with a flamethrower.
The film begins well enough by once again introducing our heroes. Ever since he was a little kid, Reed Richards (Miles Teller) has dreamed of building a working teleportation machine. With his best buddy and junkyard hookup Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), Richards builds one that not only works, but also catches the eye of scientist Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey). Storm believes Richards’ machine is the key to traveling between dimensions, and hires Richards to complete his project with Storm’s daughter Sue (Kate Mara) and delinquent wunderkind Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell). Realizing that government stooge Dr. Allen (Tim Blake Nelson) is about to sweep them under the rug of history, Reed, Victor, Ben and Sue’s brother Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) suit up to become the first humans to set foot in another dimension.
While it may sound like every Fantastic Four origin you’ve ever heard (I’m told it’s the Ultimate origin, specifically), the details in between are what make this opening act so promising. Dr. Storm recognizes that his generation is to blame for the state of the world, and sees in his children the tools and willpower to fix it. There’s an environmentalist streak running through this first act that the film never capitalizes on, but it would’ve been a welcome direction. The scenes of Reed, Sue and Victor working on their machine play out like one of those GE commercials about how science can save the world. Storm sells this alternate dimension, which he dubs Planet Zero, as a world of untapped resources, and at first glance it’s a gorgeous sci-fi landscape brimming with possibilities.
However, no sooner do our heroes begin exploring Planet Zero than it’s energy gives them all special abilities (that they keep calling disabilities) and the film quickly shifts gears into an hour of ill-conceived superhero nonsense. Fantastic Four supposedly had an even more troubled production than last month’s Ant-Man, and while we may never see Chronicle director Josh Trank’s original vision for this film, I can’t fathom how it could be any worse than what it became. The moment our protagonists actually gain their powers is the first sign that we might be in trouble. Ben is transformed into The Thing by a swarm of rocks flying at his face. Johnny becomes The Human Torch thanks to an equally specific blast of fire. Meanwhile, Sue is zapped invisible from the other side of the portal, and Reed just…sorta…wakes up all stretchy. The aftermath, during which Dr. Storm looks on in horror at what’s happened to his children, is actually kind of affecting, but the moment itself is hilariously hokey.
This shouldn’t necessarily be a problem, because the same blast of energy giving the Fantastic Four their four different powers is literally their origin story. There’s really no other way you can spin it that wouldn’t make it hokey. There are ways you can spin it poorly, though. For example, one of Sue’s defining traits in this film is that she’s obsessed with pattern recognition. She listens to music while she’s working to help her think, even going so far as to explain to Reed the patterns inherent in Portishead. So you might think that the same blast of energy turning her invisible while turning her brother into Fryguy might present Sue with a problem to solve. But instead, the film plays it off as a freak accident and Sue’s latent OCD only becomes useful after Reed goes on the run from Johnny Law, where she’s forced to do some Grade-A movie hacking to ping his location via email.
After Reed flees the scene of the accident, the other three (Doom disappears to become the bad guy offscreen) work with the military to find ways to weaponize themselves. There’s the kernel of some character development here, but while Sue sits around and mopes about not wanting to be a weapon, Johnny seems pretty okay with it. And despite showing him wrecking things around the world in montage, the film never once asks Ben how he feels about it. Why bother, right? Doom is obviously primed for a comeback, and once he’s revealed to be a telekinetic CPR dummy melted over an air conditioner, the climactic fight can begin and we can all go home.
As mentioned above, we don’t know the specifics of how Fox cut up Trank’s film, but if I had to wager a guess, I’d say the hackjob starts as soon as the film deploys its “ONE YEAR LATER” card. At this point, all bets are off as to the rhyme or reason for anything that follows. Shit just starts happening with seemingly no motivation other than needing to put five characters in the same room so they can have a special effects fight. It’s actually kind of amazing to see the gears inside this film’s head suddenly come to a halt.
I still believe there’s a good movie waiting to be made with these characters. (And maybe even one with these actors, because they’re definitely not the problem.) If this is the best Fox can do in 2015, though, I doubt we’ll ever see that film. I’d hate to end this review on another down note, though, so I’ll try to close things out by saying something positive: Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four actually manages the impressive feat of making Tim Story’s Fantastic Four seem like an entertaining lark in comparison.
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