Movie Review

Fantastic Four

The Fantastic Four was the book that launched Marvel Comics in 1961 – the first superhero team created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who went on to create Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk and The X-Men. While their other creations have become pop culture juggernauts in this current golden age of superhero movies, the Fantastic Four still have yet to be convincingly translated onto film. A 1994 production by Roger Corman was only made to retain the rights and was never released. Marvel then sold the Fantastic Four film rights to Fox (along with Daredevil and The X-Men), who made two FF films in 2005 and 2007. Both made back their respective budgets, but were not particularly well reviewed or well liked. So, like Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man, Fox decided to reboot the franchise in an attempt to copy Marvel Studio’s successful cinematic universe model. Following the soft reboot of their X-Men franchise with Days of Future Past, their hope was to revitalise the FF for a potential crossover with the X-Men.

Fox hired hot new director Josh Trank – whose 2012 found-footage take on superheroes Chronicle seemed like the perfect job application – and Days of Future Past writer Simon Kinberg to make everyone forget about Jessica Alba’s freaky blue contact lenses. But troubling rumours came up during production, with various stories implying that Trank was unable to handle the pressures of the blockbuster machine. The planned 3D conversion was cancelled to fund reshoots that were either to add more action or to fix what one Fox exec called “a mess”.

The film starts very much like you would expect the director of Chronicle to start it: with young supergenius Reed Richards and his friend Ben Grimm building a teleportation machine in their garage with scavenged parts. Skipping forward a few years, Reed (Miles Teller) is recruited by Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his daughter Sue (Kate Mara) to fix their teleportation machine – which it turns out is actually a transporter to another planet. At their facility he meets Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbel), who is totally not evil. Then they’re joined by Franklin’s “hothead” son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) for some reason. They successfully build the machine and decide to take it on a joyride to the other planet... because why else are we here? Oh, and Reed invites Ben (Jamie Bell) to come along... because why not?

Things go horribly wrong and, following the rules of 60s scifi and comics, they all get superpowers. Note: it has taken over half the film to get to this point. I almost feel like I’m spoiling the film here, except that this origin story has been told several times in several different mediums and I don’t know why someone thought it was a good idea to spend most of this movie doing it again. Much as I liked the body horror treatment of their emerging powers, it takes way too long to get there and then the film suddenly skips forward a year. From this point on it’s like you’re watching a different film – one that wants to reach an end-of-the-world battle as quickly as it can. Doom soon returns as the bigbad intent on destroying the world (but he seemed so nice!) and the new superteam must unite to defeat him. This is all fair enough and “in genre”, but the way it’s handled is so rushed and so generic and with the blandest VFX design they could muster. Miles Teller spends most of the final act of the film explaining what this CGI lightshow is and why it’s bad... because it’s not at all obvious to anyone else (including the audience) what they’re looking at. The film ends like a bad hookup: quick, disappointing, and with the suggestion that it wants to come back for more.


The film is exactly what you would expect from the production history: Trank begins making a smaller character-based film that recreates the “young people dealing with fantastic powers” vibe of Chronicle, but then the studio rewrites the ending to hit the well-worn beats of a studio blockbuster. There’s no telling whether Trank’s film would have worked without the studio’s interference – and I don’t think an extended origin story was the best idea – but what they ended up with definitely doesn’t work either. Like previous superhero bomb Green Lantern, it’s a film that only works as an introduction for another film. Fox has already scheduled Fantastic Four 2 for 2017, but the box office this coming week will most likely cut this story short. Perhaps another reboot in 2017 instead?

- Adam Raboczi

Reviews

Quick Listens

Sasha Čuha: about 'Svetozar!' & electric gusle

4ZZZ's interview with Kevin Borich

4ZZZ's radio drama 'Connie' by Joel Quick

4ZZZ's radio drama 'Morph' by Kathryn Rothe

Opera at 4ZZZ with Milijana Nikolic, mezzo-soprano & Rosario La Spina, tenor

LISI + QLD SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Join Forces

TWO DIVAS: Eva Kong & Asabi Goodman in Jazz meets the Opera concert

Voice acting by artist Ri McLean: radio drama 'Return' by Stephen Gale

Synthony hitting Riverstage Brisbane

Bardon Community Markets

SuburbiaSuburbia: Rock MUSIC, ART and SATIRE from the AU Suburbs

'My Gypsy Soul' show - Milijana Nikolic & Zokki Bugarski

Crowd Control: Stand up comedy improv competition

Aunty Donna interview: Brisbane show in Oct 2021

Eurovision Song Contest 2021 - review by Blair Martin

Gina Vanderpump - Miss Sportsman Hotel

4ZZZ's 45th Birthday special by Alex Oliver

Nazo Nazarian interview: music, culture & history

Opera Gala Concert in Brisbane: Life, love, passion

Oskar & Andy interview The Immigrants: 4ZZZ subscriber band

El Vito by Marina Poša

4ZZZ Interview: GLOBAL BANDEMIC: Worldwide Free Live Stream event

HOTA Takes Their Rage Online: Interview with Virginia Hyam, HOTA Head of Programming

Interview with Criena Gehrke CEO at HOTA about HOTA Artist Fund – Rage Against The V(irus)

Jack Vidgen - Eurovision: Australia Decides 2020

Jaguar Jonze - Eurovision: Australia Decides 2020

Mitch Tambo - Eurovision: Australia Decides 2020

Didirri - Eurovision: Australia Decides 2020

iOTA - Eurovision: Australia Decides 2020

Boban Markovic Orkestar on Balkan Beats Zed Digital / 4ZZZ

LIVE
100