Marvel’s first family cannot seem to catch a break. After Tim Story delivered two Fantastic Four films almost a decade ago to mixed reviews, Chronicle’s Josh Trank was tasked with bringing Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch and The Thing back to life in 2015 for Fox.
Deciding to go younger than the characters were painted in the comics, Trank and Fox cast Miles Teller as Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, Kate Mara as Sue Storm, The Invisible Woman, Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, The Human Torch, and Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm, The Thing.
A rumor-filled Fantastic Four shoot followed, with re-shoots and headlines claiming the studio mettled with the filmmaker’s vision. Trank even released a statement to the fact that his vision for the film a year ago was much different than what audiences will see now that Fantastic Four is on the big screen.
However we got here, the result is bland at best.
We meet Richards and Grimm as young kids with dreams of riding Reed’s scientific brilliance all the way to fame and fortune. Richards believes he can develop a system where human teleportation is possible. He has succeeded at sending inanimate objects, but no one seems to be willing to give him the chance to try it out on living matter. Enter Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey), the father of Johnny and Sue, who recruits Reed to come to his facility where they too have been flirting with teleportation and Dr. Storm believes that Richards holds the missing ingredient to a successful human experiment.
The only thing, when they do go through with it, it leads them to another dimension and when they return, it is with astounding superhuman powers.
A scientist who is already there working on Dr. Storm’s project is established as someone who was never sure about the new arrivals. With a name like Dr. Doom, one can see trouble coming from him a mile away. And that’s fine. That is right out of the comic book series. But the way Doom is used in Trank’s film, he doesn’t even become a villain in any capacity until late in the third act, and even at that time, we cannot see what is so scary and fearsome about him.
He’s threatening our world? Really? It more seems like all he wants to do is retire back to his alternative world and it is the Fantastic Four that build him up to be something evil that never (ever) comes to fruition. It’s hard to have a superhero movie when there is no real villain to root against. Why do we care what these super-humans are doing? The truth is, we don’t.
Teller, Mara, Bell and Jordan are all top notch actors. But their performances in Fantastic Four are so incredibly flat. It reminds The Movie Mensch of another film where the actors had Oscar-worthy talent and seemed to be acting in a fourth grade play… The Phantom Menace. Perhaps it speaks volumes about director Trank and how he was in over his head? Maybe it has more to do with a script that was penned by Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past) and a committee of other writers?
Who knows, but there is enough blame to go around in this disaster. Even the special effects are the lamest we’ve seen in some time. Trank got more with less with his found footage superhero origins story Chronicle than he does with this mess.
Why is it so hard for someone to get the Fantastic Four cinematic journey right? Perhaps after this fiasco, the rights for the series will head back to Marvel studios and they can make something of it. Surely we won’t get a sequel. What is honestly more likely is our feeble foursome will do a crossover movie with X-Men so that Fox can keep the rights for a few years more.
Maybe then they’ll figure out how to properly give them a story worthy of their title.
Grade: D