C&C Review - 'Fantastic Four'
No Thrills, No Fun, No Hope
By Alex Burns
Get ready, it is indeed clobberin' time as the Fantastic Four reboot finally bows in cinemas worldwide, unfortunately it's not the kind of clobberin' time you were expecting. Fantastic Four is a dour, mind numbing experience that doesn't reach any of the potential a so-called modern take on a classic tale merits. What's worse are the little glimmers of what could have been and as the credits roll you wonder why the heck it didn't.
Josh Trank goes for the Chronicle feel as he adapts Marvel's first family in their first movie outing since the kid friendly and critically challenged Tim Story films and it doesn't pay off. Whereas Chronicle benefited from the heightened realism that is on show here it had one defining aspect that separates it completely from this film, it's fun. While you can understand the mindset behind such a u turn in tone after the success of realistic superhero movies in X-Men and The Dark Knight, there's just no forgiving a complete lack of joy in a film concerning characters who can stretch real far and fly around on fire.
The beginning of the movie may as well be the whole thing, it seemingly never moves forward, endless bland lab corridors and boring "realistic" science experiments dominate the films running time and there's little action to get the adrenaline pumping, this is a superhero movie right? There's no opening act like Age of Ultron's attack on the Hydra base and little to no superheroics until a third of the way through, the fact that this is an origin story is no excuse for having no actual story to fill the all this drab inter-dimensional travel talk.
The cast are given nothing to do except detail plot, there's no character development or arc here, the team barely spend any meaningful time together. You'll get two lines of chemistry filled dialogue between Miles Teller's Reed Richards and Michael B Jordan's Johnny Storm then you'll be subjected to another five minutes of characters looking at blue prints and concocting made up science. Just punch a bad guy already! It is unreal just how much of this film is spent not showing any of the heroes, that said when they do make an appearance it's unfortunately brief and they are often not together but separated by a been-there-done that-a-million-times US military wants to abuse superpowers plot device. For all the talk of reinvention this origin story doesn't even get the basics right.
The positives are few and far between, the heroes discovering their powers for the first time is a standout, Jamie Bell's Ben Grimm manages a rare piece of emotion in the film as he succumbs to his horrific transformation. Johnny Storm's terror at awaking on fire is chilling and Reed Richards knocks the sci-fi ball out of the park as he awakes with an elongated body all tied up, his screams for his friends are powerful. It's a shame the cast weren't given more moments like these, they are all incredibly talented actors and when they're all on screen together you get the feeling this should have worked so it's all the more frustrating that the approved script has the Fantastic Four become the solemn solos and hang out with themselves too much.
Oh and there is a villain by the way, Dr Doom rolls up for his grand finale spouting cliche bad guy dialogue and roaming the Area 57 in Terminator fashion popping soldiers heads with his mind and taking assault rifle shots to his body with little concern. It's sequence that should have invoked fear and panic but it's too little too late and with next to no set-up you can't expect a rewarding pay off. The final showdown is a by the numbers "we're stronger together" climax that does nothing to improve the film and the whole wait for the sequel ending is the studio placed cherry on top of a bland, bloating cake.
Whatever happened with Josh Trank's original vision will no doubt be disputed but I'm not convinced the guy had anything special here to begin with, this is no Edgar Wright leaving Ant-Man deal, that movie still ticked so many boxes and endured as much development hell as this project, the fact is this Fantastic Four reboot just hasn't got a clue.
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