Fantastic Four Review

Fantastic Four Review

Written by Huzaifa Khan on August 6, 2015.

Before this review gets started, let's just recap on the "publicity" of this flick. We went from having incredible hype in production, to atrocious BTS drama with the director involving heavy reshoots, then came onto decent trailers, followed by a REVIEW EMBARGO until 2 days of release, so I mean, it should come as no shock why Fox wanted to keep Fantastic 4 a secret from the human eyes.

Fantastic 4 is directed by Josh Trank, who previously directed the surprise-hit Chronicle, and stars Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell as the titular group of four, who obtain mysterious powers after a freak accident in space goes awry. Anyways, now that the obligatory mentioning is out of the way, let's get this "obligatory" review over with.

Looking at comic book movies today, you'd think that we have escaped the reaches of those god awful attempts we know from the past. Movies like Batman & Robin, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, Ghost Rider, and even the original Fantastic Four movies, all remind us how lucky we are to finally have movies that do us some justice. With the now ever-popular tones of dark, gritty, grounded concepts and CGI advancements, you'd think that making a movie as bad as the aformentioned titles would be impossible correct? Wrong. Fantastic Four has easily got to be one of, and it honestly hurts me to say this, the worst comic book movies ever to hit the big screen. Let me explain.

Simply put, this entire movie feels like exposition leading up to a movie that never happens. It tries so hard to spend time on building up this supposed world that would pave the way for sequels and crossovers and such, that it forgets to make the original movie interesting in itself. Mentioning the "world" aspect, Marvel Studios seems to have made that a comic book must-have at this point, with the incredible success of the Avengers movies and spinoffs showing great return, but mainly due to how stellar the writing and quality was of the individual movies. With Fantastic Four, they try to sell the audience on an idea of a world unexplored, that it makes the one you're forced to watch incredibly dull and bland.

And while a movie is more than its setting, Fantastic Four fails to captivate the viewer on even the most basic of necessities; character development. In this movie, each character exhibits incredible new abilities that seem great at first, but the tone used to display how the four dealt with said abilities was nowhere near dark or grounded; it was basically horror. Now I'm not saying that introducing a new take on an origin story is bad. It should be welcomed with open arms, but only if the welcome leads to a decent goodbye. The pacing of these developments is so uneven that the entire "exposition" feel that should've granted these characters and their abilities a decent payoff, makes for the weakest of battles, in a climax that drew no intensity or suspense as far as I could tell. And that's another thing.

The villain in this movie. It's not like Victor Von Doom, or "Dr. Doom" as his comic counterpart exists, is a hard villain to do. In the right hands, he would be sensational, arguably one of the best the comic-book genre would have to offer. But the poor handling of his character, abilities, and even aura was almost laughable. He would be much more in place within a comedy and that's not something you want in an almost horror movie at this point.

Now I know that I've roasted quite a bit on the overall integrity this movie presented, but in no way should it be blamed on the actors themselves, for the most part. This movie had some world-class talent in its young actors, and that's the ultimate disappointment in itself. If you're a studio who's just managed to secure Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell in the same movie after a year of their most incredible performances to date, and waste it on this, I don't even know what to say. The relationships between these characters are beyond forced, showing no chemistry whatsoever, and even the "comedic" jokes are ones that will fly by you no matter the age. And it's a shame, because by the looks of the cast, it's a major letdown.

Fantastic Four

Simply put, Fantastic Four is an appetizer, teasing a meal that doesn’t actually come. It is a true origin story which simply does not originate to anything other than a mediocre universe set-up which I personally doubt many will want to see should it come time for the sequel to hit theaters in two years.

KhanFlix Rating: 2/10

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