← Back to Reviews
in
#512 - Fantastic Four
Josh Trank, 2015
An experiment with inter-dimensional travel results in a handful of people developing a diverse array of superpowers.
The astoundingly negative hype that surrounded the latest attempt to bring the Fantastic Four to the silver screen meant that it pretty much demanded to be seen. It's not like me buying a ticket was going to stop it from being a tremendous flop, anyway - besides, I somehow have not managed to watch any of the previous Fantastic Four films anyway (apart from a fragment of the 2005 one, though what I saw wasn't particularly impressive). Whereas other heavily reviled superhero films were hated because they were horribly tone-deaf and lightweight films in general, the 2015 edition of Fantastic Four is a sign of how badly things go wrong when the tone goes in the opposite direction. Though audiences have generally responded well to films that treat superheroes seriously (the most prominent example being Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy), there have been instances where taking a serious tack hasn't always worked for the better. 2013's Man of Steel drew some criticism for taking a colourful and upstanding hero like Superman and subjecting him to the same dark sensibilities that defined Nolan's Batman films, which did not suit Superman as a character. While I admit that Man of Steel was still a somewhat tolerable film in spite of these shortcomings, I can offer no such concessions when it comes to this film's attempts to take the same approach.
As I mentioned in my review for Ant-Man, the origin stories in superhero movies generally tend to be a chore to sit through, especially when the characters have already been adapted to film at least once within recent memory. A major failing that many have found with Fantastic Four (and which I'm inclined to agree with) is that it spends far too much of its relatively brief running time building the origins of its heroes and villain. It starts with a lengthy prologue involving boy genius Reed Richards making a teleportation device in his garage with the help of his rough-edged but kind friend Ben Grimm, which seems more at home in a 1980s family adventure film than in a grim present-day superhero film. After that, the film seems to get going when teenaged Reed (Miles Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) are approached by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) to bring their breakthrough technology to the research institute where he works. There, they are introduced to Dr. Storm's children, studious Sue (Kate Mara) and reckless Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) - as well as the ominously monikered Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), another tech genius with a serious chip on his shoulder. They all team together to create a giant version that's capable of transporting people to another dimension, but when a duplicitous executive (Tim Blake Nelson) reveals an ulterior motive for the technology, that's when most of the young cast decides to take a stand in the name of science...
Long story short, it takes half the film before the group receive their powers and a sufficiently world-ending threat only emerges in the last 30 minutes of the film. As such, the film is horribly paced; while a 150-minute running time would be no guarantee of quality, in that context taking 50 minutes to simply set up the cast of characters and the main conflicts makes some degree of sense. With this 100-minute film, it means that the sort of excitement and spectacle that are normally the main draw in even the weakest of superhero films are conspicuously absent for much of the running time. As if to add insult to injury, the indulges a lot of other annoying narrative clichés that aren't even any fun; once again, much of the conflict is driven by members of the military-industrial complex who want to weaponise not just the transporter but also the heroes' abilities. Even by the comparatively low standards of narrative complexity set by most superhero films, this comes across as especially uninspired and poorly executed to the point where the introduction of an actual supervillain can feel like something of an after-thought.
This lack of inspiration even extends to the characterisation being so flat that not even otherwise decent actors can pull it off. Good examples include Reed being the kind of genius who is constantly being belittled by disbelieving schoolteachers and co-workers or Ben being the good-hearted kid from the wrong side of the tracks with an abusive family (which opens up a whole other can of worms when you learn that "It's clobbering time!" apparently originates from Ben's physically violent older brother). The decision to cast African-American actors to play Johnny and his father may have drawn controversy in certain circles, but Jordan and Cathey (who were both on The Wire, which just damns this film even further) do considerably well considering the weakness of the material. The same applies to just about every other actor in the film, with the possible exception of Teller; though he has given sufficiently solid and complex performances in other films, he just seems seriously miscast as Reed, which comes across in his severe lack of chemistry with Bell as they must try to sell a strong friendship that comes under pressure but don't manage to do so for reasons that have nothing to do with Bell's being buried under a mountain of CGI and voice modulation.
Whether it's the depiction of the alternate-dimension planet that the explorers visit or the attempts to bring the Four's admittedly rather disturbing new changes to life, none of the effects work here feels egregiously awful so much as exceedingly average. There is the occasional moment of flair to take it above its rather low standard, but those are very occasional. There are attempts to reflect the actual body horror involved with the Four and also Dr. Doom himself, which does provide a potentially interesting dark side to these otherwise campy characters but ends up squandering said potential by skipping over most of it in order to chase a PG-13 rating. This same squandering is also true of the villain's telekinetic rampage through a military base, which mixes with my impressions of director Trank's earlier film Chronicle to make me think that he really wants to make a live-action version of Akira - and that's without getting into how superficially derivative the climax involving a massive blue beam of energy stretching into the sky looks.
Though reading up on the film's difficult production makes me wonder if there is a potentially redeeming director's cut on the horizon, as it currently stands Fantastic Four is an extremely difficult film to like even when you're willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Serviceable performers aren't given much of worth to do, what few attempts there are at creating thrilling action sequences do little to compensate for the incredibly dull first half, the attempt to build a story lacks creative spark and is ultimately undone by some remarkably poor narrative structuring...the list goes on. Just as Batman and Robin showcased the worst that "light" superhero movies had to offer, Fantastic Four is a pretty good example of how wrong a "dark" superhero movie can go. The two films differ in that Schumacher's garish goof-off can at least be somewhat enjoyed as an incredibly silly cinematic blunder, while Trank's sombre sojourn is such an inherently boring and joyless affair that it doesn't work even as an object of scornful amusement.
Josh Trank, 2015
An experiment with inter-dimensional travel results in a handful of people developing a diverse array of superpowers.
The astoundingly negative hype that surrounded the latest attempt to bring the Fantastic Four to the silver screen meant that it pretty much demanded to be seen. It's not like me buying a ticket was going to stop it from being a tremendous flop, anyway - besides, I somehow have not managed to watch any of the previous Fantastic Four films anyway (apart from a fragment of the 2005 one, though what I saw wasn't particularly impressive). Whereas other heavily reviled superhero films were hated because they were horribly tone-deaf and lightweight films in general, the 2015 edition of Fantastic Four is a sign of how badly things go wrong when the tone goes in the opposite direction. Though audiences have generally responded well to films that treat superheroes seriously (the most prominent example being Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy), there have been instances where taking a serious tack hasn't always worked for the better. 2013's Man of Steel drew some criticism for taking a colourful and upstanding hero like Superman and subjecting him to the same dark sensibilities that defined Nolan's Batman films, which did not suit Superman as a character. While I admit that Man of Steel was still a somewhat tolerable film in spite of these shortcomings, I can offer no such concessions when it comes to this film's attempts to take the same approach.
As I mentioned in my review for Ant-Man, the origin stories in superhero movies generally tend to be a chore to sit through, especially when the characters have already been adapted to film at least once within recent memory. A major failing that many have found with Fantastic Four (and which I'm inclined to agree with) is that it spends far too much of its relatively brief running time building the origins of its heroes and villain. It starts with a lengthy prologue involving boy genius Reed Richards making a teleportation device in his garage with the help of his rough-edged but kind friend Ben Grimm, which seems more at home in a 1980s family adventure film than in a grim present-day superhero film. After that, the film seems to get going when teenaged Reed (Miles Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) are approached by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) to bring their breakthrough technology to the research institute where he works. There, they are introduced to Dr. Storm's children, studious Sue (Kate Mara) and reckless Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) - as well as the ominously monikered Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), another tech genius with a serious chip on his shoulder. They all team together to create a giant version that's capable of transporting people to another dimension, but when a duplicitous executive (Tim Blake Nelson) reveals an ulterior motive for the technology, that's when most of the young cast decides to take a stand in the name of science...
Long story short, it takes half the film before the group receive their powers and a sufficiently world-ending threat only emerges in the last 30 minutes of the film. As such, the film is horribly paced; while a 150-minute running time would be no guarantee of quality, in that context taking 50 minutes to simply set up the cast of characters and the main conflicts makes some degree of sense. With this 100-minute film, it means that the sort of excitement and spectacle that are normally the main draw in even the weakest of superhero films are conspicuously absent for much of the running time. As if to add insult to injury, the indulges a lot of other annoying narrative clichés that aren't even any fun; once again, much of the conflict is driven by members of the military-industrial complex who want to weaponise not just the transporter but also the heroes' abilities. Even by the comparatively low standards of narrative complexity set by most superhero films, this comes across as especially uninspired and poorly executed to the point where the introduction of an actual supervillain can feel like something of an after-thought.
This lack of inspiration even extends to the characterisation being so flat that not even otherwise decent actors can pull it off. Good examples include Reed being the kind of genius who is constantly being belittled by disbelieving schoolteachers and co-workers or Ben being the good-hearted kid from the wrong side of the tracks with an abusive family (which opens up a whole other can of worms when you learn that "It's clobbering time!" apparently originates from Ben's physically violent older brother). The decision to cast African-American actors to play Johnny and his father may have drawn controversy in certain circles, but Jordan and Cathey (who were both on The Wire, which just damns this film even further) do considerably well considering the weakness of the material. The same applies to just about every other actor in the film, with the possible exception of Teller; though he has given sufficiently solid and complex performances in other films, he just seems seriously miscast as Reed, which comes across in his severe lack of chemistry with Bell as they must try to sell a strong friendship that comes under pressure but don't manage to do so for reasons that have nothing to do with Bell's being buried under a mountain of CGI and voice modulation.
Whether it's the depiction of the alternate-dimension planet that the explorers visit or the attempts to bring the Four's admittedly rather disturbing new changes to life, none of the effects work here feels egregiously awful so much as exceedingly average. There is the occasional moment of flair to take it above its rather low standard, but those are very occasional. There are attempts to reflect the actual body horror involved with the Four and also Dr. Doom himself, which does provide a potentially interesting dark side to these otherwise campy characters but ends up squandering said potential by skipping over most of it in order to chase a PG-13 rating. This same squandering is also true of the villain's telekinetic rampage through a military base, which mixes with my impressions of director Trank's earlier film Chronicle to make me think that he really wants to make a live-action version of Akira - and that's without getting into how superficially derivative the climax involving a massive blue beam of energy stretching into the sky looks.
Though reading up on the film's difficult production makes me wonder if there is a potentially redeeming director's cut on the horizon, as it currently stands Fantastic Four is an extremely difficult film to like even when you're willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Serviceable performers aren't given much of worth to do, what few attempts there are at creating thrilling action sequences do little to compensate for the incredibly dull first half, the attempt to build a story lacks creative spark and is ultimately undone by some remarkably poor narrative structuring...the list goes on. Just as Batman and Robin showcased the worst that "light" superhero movies had to offer, Fantastic Four is a pretty good example of how wrong a "dark" superhero movie can go. The two films differ in that Schumacher's garish goof-off can at least be somewhat enjoyed as an incredibly silly cinematic blunder, while Trank's sombre sojourn is such an inherently boring and joyless affair that it doesn't work even as an object of scornful amusement.