Fantastic Four
Dustin Chase
According to IMDB: “This film was made so Fox could keep the film rights for the Fantastic Four. Fox waited the full 7 years they had, before going into production. Any longer, and Fox would have lost the film rights”. This pretty much sums up why the reviews, attitudes and general discontent for the reboot of Fantastic Four is what it is. No one was really wanting a third Fantastic Four film as the original two were failures, it’s an ownership thing and that comes across on screen with the lack of heart and soul in the film. You have four very talented young actors here (far more impressive than the original cast) but the script is like an appetizer for a film that never gets the full course meal treatment.
Even as a child Reed Richards (Teller) and his buddy Ben (Bell) worked towards creating a teleportation device. Their creativity led to Richards being accepted into The Baxter Foundation, also working on the same technology. With Richards intelligence, along-side project director Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg. E Cathey) and his daughter Sue (Mara) the machine was ready. First they send matter, then chimps, and unwilling to let some NASA star steal their thunder; Reed, Ben and Sue’s brother Johnny (Jordan) use the device to transport to another planet. Their eagerness for exploration with the newly tested device results in catastrophe on their way back, leaving all involved with mutant powers.
There is just too little effort from everyone involved here to make this reboot work.
Director Josh Trank made the indie superhero hit Chronicle outside the system. It was a clever film that focused far more on the responsibility of superpowers and the individuals who were blessed or cursed with them. The script here which includes Trank’s voice, fails to utilize the basic principles that made Chronicle so unique. Instead it shy’s away both from the redundant formula of mainstream Marvel films (only concerned with jokes, action and flash) as well as the darker more relatable circumstances from the hands of Christopher Nolan. Fantastic Four isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just so plain, boring and uneventful.
Fantastic Four is also caught at the end of a summer filled with more comic book adapted films than ever before. While fans of the superhero universe get accustom to a new one of these films every month, the rest of us have long ago realized there isn’t much new material being stirred up in these films. Fantastic Four, like Spider-Man, is perhaps just another example of how everything inside a comic book shouldn’t be adapted for the big screen. There is just too little effort from everyone involved here to make this reboot work. For over half the film we watch these characters work on building something, then in a flash they become superheroes with powers they haven’t even learned to use before they are stereotypically tasked with saving the world.
Final Thought
Created and re-booted for all the wrong reasons.