As any of you who have read my reviews before knows, I am a geek. However, I cannot lay claim to the dominion of comic book geek. I didn’t start reading comic books until I was in high school, and when I finally started I didn’t read Superman or Avengers; I read Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and The Sandman, none of which are even close to typical superhero fare. This is why I’ve been less excited than many about the recent spate of blockbuster super movies. One of the few I was actually interested in was Fox’s reboot of Fantastic Four, mostly because I just want something other than Marvel films at this point. Sure, the last incarnation wasn’t very good, but it was directed by Josh Trank (who did Chronicle) and stars Miles Teller and Kate Mara (from Whiplash and House of Cards). I mean, how bad could it be?
But holy shit was this movie bad.
Our main character is Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Mr. Fantastic, although he’s never called that in the movie. Instead of being an astronaut like in the previous movies and original comic book, Richards is a scientist experimenting with teleportation technology (this movie is actually based on the more recent Ultimate Fantastic Four comic series). He, with the help of his friend Ben (Jaime Bell) built a glitchy prototype teleportation machine in the fifth grade. No one takes his work seriously until he’s discovered by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey), a physicist at a fabulously wealthy research institute which funds Reed’s research. He also gets the help of Dr. Franklin’s two children, Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) and Sue (Kate Mara), and a brilliant but cynical scientist named Victor (Toby Kebbell). Eventually, of course, they’re able to finish the machine, and teleport themselves to an alternate dimension. But something goes wrong and they are all exposed to the hazardous environment of the other world, which changes them in unexpected ways.
First of all, I want to apologize to all my readers. In one of my recent reviews, I called the horror movie The Gallows the literal personification of They Just Didn’t Care. But as it turns out, I was wrong: in reality, that high honor goes to Fantastic Four. Nobody in this movie gave a fuck, most obviously the actors. They deliver each of their lines with the enthusiasm of a suicidally depressed clown hired to do an emo teenager’s birthday party. They have no emotion, no feeling, and no external display of anything at all other than sheer unadulterated apathy. I know that these are not the greatest actors ever, but anyone who’s seen Whiplash or House of Cards, both excellent productions, can easily tell that Teller and Mara didn’t even try. But at least they have good portfolios to fall back on; this movie could very well be a career killer for everyone else in the film.
Of course, the horrible delivery is certainly not helped by the absolutely atrocious writing. This movie is like if someone watched a YouTube video called something like “The 50 Best Movie Quotes in 100 Seconds” and wrote an entire script around it. Oh, and also while having absolutely no talent or experience. Basically every line is some stupid, predictable, cliché line which sounds like it came out of a shitty action movie from the 80s. Some of my favorites include: “We started this together, we’re gonna finish this together”, “We can’t defeat him alone, but we can defeat him together!” and “Flame On”, which couldn’t sound more lifeless if it was said by a corpse. Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, they really like to talk about teamwork. They talk so fucking much about teamwork. And every other aspect of the movie is awful as well, (if only slightly less blatantly) from the poorly-done special effects to Doctor Doom's terrible-looking costume and the complete lack of any but the most shallow and boring characterization.
In the post-viewing discussion of this movie, many of my critic friends bashed the movie for simply being bland and boring. That was not how I felt. Watching this movie is what I imagine electroshock therapy feels like. I didn’t know if was possible for a movie to actually cause me physical pain, but I guess you learn something new every day. Someone jokingly said before the movie that this movie was only made so the film rights wouldn’t revert back to Marvel, but after watching it I believe that is completely true. I utterly refuse to believe that anyone involved in the making of this movie gave one single shit about it, or even had the barest illusion that it was even trying to be good. Fantastic Four is the worst movie I’ve seen all year; The Gallows at least had the saving grace of being entertainingly bad. This movie is just the latest piece of garbage that Hollywood has spent an unconscious able amount of money making, and everyone should avoid it like the plague so that Fox loses as much money as possible on it. Because no matter how badly this movie bombs, it won’t be enough to punish them for inflicting this utter disaster on the public.
Grade: F
But holy shit was this movie bad.
Our main character is Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Mr. Fantastic, although he’s never called that in the movie. Instead of being an astronaut like in the previous movies and original comic book, Richards is a scientist experimenting with teleportation technology (this movie is actually based on the more recent Ultimate Fantastic Four comic series). He, with the help of his friend Ben (Jaime Bell) built a glitchy prototype teleportation machine in the fifth grade. No one takes his work seriously until he’s discovered by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey), a physicist at a fabulously wealthy research institute which funds Reed’s research. He also gets the help of Dr. Franklin’s two children, Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) and Sue (Kate Mara), and a brilliant but cynical scientist named Victor (Toby Kebbell). Eventually, of course, they’re able to finish the machine, and teleport themselves to an alternate dimension. But something goes wrong and they are all exposed to the hazardous environment of the other world, which changes them in unexpected ways.
First of all, I want to apologize to all my readers. In one of my recent reviews, I called the horror movie The Gallows the literal personification of They Just Didn’t Care. But as it turns out, I was wrong: in reality, that high honor goes to Fantastic Four. Nobody in this movie gave a fuck, most obviously the actors. They deliver each of their lines with the enthusiasm of a suicidally depressed clown hired to do an emo teenager’s birthday party. They have no emotion, no feeling, and no external display of anything at all other than sheer unadulterated apathy. I know that these are not the greatest actors ever, but anyone who’s seen Whiplash or House of Cards, both excellent productions, can easily tell that Teller and Mara didn’t even try. But at least they have good portfolios to fall back on; this movie could very well be a career killer for everyone else in the film.
Of course, the horrible delivery is certainly not helped by the absolutely atrocious writing. This movie is like if someone watched a YouTube video called something like “The 50 Best Movie Quotes in 100 Seconds” and wrote an entire script around it. Oh, and also while having absolutely no talent or experience. Basically every line is some stupid, predictable, cliché line which sounds like it came out of a shitty action movie from the 80s. Some of my favorites include: “We started this together, we’re gonna finish this together”, “We can’t defeat him alone, but we can defeat him together!” and “Flame On”, which couldn’t sound more lifeless if it was said by a corpse. Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, they really like to talk about teamwork. They talk so fucking much about teamwork. And every other aspect of the movie is awful as well, (if only slightly less blatantly) from the poorly-done special effects to Doctor Doom's terrible-looking costume and the complete lack of any but the most shallow and boring characterization.
In the post-viewing discussion of this movie, many of my critic friends bashed the movie for simply being bland and boring. That was not how I felt. Watching this movie is what I imagine electroshock therapy feels like. I didn’t know if was possible for a movie to actually cause me physical pain, but I guess you learn something new every day. Someone jokingly said before the movie that this movie was only made so the film rights wouldn’t revert back to Marvel, but after watching it I believe that is completely true. I utterly refuse to believe that anyone involved in the making of this movie gave one single shit about it, or even had the barest illusion that it was even trying to be good. Fantastic Four is the worst movie I’ve seen all year; The Gallows at least had the saving grace of being entertainingly bad. This movie is just the latest piece of garbage that Hollywood has spent an unconscious able amount of money making, and everyone should avoid it like the plague so that Fox loses as much money as possible on it. Because no matter how badly this movie bombs, it won’t be enough to punish them for inflicting this utter disaster on the public.
Grade: F
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