Let's start this review off right: this movie sucks.
No seriously, this move was dead on arrival. Still, I'm a true professional and we have to let the surviving studio Fox know what the hell happened. So, I'm going to take out my surgical tools, a bottle of johnny walker, and rip this bad boy apart.
Many of us, myself included, followed the pre-release news of this movie. The rumors of reshoots, the stories of director (I use this term loosely) Josh Trank destroying property and derailing the project. It didn't sound good, and while some people thought this film was perhaps immune to these sorts of things, or that they weren't true. Those people were dead wrong.
This film is just a mess. Now you see in the trailers that we see a young Reed and Ben, and I have to be honest I didn't mind the first little bit of the film. It sets up Ben and Reed and explores Reed's desire to truly push scientific boundaries. However, when the film reaches the modern times it gets into some weird tonal shifts. The film becomes a light-hearted comedy for a while before the group gets their powers, then it turns into some body horror elements, before finally just devolving into a mess. The main issue I had with this movie is that clearly no one from diector Josh Trank to writer Simon Kinsberg knew what kind fo film they wanted to make. It's easy to blame Trank, but Kinsberg is equally at fault, if not moreso as details like this should've been ironed out very early in the writing process. When you watch
Guardians of the Galaxy the film establishes that it's a space-adventure film early on and never (dramatically) veers off course.
The other problem I have with the film is that after keeping a somewhat decent pace for the first half or so, the move just stalls. Now there's obviously times in a film where they could cut a scene or two, but we're talking 45 minutes of this film that is completely uneccesary. Once the team returns from the Negative Zone, there's literally nothing going on until Dr. Doom shows up in the last 20 minutes fo the film. This is in reality a terrible 50 minute that's extended by nearly another 45 minutes of just mindless drivel.
Now some people are going to wonder,
"Wow Hulksta, this can't be any worse than the other three* Fantastic Four films right?" Unlike the other three previous itterations, the core four here have no chemistry. Anytime they're on screen they all have the looks on their face like juniors at their first school dance. It's not the actors faults I think, as it's clear that Trank and Kinsberg gave the cast no background on their relationships, even watching interviews it's clear the cast is making up half this stuff. That's probably the biggest problem with this film, you should nail the relationships between the core four! The film can't even do that! There's even moments where there's an awkward exchange and you can tell it wasn't intentional, but Trank left it in.
*Really two, but one was unreleased but I've seen it so it counts
I guess I should talk about Dr. Doom. Who appears in the beginning, disappears, then shows up in the last 20 minutes of the movie with no context, explanation, nothing. His character motivation is absurd, his design is horrid, and I actually threw up a bit when he came back.
Just some other random things. The Negative Zone looks terrible. There's setup for a sequel I honestly couldn't care about seeing.
Deep down I wanted this film to succeed. In all fairness I want to see every comic book movie do well. It's when they're
THIS bad that you see the worst parts of the industry. Uninspired, lazy filmmakers only looking to cash a checque and add a notch to their resume. This is the sort of film that just pisses me off, as some bad comic book movies are bad like
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, but at least you can see some elements of passion and drive. There's none of that here, Simon Kinsberg didn't care about this film, Josh Trank easily illustrates that he's terrible once more; and everyone else is probably looking at these two and know nothing about what the film is supposed to be, what it's trying to accomplish, or where it's all going; and ultimately I felt the same way.
This film is so bad it doesn't even register on the Uncle Joey scale.