Trailer:
"We're the Fantastic Four, right? Remember, that's what your mom called us!"
You know how I promised that Captain America would be the last early crappy films from Marvel? Well….I lied. Yet another studio feebly attempts to cling to the film rights of The Fantastic Four, in the process putting out a thrill free film that has me wishing I had been cleaning out my gutters in the rain instead.
The Fantastic Four is one of Marvel’s better know franchise, due mostly to its appeal to the younger audience. It gained more popularity with the arrival of the popular cartoon series. The characters are a little goofy and some of them outright silly, but for the target audience they worked. In this first film Marvel once again struggles with finding their target as (like Howard the Duck) it seems unsure if it was meant for older or younger viewers.
The film opens with a surprisingly good musical score even if the opening credit sequence is ripped straight out of Superman. When the “flying through space” sequence is complete we land on earth to find pre Doctor Doom and Mr. Fantastic in college and planning some experiment for when the earth comes in contact with some sort of space thingy called “Colossus”. They appear to be close friends. Meanwhile Susan and Johnny are still little kids, making Susan’s crush on the adult Richard Reed just kind of creepy and awkward rather than endearing.
The space storm comes through and Undergrad Doom gets caught in the blast created by the machine meant to “harness its energy”, whatever that means. Either way he appears to die from severe burns, when in reality he is just taken away by people calling him “Your Highness”.
So already the film has lost me. I was under the impression that Doom later went on to create his own country, but in this version he was a prince all along? A prince of what? Of where? Several years later it doesn’t seem like he is ruling anything, he’s just trying to steal America’s diamonds. Sure, it is all part of some grand convoluted scheme to capture Colossus again, but none of it really makes sense if you stop to think about it. Undergrad Doom seemed like he was just a researcher. Why would he suddenly turn around and try to take over the world? The film takes no time to answer any such questions. Also Dr. Doom appears to have no powers in the film. In fact all he can do in the entire film is make claws come out of his gloves……catwoman could do that.
But still thinking the audience is on the same page, the film jumps ahead several years to a grey haired Reed who recruits the Storm siblings and his college friend Ben to help with a new experiment in space, once again involving the Colossus space thingy. I’m not really sure why Susan and Johnny are there, seeing as even Reed says they don’t know anything about the project. Johnny is especially useless. Who in there right mind would send a teenager into space? What expertise does he have to offer?
You know the music I said was surprisingly good at the beginning. Well at this point in becomes obvious that all their money went into two songs for the entire film that they switch between. It becomes just an irritating background noise and I found myself wishing for that generic acoustic guitar found in EVERY Indie film.
So the four head into space but thanks to Dr. Doom their spaceship crashes but the group returns to earth with “awesome” powers. At this point Doom forgets about Colossus and decides that he would rather just capture the Fantastic Four and destroy New York for no reason. But at this point I’ve stopped caring, so just go with it.
Now there is your plot, if you can pick through it enough to understand what is going on. Now I know I have so far bashed on this film a lot, but it does have one major benefit over the 2000 version. It is much more sincere in the portrayal and telling of the story. It takes itself far more seriously than the CGI heavy, tongue and cheek remake that would pop up a decade later. This might not always work well, but at least they were trying for some kind of emotion and the character felt more true to the source.
Alex Hyde-White who played Mr. Fantastic actually does a pretty good job. The rest of the actors are mediocre at best and Jay Underwood who plays Johnny is exceptionally bad. He rarely goes into his “flame on” form because the CGI was beyond them. When they do finally do it near the end of the film it looks laughable. The film also does a good job with The Things (Michael Bailey Smith) transformation into a stone monster, making him the easiest person to sympathize with, even if he does just look like rubber more than rock. As for the Invisible Girl (Rebecca Staab). She is close to her comic book counterpart but the performance is lackluster and her character does nothing significant through the entire film besides batting her eyelashes at Reed.
There are two main villains in the film. The first is obviously Dr. Doom, and the second is a Mole Man-like character renamed “the jeweler”. Besides Mr. Fantastic the actor playing the Mole Man (Ian Trigger) is the only other person who gives a good performance, too good almost. Unfortunately his character’s motivation and point of being in the movie is kind of stupid. He exists only to kidnap The Thing’s puppy love crush. Thus perhaps the only interesting threat is wasted.
Which brings me to the next topic of the romances. All of them are poorly built up, even the central one between Susan and Richard. The Thing and Blind Girl’s though is particularly bad. They accidentally bump into each other once in the hall and fall madly in love with one another. Who need character development, right?
Speaking of development WHERE THE HELL DID THE FANTASTICAR COME FROM!!! No really it just pops up out of nowhere in the middle of the film, just when they conveniently need a ride.
The film really falls to pieces though in terms of the effects and action scenes which range from horrible to laugh worthy, to just plain silly. It is hard to make a Fantastic Four movie (hell, it’s impossible) on a nearly none existent budget. The costumes were also ridiculous and just looked like pajama’s while I saw more impressive set designs on the original Star Trek.
So The Fantastic Four may be a notch above the 2000 remake (which says something about that film…we’ll get to that later) but it is dragged down by cheap effects, lackluster acting, and a convoluted plotline. In the end it’s not a horrible movie, just an extremely underwhelming one.
FINAL RATING: 3/10- 30%
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