The Fantastic Four Commits The Ultimate Sin of being Aggressively Mediocre!

DF-11764r – Miles Teller (left) as Reed Richards and Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm prepare for an epic battle with a former friend turned enemy. Photo Credit: Ben Rothstein

I really want to go down as the one of the few critics in the world who loved The Fantastic Four, alas I can’t. The trailers gave me hope that even if it wasn’t going to be a real FF movie it’d at least be a decent generic YA flick. This is not the epic disaster I thought it’d be however it commits the ultimate sin of being aggressively mediocre.  The movie reportedly cost over a $100 million to make, but none of that money appears on screen. It’s bland, joyless, lifeless, claustrophobic, and created by a bunch of people who had zero interest in the property. Director Josh Trank clearly had no desire to make this. The entire affair looks lazy and cheap.

After years of reading Ritchie Rich, the first Superhero book I ever read was the famed issue that featured the first appearance of Galactus. I discovered Spider-Man because Johnny Storm guest starred in a Spidey book – helped him build the Spidey Buggy. So I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Marvel’s first family.

Considering all the unjustified hatred the first two films got, can people now finally agree that however flawed they may have been at least everyone involved at least wanted to make a FANTASTIC FOUR movie. The relationships, the tone, color palette, sense of wonder were all present in the much hated first two films.

Most of the advanced criticism of this film was based purely on nonsense. “Oh my god, Johnny Storm is a black guy!” “Give the franchise Back to Marvel,” is the refrain I’ve heard over and over and frankly just sick to death of. There’s no guarantee Marvel wouldn’t fuck it up either.

Yeah, they have a clear vision and should be lauded for executing on that vision, but let’s face it, they don’t have a perfect track record – Iron Man 2 and 3 were god awful, first Captain America sucked, Thor films while having a great cast are ugly movies to look at, Avengers Age of Ultron ended with them essentially fighting Iron Man armor yet again. Don’t even get me started on what they’ve done to The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man in the comics over the last few years or how they are currently destroying/rebooting their entire comics Universe AGAIN.

I’m not trying to defend Fox, but they’ve had creative success with The X-Men Movies (yes 3 wasn’t great and the Wolverine films were meh, but the rest were solid). So saying “Give them back to Marvel,” as though everything will magically get better is silly.

Here, there’s no defense for what the producers and directors created. They aggressively strived NOT to make a Fantastic Four movie, or a super hero movie at all. It seemed like they were too scared to repeat the “mistakes” of the first two films.

The first 30 minutes of the film are actually pretty solid as far as build up goes; all the standard tropes are there, we briefly meet Reed Richards (Miles Teller) and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) as young kids, before a quick flash forward to them as pre-college students at a science fair. Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) is impressed by Reed and hopes he can help them crack their own dimensional transport device. He invites him to study at their institute. At the Baxter building we meet Storm’s kids Sue (Kate Mara) and Johnny (Michael B. Jordan). Storm asks his former project lead Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) to come back and help them. The less said about Doom, the better.

At 90 minutes, the film felt really long. It’s more of a one-act play than an actual movie. It’s all build up, but even that’s not handled particularly well. Considering both Johnny and Sue are siblings, there’s very little interaction between the two, it’s as if Trank wanted to keep them separated so they don’t call out the fact that one sibling is black and gasp, the other is white. OMG!!!!!

I like Michael B. Jordan, he’s proven that he can act and I’ve met him a couple of times in person he is a genuinely likeable, funny person who always seems happy to just be able to do what he gets to do. Key traits that Johnny Storm has and why I had no issue with them casting him, but here he only shows one expression throughout the movie – a weird grimace that is supposed to show annoyance or anger. He never smiles, he doesn’t even experience any joy in his ability to fly. We don’t even get one flaming 4 in the sky and he just kind of mumbles – “flame on.” Are you kidding me?

None of the actors are really allowed to display a range of emotions and all have pretty much one expression – varying degrees of annoyance. There is an all two brief moment where everyone (including Doom) seems to like being there, but that moment is all too brief. Here is where I mention Grimm has nothing to do with any part of this; I kept thinking how could they become the Fantastic Four if Grimm isn’t even a factor or mentioned? When they finally bring him back for their big journey it felt stupid and forced, like once again someone told Trank – “Hey putz you are missing one of the key members, Victor ISN’T a part of the Fantastic Four you idiot!”

Not only was the ending incredibly bad, but I left feeling pissed off. I’m not spoiling anything and most likely (hopefully) you aren’t going to see this anyway, but it goes to prove everything I said about them not wanting to make a Fantastic Four movie. It ends with the four heroes looking over their new home and having a conversation about how they needed a team name and they throw around crazy ideas, when Grimm looks at the lab and says “It’s Fantastic.” Reed looks at everyone and smiles. Role credits. I was like WTF!

 Final Grade D