The Blabbering Inferno: FANTASTIC FOUR. REVIEWED.

Fantastic Four (2015)

Rating- 12a

Running Time- 1 hour 40 minutes

Directed by- Josh Trank

Written by- Simon Kinberg, Josh Trank, and Jeremy Slater

It’s been eight years since the Fantastic 4 were last on the silver screen but now, after no demand for them to return, they have returned. This reboot aims to put a more serious spin on the characters we already know in the hopes that it will cleanse our minds of the campy incarnation that preceded it. In that respect it succeeds but in every other respect it falls rather flat.

The film begins with five young misfits, consisting of three young scientists, Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell), and Sue Storm (Kate Mara), along with Sue’s brother Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) and Reed’s friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), conceiving and building a machine that allows instantaneous, inter-dimensional travel. But, when the bureaucratic Dr. Allen (Tim Blake Nelson) denies the kids the chance to use the machine that they built, they decide to use it anyway. They arrive on a planet, later named ‘Planet Zero’, where they discover a supernatural power that quickly becomes volatile. As they attempt to escape, von Doom is consumed by the power and assumed dead while the others are attacked by it just as they begin their journey back to Earth. Upon their return, they realise they have all been affected by this power in different ways. Reed can stretch his limbs like rubber, Sue (despite not actually going with them) is hit by a blast of energy on their return and therefore can turn invisible and create force fields, Johnny can safely set himself on fire and fly, and Ben is now giant and made of rocks…

Surprisingly, this is easy to look past as we already know how ridiculous the origin of these characters are and, considering the nature of comic movies, we expect going in that we are going to have to suspend our reality to an extent. Where the film fails though is that it spends almost an hour and a half of its one hour and forty-five minute run time establishing the characters, their relationships, and the acquisition of their powers. Then a quick fight scene is squeezed in just before very tame tease for a sequel closes out the movie. Usually, I think that comic book movies run a bit too long for what they are but in this case the film would have been improved with an extra couple of scenes to heighten the threat of the villain, when he finally arrives, and for us to get to see the Fantastic 4 actually fight together as the Fantastic 4 for more than five minutes.

The film’s set up was actually pretty promising but the fact that the payoff was so underwhelming makes it so that the promise that was there was not realised and so it didn’t seem worth while in the end. But, even the film’s ‘opening’ had its flaws despite, and regardless of, its promise. The most predominant of these flaws was that it focused on the least interesting aspects of the story; the parts that were interesting, such as the characters learning to control their powers and the government’s desire to use their powers as weapons in military exploits, were brushed over and teased before mostly taking place in a period of time that we transition through via a ‘one year later’ caption. But, there was plenty of screen time spent trying to establish a connection between the characters, a connection that comes across as very forced as none of the actors/characters seem to have any real chemistry with each other.

The film eventually introduces the main villain in Dr. Doom who appears to be all powerful, with his ability to cause people to explode a particularly handy trick for a bad guy to have. At this point we think that our heroes are going to have a really tough time beating this guy but alas the final fight between them is incredibly underwhelming with all the threat that this menacing figure had possessed apparently being all used up in his debut scene. Shortly afterwards the film ends with a whimper and with an audience almost in unison proclaiming, “was that it?” and, unfortunately the answer is yes.

The only saving grace is that the characters themselves have the potential to be interesting and perhaps they would be able to flourish in a sequel. But, despite a sequel reportedly already in the works, it would not be a surprise if this franchise was nipped in the bud at this early stage. So, overall a film that promises much but delivers little and only succeeds in bettering its predecessor through its predecessor being really, really bad.