One of the worst blockbusters I have seen in years.

that sucks

I wonder what it must've been like before the reshoots.

I take its also not Kid friendly? Seems darker than it should be. At least the Tim Story films were cartoonish fun.

The Fantastic Four would work better as a Disney/Pixar film. A cross between The Incredibles and Big Hero 6.

Not kid-friendly at all, no.

I guess it was a good thing Lucasfilm/Disney dropped the director from making the Han Solo film.

20th Century Fox's big-budget bid to reboot their second most valuable Marvel-based property has come out under a foreboding cloud, one much more menacing than a certain antagonistic cloud from the third act of the largely forgotten Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Perhaps prompted in part by stories of on-set conflict and drama, including director Josh Trank's (Chronicle) subsequent firing from an upcoming Star Wars project, critics have torn this film to shreds without mercy or pause. For around an hour and 10 minutes, I disagreed and enjoyed myself. Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell inhabit their iconic roles with aplomb. The tone is serious and even contemplative at certain points, and there are neat, unexpected moments of almost body horror (in one scene right after the four are transformed, Reed believes he has freed his leg from beneath debris, but then realizes it has simply stretched as he crawled away). Qualms? Sure—it could use a memorable action sequence or two early on, a few character and storytelling arcs are overly compressed by a one-year-later title card, and they should have shot the Planet Zero scenes in a real desert versus on a green-screen-clad sound-stage—but the film held my attention and even drew me into its characters and their dynamic.

However, in the final 30 minutes, Fantastic Four crashes and burns. Its fall is cleanly and clearly signaled by the reintroduction of Victor von Doom (a previously compelling, brooding Toby Kebbell), now mummified, blandly set on world destruction, and sans the "Victor von." The film bumbles and fumbles and stumbles to an anticlimax, laying on inauthentic eleventh-hour fan service ("It's clobbering time!" is so unearned here) and completely failing to generate any tension even as we are told the earth is in peril, etc., etc., yawn. It is almost fascinating how rapidly any character, depth, momentum, and wit completely vanishes during the rushed third act, and it will be interesting to one day learn who is most to blame: reportedly misbehaved/opinionated hotshot director Trank, a boardroom full of nervously avaricious Fox executives, or another culprit.

First and second acts: B+
Third act: F

C+

I thought they did a great job rendering the Thing. His movement truly feels heavy and pained. He is scary and voiced well by Bell, who sells the character's inner turmoil without much dialogue or time.

I wish we saw a few actual sequences with him on military missions versus brief, montage-style glimpses on television sets.

One random moment in this movie at the very end:

I know the comics often portray a friendly rivalry between the Human Torch and the Thing, but this film never went there. But they then try to shoehorn it in via this one line where Johnny Storm says, to paraphrase, "Maybe we can call ourselves the Fantastic Three and the Thing No One Else Wanted." It comes out of the blue and just sounds mean because the film, to this point, has done nothing else to establish a playful trade of barbs between the two.

David's summed everything up nicely, again.

The first half of the film is just fine and left me wondering why it was receiving such bad reviews, but then it begins to drag and the final act, simply, sucks. The turnaround is jarring. The RT score doesn't accurately represent the full quality of the film, in my opinion, but it's still another bad Fantastic Four film. C

There are several scenes in the trailers and TV spots not in the movie. The most notable is the Thing dropping from an airplane. This one intrigues me because I suspect it comes from a section of the storyline glossed over to the film's detriment in the final cut: the year in which he is employed as a military weapon while the Storm siblings train and Reed is on the lam. The film seriously loses its rhythm when the title card says "one year later." As if the Movie Gods sat down on their couch and butt-pushed a chapter-forward button.

The director may be an a-hole and a boozer, but I feel for him to a certain degree. There are so many interesting decisions here, but the film feels chopped to bits in the editing room, particularly during the second half. There are also moments which just scream, "This is from a slapdash day of re-shoots." In my opinion, one can clearly sense a more serious and expansive superhero drama, which may very well have proved too slow or revisionist to please many fans, being forcibly transformed into a 90-minute programmer.

I also noticed that various scenes in the trailers didn't make it into the movie. The Thing dropping from the helicopter, and the scene either before or after with Reed, was one of the best parts of the trailers and it's not here.

Another 15/20 minutes that included the missing action footage, and more character interactions between Victor and Sue, and Johnny and Ben (they say one line to one another, I think...) would have done wonders for this one.

I doubt much better.

50 minutes of setup, 20 minutes of bizarre character motivations (why does Richards just disappear), and a 20 minute finale that feels tacked on and is completely inept. Did the radiation give them some sort of mind-melding powers? Because they came up with a plan to take down Doom except we never see them planning or talking about how they'll take him down. Then it just happens. And how does it kill him?

If you knew nothing about the four going in, you'd be lost at sea as to how they got their powers. Reed stretches because he was stretching for Victor? Johnny becomes The Human Torch because his pod was on fire (I think)? Only Grimm's is clear cut and that was stupid. How unlucky was he that the rocks were only pelting him?

I also appreciate the trouble the film goes through to set things up, but it takes way too fucking long. In a 120 minute film, 50 minutes would be fine (and I'm sure that was Trank's initial goal). But in a 92 minute film it's unfathomably long. I think FOX knew they had shit on their hands (or at least thought the movie was boring as shit) and cut their losses down to 90 minutes, but cutting to where the film feels inept isn't helpful. It's almost like they purposefully through Trank under the bus after all the shit he put them through.

And finally, the worst thing the film does in my mind: none of these superheroes are super or heroic. They're the "Reluctant Four" at best. Reed flees I think to discover a cure for Grimm, but that's never fleshed out. Grimm cuts a deal with the military. Okay, I buy that because he got the short end of the stick, but his turn in the final scene to the happy-go-lucky Thing makes no sense. And Sue just kind of hangs around for a year doing...shit? And they only go after Victor at the end because they've created a monster, not out a sense of duty, or at least that's how it feels to them in terms of priorities. That's kind of a problem.

So where does FF4 land in the spectrum of superhero films? Well, I thought Tim Story's first film was cheesy, but ultimately forgettable fun. The second one was cheesy, kid-friendly, and really stupid. They're both better than this. Is it Batman & Robin level of bad though? Not quite. And that's both a good thing and a bad thing. It's not a so bad you have to see it kind of deal. It's just bad. It's bad for the reasons I listed above, but it's also bad because it's such a missed opportunity. Just look at the cast. I'd compare it to a baseball hitter hitting off of a tee. The ball is right there being held out in front of you. All you have to do is hit the ball. Trank, Kinberg, FOX, whoever, swung and not only missed the ball, but hit the tee and then collapsed in an embarrassing heap. Now go have some Gatorade and don't bother grabbing a bat again.

* (D)

Franklin Storm might have the worst death in a superhero movie, at least in quite some time. Was I supposed to laugh when he got zapped and then crossed his eyes? That seemed straight out of a cartoon.

And how the hell did Tim Heidecker get a main credit when he's in the film for 45 seconds?

Maybe extra scenes of his were cut during the troubled post-production, à la Matthew Fox's prominent billing in World War Z.

horrible but not funny horrible, just horrible. F-

I believe where I differ from most people re: this film - I did not mind the long setup. I found the characters involving and dug the serious, almost dour science-fiction tone, which is unusual and refreshing for a superhero film. It hews closer in tone to, say, Contact or Interstellar than a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. No golly-jaunty whiz here. I could also roll with the second act's plot developments, too, such as Reed running and trying to find a cure from afar, though this needed more development, as did Ben becoming a military weapon, the Storms training, etc.

It only goes 100 percent to goofy shit when Doom returns. Ugh. So disappointing. I will always wonder how it would be if it were not tampered with. I expect I would love it, even if it were divisive and regarded as slow/overlong, similar to Ang Lee's Hulk. Or maybe I am wrong, and the dud of a third act was always hardwired in.

First 2/3s of the film is decent and then we go into another territory when it comes to the last third. Eek. If there really is a decent cut of this without the goofiness of the finale I'd like to see it. Although I did like a good portion of the movie I didn't like how the characters aren't fleshed out at all (poor Michael B. Jordan, his role feels so light) and there is no real moment of camaraderie among the group.

FANTASTIC FOUR

After watching this film to see what the fuss was about I can say that it certainly is a misfire. It is one of the disappointments of the year. I think there are a few problems with the film starting with the cast. I didn't feel like the actors were a fit for their roles. Maybe Kate Mara was the most acceptable for me. The rest just didn't do it for me. They felt miscast but maybe that has to do with this story. Speaking of the story it was very tedious and took a long time to get to anything interesting. It's just a shame that you have this reboot that looked interesting in it's trailer only to end up with this wasted opportunity. I think going younger turned out to be a clear mistake. I thought Jamie Bell was very out of place and he was hardly in it. It also put me to sleep but to be fair I was already tired when I saw it and it was a 9PM show.

Grade - D

This is worse than anything in the 2015 version:



"THIS is going to be...fun!"

"own every fantastic four moment you love"