Fantastic Four (2015)

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warrensm
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Fantastic Four (2015)

Post by warrensm »

Marvel has come a long way in this movie industry. Ever since the failure of Howard the Duck and the Roger Corman attempts, movie adaptations of Marvel comics have gotten better with each superhero. And since 2008, Marvel turned itself into a production company and created a cinematic universe that has crushed the competition. Every one of their superheroes that are getting translated into film are continuously rising above their source material. The one real downside to this trend is that you're going to come across a lot of fans that are going to complain online every time there's a Marvel movie not in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it sucks terribly (Daredevil, Elektra, The Amazing Spider-Man 2). Sure, you want to see a certain superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it's not really healthy to pressure them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe after some other studio botched them up. There are enough superheroes on the the Marvel Cinematic Universe's plate as it is already. Plus, it doesn't give other studios a fair chance to try and to get a Marvel superhero right. You don't hear anyone else complain that X-Men and Wolverine need to be in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Movies outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe aren't sucking because it's not in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Movies outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe are sucking because of bad filmmakers that aren't understanding the source material. And the one Marvel comic that Hollywood has continued to get wrong is the Fantastic Four, which is sadly the first ever superhero team for Marvel Comics.

Created in 1961 by Stan Lee, the Fantastic Four have already gone through three movie adaptations: the ill-fated 1994 movie by Roger Corman, the financially-successful, yet critically-unloved 2005 movie, and the ignored 2007 sequel, "Rise of the Silver Surfer", with the latter two both by 20th Century Fox. This year, 20th Century Fox has put out another reboot of the Fantastic Four, which marks the third time that the story of the Fantastic Four has been told for the big screen and the fourth Fantastic Four movie overall. Expectations for this movie were pretty low, as the director was Josh Trank (Chronicle), there were reports of rewrites and reshoots going on midway into production, and controversy rose when it was announced that African-American actor Michael B. Jordan was going to play the previously-Caucasian Johnny Storm, because you know you're running into trouble when your casting receives racial criticism. But the movie's out now. It's time to judge the new Fantastic Four movie for ourselves.

I expected it to be average. Everyone expected it to be terrible. None of us expected this. I already called it earlier this year that it was going to be impossible for any other movie to beat out Vice (http://www.criticker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4784) for Worst Movie of 2015. This new Fantastic Four movie comes pretty darn close. Worse than Johnny Depp's Mortdecai. Worse than the Paul Blart sequel. Worse than Jupiter Ascending or even the Entourage movie. This is a different kind of terrible, because it ranks among the worst superhero movies of all-time. It did what the other Fantastic Four movies didn't do: get everything 100 percent wrong.

I don't even know where to begin with this movie, but I'm going to try by starting with the acting. The new team this time around consists of Miles Teller as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm/Human Torch, Kate Mara as Sue Storm, and Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm/The Thing. Michael drew in a lot of criticism early for being an African-American playing Johnny Storm. This casting choice actually worked out well. He's actually the best actor in this movie. It may not be a lot, but he's the only one that's probably trying. They even tried to make this African-American Human Torch thing work by having another African-American (Reg E. Cathey) come in as his father, Professor Franklin Storm. The problem is that Sue Storm, Johnny's sister and Professor Franklin's daughter, is played by a Caucasian actress (Kate Mara). Changing a character's skin color is not a bad idea, but you need to change everything else so that it makes sense in the story. Instead of an African-American Sue Storm that ties the family's bloodline together, this movie gave us another plastic Caucasian damsel in distress that has been removed of all emotion and passion in her performance. Kate Mara not only fails to convince anyone that she's Johnny's sister, but she also fails to convince anyone that she's Reed's girlfriend. Their relationship is just your everyday carbon copy romance that is void of chemistry. Mr. Fantastic, on the other hand, is a complete idiot. It's a huge step down for Miles Teller after Whiplash, and for nearly the entire length of the movie, he has no clue what's going on. And as for Jamie Bell's performance as The Thing, he does not look or feel like this character at all. He's made into this comic relief that continuously falls flat. Not to be outdone by this interpretation of our heroes, Dr. Doom (Toby Kebbell) is a joke. He barely does anything in the movie, and for the time he's actually in a scene, he doesn't really do a lot. It's like this movie was doing anything to make these superheroes come across as the exact opposite of super.

Making matters worse, their superpowers are only good as this movie's visuals and production value. Director Josh Trank has gone on to tweet that 20th Century Fox botched up his original vision of Fantastic Four. Apparently, this led to numerous arguments between Trank and other crew members. I actually knew a few people who worked on the set, and they all confirmed that Trank was not a great director to work with, but you didn't need that behind-the-scenes info to tell you that. It did a bad job in directing the action, it did a bad job in directing the story, and it did a bad job in directing the performances. And as they all say, the captain has to go down with the ship. But forget about the director. He didn't make this movie alone. He had 5 producers, 2 editors, a cinematographer, multiple visual effects companies, and several movie studio execs working against him. The CGI is sloppy across the board. It looks like they didn't even do it the right way. The costume effects are terrible. They look way too dated, and they tried to be way too edgy. Dr. Doom, for example, looks like a plasmatic robot. And the editors drop the ball too much. In fact, they're the real people to blame for the outcome. They failed to connect the dots with the story, making it feel incomplete. It's very clear that they tried to sabotage the final cut anyway they could. I heard the studio even changed the ending to the original cut in the story during production, so it's possible that Josh Trank was trying to make a better Fantastic Four movie, and the studio ruined it.

But now, let's talk about the story we did receive. When you include the rewrites, there were about seven people who had a hand in the final story, and only three of which actually wrote the screenplay. And when you had three other Fantastic Four movies before you fail to impress, why would you absolutely obliterate this one before it even gets off the ground? This movie starts making mistakes early. At the beginning, young Reed and young Ben are trying to create a model version of the teleporter. Reed doesn't know how to use a screwdriver, and Ben waits until after they finish the teleporter to teach him how to use a screwdriver. It's a mistake that comes out so small and makes a very big impact. Some of the actions within the plot don't even make sense. Sue Storm [spoiler]didn't even travel with them in the teleporter, and they tried to make us believe she received her powers through a computer malfunction[/spoiler]. Everyone else made contact with the goop during the experiment. This kind of stupidity makes other underperforming superhero movies feel better about themselves. Catwoman didn't screw up this badly. Howard the Duck fared a lot better overall. And you may think I'm nuts, but I actually liked the Fantastic Four movie from 2005. It wasn't great, but I thought it was decent, safe and harmless. Plus, the story was a lot more fleshed out. Even if you didn't like that movie, you begin to miss those memories as soon as you watch this new one, because at least the 2005 one had a complete story that was pleasant enough to forget. Here, it lacks a full 3-act structure that every other superhero movie follows. All it does is show how they received their powers and the Fantastic Four in action. When you do see the Fantastic Four in action, they easily take their opponents down without breaking a sweat. Every other superhero movie shows our protagonists struggling with their powers and take time adjusting to them. WHY ON EARTH WOULD THIS MOVIE LEAVE THAT PART OUT??????????

Because after they received their powers, two time jumps occur. The first one jumps a few days later, where they are under examination and Reed runs off to escape. After that, [spoiler]it jumps a full year later[/spoiler]. Yeah, apparently, you can't do a superhero movie where they have a struggle. You have to be seen as a real superhero. This is a direct insult to the superhero movie genre. It's a direct insult to the Marvel brand. It's a direct insult to the Fantastic Four. 20th Century Fox even removed the 2005 Fantastic Four movie and Rise of the Silver Surfer from all digital video stores. 20th Century Fox is basically telling us, "No, THIS is the REAL Fantastic Four movie, not the two movies we've done before!" Sorry, but that is a complete load, and 20th Century Fox is foolish if they think they can turn this into a franchise.

Score: 1/100

Recommendation: None. Not even for Marvel fans, because you're going to be let down. And if you're a Marvel fan, you're probably demanding 20th Century Fox to give the rights back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe right now. But honestly, the Fantastic Four doesn't even belong in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Roger Corman movie didn't work out, the two previous movies didn't work out, and this one fell flat on its face. They just failed with it too many times now that I don't think moviegoers can stomach another Fantastic Four movie, especially in the near future. Now, there is a chance that 20th Century Fox can give the rights back to Marvel and have them turn it into a TV show. Marvel has a TV series universe going on right now, and it's turning out pretty good. It can do what Daredevil did. 12 years after the movie came out, Marvel turned it into a show on Netflix, and it came out 10x better. We just don't want Hollywood to continue putting this superhero team into the wrong hands.

livelove
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Re: Fantastic Four (2015)

Post by livelove »

warrensm wrote:The one real downside to this trend is that you're going to come across a lot of fans that are going to complain online every time there's a Marvel movie not in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it sucks terribly (Daredevil, Elektra, The Amazing Spider-Man 2). Sure, you want to see a certain superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it's not really healthy to pressure them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe after some other studio botched them up.


I have been reading lots of comics as a kid (Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Hulk, Fantastic Four, Transformers, etc.) and have seen a couple of superhero movies in recent years. Still I am quite a layman. Could you explain to me, what it means exactly on a pracitcal, concrete level, whether or not a movie is in the MCU, and why that matters so much ?

I read the wiki article about MCU, and the way I understand it, movies inside the MCU share common places and a common history, but since those movies — for better or worse — don't only cater to diehard fans but to millions of moviegoers who are not familiar with the backdrop, I guess there would be at utmost a handful of cross-references in any given movie, which surely won't be significant nor lengthy in screen time, since any movie must also work for complete neophytes (no pun intended) for commercial reasons.

So, why does it matter as much as is implied in the passage I quoted ?

warrensm
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Re: Fantastic Four (2015)

Post by warrensm »

livelove wrote:
warrensm wrote:The one real downside to this trend is that you're going to come across a lot of fans that are going to complain online every time there's a Marvel movie not in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it sucks terribly (Daredevil, Elektra, The Amazing Spider-Man 2). Sure, you want to see a certain superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it's not really healthy to pressure them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe after some other studio botched them up.


I have been reading lots of comics as a kid (Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Hulk, Fantastic Four, Transformers, etc.) and have seen a couple of superhero movies in recent years. Still I am quite a layman. Could you explain to me, what it means exactly on a pracitcal, concrete level, whether or not a movie is in the MCU, and why that matters so much ?

I read the wiki article about MCU, and the way I understand it, movies inside the MCU share common places and a common history, but since those movies — for better or worse — don't only cater to diehard fans but to millions of moviegoers who are not familiar with the backdrop, I guess there would be at utmost a handful of cross-references in any given movie, which surely won't be significant nor lengthy in screen time, since any movie must also work for complete neophytes (no pun intended) for commercial reasons.

So, why does it matter as much as is implied in the passage I quoted ?


I don't really care about it, but for some reason, it matters to the MCU fans.

livelove
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Re: Fantastic Four (2015)

Post by livelove »

    Yeah, but WHY ?

    warrensm wrote:The one real downside to this trend is that you're going to come across a lot of fans that are going to complain online every time there's a Marvel movie not in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it sucks terribly (Daredevil, Elektra, The Amazing Spider-Man 2). Sure, you want to see a certain superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it's not really healthy to pressure them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe after some other studio botched them up.


    And why is it "not healthy" ?

    bowfinger
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    Re: Fantastic Four (2015)

    Post by bowfinger »

    warrensm wrote:Some of the actions within the plot don't even make sense. Sue Storm [spoiler]didn't even travel with them in the teleporter, and they tried to make us believe she received her powers through a computer malfunction[/spoiler].


    Ok, I managed to read just this part of your review and although the movie is shit and is really stupid, this particular scene has a different explanation (I had to watch this several times, and it's only natural you missed this). She gets her powers [spoiler]from a radioactive wave that comes through the portal as the team is teleported, which also destroys the lab. Still, it's stupid but at least it is not the PC malfunctioning.[/spoiler]

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