Fantastic Four

I had heard so much bad press and reviews of the new 20th Century Fox (20th CF) movie Fantastic Four that I didn't go see it at the theater, nor watch the DVD of the movie. However, when it came on premium cable that I already had, I decided to watch it and see for myself just how bad it was.Before I say anything about the movie based on my viewing of it, I'll say a few things about the storm of condemnation the movie seemed to generate. The first thing I noticed in the reviews was the uniform dislike by the fan boys, mostly based on the idea that 20th CF was just going to make a quick and cheap movie so they could retain the movie rights to FF. Apparently there is a clause in the rights contract that the studio has to make a movie at least every 7 years to keep the film rights. Since the last two FF movies weren't stellar box office winners, the fan boys were hoping 20th CF would just skip a movie and let the rights revert to Marvel where, they hoped, it would get a much better film treatment. When 20th CF announced the new movie, they immediately hated it before it was ever made or released since that meant there would be no Marvel produced FF for at least another 7 years. So, before the movie was even released, there was a built in bias against it by a large number of the very fans the studio wanted to see it.A second controversy came up when the cast was announced. The expected big name stars were all missing and the cast was a veritable who's who of unknown actors. Plus many of the fans were disappointed the cast didn't look exactly like the people in the comic books. This was especially true when a black actor was cast as Johnny Storm when the comic book character was white. Some of this can just be put down to racism, but the actors on a whole were much younger than their comic book counterparts, taking away some of the familiarity the viewers felt.Another part of the controversy before the movie even opened was the rumored infighting between the director, writers, producers, and executives at 20th CF over what was the plot of the story and what was to go on the screen. Apparently, the executives at 20th CF fired the director after the movie was already shot and being edited and ordered a large number of cuts and re-shoots and also changed both the length and ending of the picture. How much this changed the picture is unknown, but it certainly meant the movie was no longer the version the director had originally envisioned.After the movie was released, the harsh criticism continued, mainly centered around the total lack of humor in the movie, the dreary acting turned in by the performers, the shortness of the movie, and the sub par special effects compared to other super hero movies. There is some indication that these were legitimate problems. Other super hero movies like Batman vs Superman, X-Men Apocalypse, and Avengers: Civil War all had budgets of around $250 million and ran about two and a half hours long. FF had a budget of $120 million and ran just an hour and forty minutes. Even FF: Rise of the Silver Surfer had a $130 million budget back in 2007. From a budgetary point alone, FF was definitely made on the, relative, cheap.A final complaint was very little actually happened in the movie. The first hour was mostly low budget expose about the origins of the characters and set up for their eventual transformation. The last forty minutes had only one real high budget special effects action scene and the rest was mostly TV grade special effects. Not necessarily bad, but certainly far cheaper and less entertaining than the quality seen in other super hero movies.Before I go on, I would like to make one side comment about the criticisms about the short length and low budget contributing to the poor performance of the film. Another movie that came out not long after FF was Deadpool. It had a budget of just $58 million, less than half of FF, and a running time of an hour and 48 minutes, just a few minutes longer than FF. With half the budget and roughly the same running time, Deadpool made $763 million, so neither budget nor running time should have been a deciding factor in the reception of FF. And, while FF was roundly criticized, it did make $168 million on its $120 million budget, so not quite the abject failure it's made out to be. But still, that also only serves to point out that the FF could have been shot and edited into a much more enjoyable movie, making better use of both the time and resources available to the writers and director.But all that aside, what did I think of the movie? Well, first off, it cost me nothing to see, so that's a plus from the start. Second, I'd read the comic books for years and was thoroughly familiar with the characters, so I needed no introduction to them if they had just reused the characters from the comics. Instead, the reboot started off with much younger versions of the characters in entirely different relationships to each other, so, in my opinion, the origin part of the movie was necessary. Almost an hour of introduction before they ever got their powers might be a little long, but I thought it was well enough done that I didn't mind the relative slow pacing. Unlike a video game, a good plot doesn't just jump straight into action without some exposé. The only early part that seemed a little rushed was the short time shown of them adjusting to their new life and practicing mastering their new powers. But even that was not really a problem. Pretty much anybody who'd read the comics already had seen all the Marvel angst their characters exhibit, moaning about how awful life had treated them and how much they hated what had happened to them. I didn't really need more than a hint of that to bring back all the comic book memories.The part that I did find far too short was the last third of the movie, from forming the FF team till the villain shows and promptly starts trying to destroy the world. In most movies the hero team meets the villain, has a confrontation, the villain explains exactly why he's so pissed, tells what he's going to do, and then tries to do it. There is then a series of escalating battles with henchmen and/or evil allies that the heroes have to fight thru till the final climatic battle with the Boss character. Quite often with losses, injuries, and a crisis of confidence of one or more of the heroes that they actually will triumph in the end. This serves to give a reason to why the villain is acting the way he is and why he might be mad at the Earth in general and the heroes specifically.What should have been a good twenty to thirty minutes of continuing fighting and talking is just condensed into about five minutes of Doom showing up, saying he's going to destroy the Earth, and then going back to his new planet and setting the Ultimate Weapon in action. The heroes then travel to Doom's planet, have the only good extended cgi enhanced battle of the whole show, defeat him, and then return to Earth. All in all, I thought the ending seem rushed and greatly abbreviated.Could the movie have been made better? Certainly. If nothing else, a little more character development on Doom would have gone a long way to make him less of a two dimensional villain. Some information on how he transitioned from lab scientist to monster would have made him a more sympathetic foil to the heroes. Plus, the heroes would seem much more human if they'd been able to have a few moments of doubt and maybe some setbacks on the way to defeating Doom. Sure, in the final battle they did get knocked down a few times, but they just got back up and continued to have at him till they won. A better route to follow would have seen them arrive on Doom's world and have to fight a legion of animated stone and fire monsters, reflecting both the Thing and the Torch's power. They could have struggled against them with the typical ups and downs of battle and bouts of self doubt till eventually triumphing over them and moving on to Doom's stronghold where they have to fight their way in and then destroy Doom's Ultimate Weapon right after he activates it.Does what I describe sound a bit like every other super hero movie? Well, yes, but there's a reason for that. It's a formula that's tried and true. When super heroes go up against a super villain, it's not going to sound like Waiting For Godot, it's going to eventually sound like a bare knuckle brawl in a Western saloon. After all, a super hero movie is, by definition, bigger than life. The characters have to rise and fall and rise again till they eventually triumph and postpone Gotterdammerung for another day. It's the basis of every good comic book series and, if done right, the raison d'etre of every good super hero movie.Did Fantastic Four achieve it's destiny in this instance? Not really, it sold it's viewers short in the important ways and left them feeling unfulfilled. In the end, it wasn't running time or money or casting or even mediocre special effects that let the movie down, it was the lack of a central coherent vision that reflected the comic book ethos the fans have come to expect from their cinematic universe.

I skipped over this film when it first came out due to the drama surrounding it. The casting, the studio meddling, Josh Trank's infamous melt-down. But after what Marvel deemed cinematic in Phase 4 and this movie was on sale.... I picked it up.Surprisingly, you can get from start to finish without any major jarring issues. I think the worst part of the film is Sue and Johnny Storm's dad. He seemed to just break the pace of the movie every time he showed up.I will admit Fantastic 4 was not my jam as a kid and I barely know anything about them. So, I cannot speak to how lore accurate this film is. I am merely pointing this film works as a film when you learn about all the behind the scenes antics..... and my interest in watching it is to see how it turned out in the end.I will say this .... this film feels like it takes forever to get going. I swear it takes like 2/3's of the movie for them to finally get their powers and when that finally happens the movie sprints to the finish.Pick it up on sale or go watch stuff on all the behind the scenes drama and then pick it up on sale to see how it panned out.

Never thought I'd write a review but here goes. Went in with low expectations and came out pleasantly surprised. There's a lot this movie gets right which I'm sure people will ignore just to jump on the hate bandwagon. I'll go over positives first. The acting was good, not Oscar worthy but it didn't need to be.The actors played the roles they were supposed to play. Visually the film is beautiful. The biggest positive was the characters themselves. Their chemistry was fantastic(pun intended). They react how I assume people who gain inter-dimensional abilities would react. They're terrified. Reed Richards (Miles Teller) especially. All he wants is to fix his friends and there's a real warmth to that. A down to earth feeling. He was definitely one of the driving factors of this film. Now, onto the negatives. I kept checking the timestamp to try to figure out when things would go wrong for the movie. It had a solid start,solid middle, and then the ending was so so bad. I have no idea who decided on the pacing but it was appalling. **********SPOILERS***********I'll just get right to it. Anything at all related to Doctor Doom takes place in the last 20 minutes of the film. Total runtime is about one hour and thirty minutes. We get such good background of Reed Richards(Miles Teller) and Ben Grimm(Jamie Bell), but the other characters just like a cliff note. We don't even really get to see them adjust to the world as they're confined to a military base the majority of the movie.***********END OF SPOILERS**********On a related note of not establishing characters well, there were scenes missing that I feel would've helped pacing a bit and help establish the villain a bit better. Victor Von Doom is an intelligent,charismatic, and borderline psychotic man obsessed with power because of his ego. This film just made him feel like a caveman who discovered fire. The dialogue during the big fight was messy too. It seemed too cheesy/awkward and I love my superhero movies to be extra cheesy but the lines were just weird. It's like the chemistry between the characters melted away for a few minutes and became more robotic. Cool fight though.My final thoughts are mixed but I can honestly say I did enjoy this movie a lot and would recommend it. I'd definitely advise going in with an open mind. Why the 5 Stars? Simple. It was a solid superhero movie. It entertained me and kept me interested in a story I already know. I commend all the actors on trying their best. It wasn't perfect in any way but definitely deserving of another go more than other recent films. I felt the positives outweighed the negatives. It had all the right ingredients, but not the right measurements. This film succeeds(exceeds at a few parts) at telling the story of the Fantastic 4 and fails quite terribly at the same time. A story that needed much more breathing room than the film was given. I absolutely love the things it did right, it makes me sad that are things that went so wrong. I would've hoped for a sequel just so they can iron out all the problems, but I believe Fox split the rights with Marvel now. So we'll see how that goes.

I honestly didn't think this was that bad. Going into it with expectations somewhere around gutter level probably helped but even though it has many faults, it breezed through 100 minutes without stinking up the joint too much.It takes a different approach to the superhero flick than most of Marvels recent output so at least deserves points for trying something new. There's little in the way of bright costumes or superhero heroics - focussing more on the origin story of The Fantastic Four and the first (brief) smackdown with Dr Doom. They've played around with the origins in an effort at freshness I guess - some of it works, some of it doesn't but such is life.As all the pieces are moved into place for a franchise, it's clear they're got an eye on future stories. Future stories that won't be told after the critical and commercial failure of this effort so those parts now feel pretty redundant. Certain characters get a little short changed in this early outing which is a shame as the cast are pretty much spot on, they just don't get enough of a chance to shine.So as a grand, world building franchise starter, it hasn't really worked but as a minor sci-fi work that doesn't outstay it's welcome, I found it relatively entertaining.

When I saw this at the cinema I remembered really not enjoying it all that much - some parts of the film dragged far too much and other parts that should/could have been developed more instead felt rushed. It felt like two attempts at a remake of a film being blurred into one and therefore the pacing isn't great at all and it felt like a bit of a chore to watch. I thought I'd give it another go watching it from the comfort of home to see if it improved with a second viewing but I think it's just a badly developed and edited film to be honest. I enjoyed it slightly more this time but the characters just don't gel well in my opinion, some components have been changed too much and feel in-cohesive and the film lacks any real excitement or intrigue. I don't think anyone in this film - actors, directors or editors - come out looking good and I think the original two films are far better and much more fun until a better reboot is produced in the future.

Oh dear another failure in bringing my favourite comic book to the screen.I thought the previous two were bad enough but this is just weird.Its like a kids tv movie.Bears no resemblance to the comic characters I remember but in fairness I do know the comic went through some changes.The ending seems to have been cobbled together in 5 minutes after most of the movie spent on introducing the characters.The movie that was never released officially was better than this.I doubt if there will be sequel.More chance of Robocop 2 god forbid.

I had heard only negative feedback on this version of the FF and so waited over a year to see it when the Blu-ray was at a reduced price. I really enjoyed it. A different take on the story. My only complaint was it was too short! I could have sat through more.The extras are OK but a bit thin. Picture and sound are very good and a great Dolby Atmos soundtrack shines through.

This was a poorly made film. I understand Marvel want younger actors/actress, but please hire actors/actress that can act. The story was poor, and why have they used a British actor to be the bad guy.Anyways. I bought the film as it forms part of my Marvel collection of films. Hopefully, the second film be better.