A decade after the first Fantastic Four feature, Marvel’s Fantastic Four gets a cinematic reboot from writer-director Josh Trank, his follow-up to 2012's Chronicle. Miles Teller (Whiplash) leads the squad as Mr. Fantastic; Kate Mara (127 Hours) is The Invisible Woman; Michael B. Jordan (Chronicle) is The Human Torch; Jamie Bell (Snowpiercer) is The Thing; and a drastically different Dr. Doom – a hacker named Victor Domashev – is played by Toby Kebbell (Koba from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes).
This is produced by 20th Century Fox (makers of the X-Men films), and falls outside the Marvel Universe of The Avengers movies.
I could easily say that this new Fantastic Four outstretches its welcome, that its plot vanishes without a trace, that the action fails to ignite, or that the script could have used a good clobbering. But I’ve got a simpler statement: this is a bad movie. I know what many of you are thinking: “Can it really be as bad as those campy previous two films?” It’s a photo finish, even (and especially) with its bold shift to a serious/humourless tone.
Full reviewAll told, the movie feels like a protracted teaser for a more exciting follow-up that, depending on whether audiences warm to this relatively low-key approach, might never happen.
Full reviewTrank's origin story brings nothing new to the party, apart from a rather muted, real-world aesthetic that counters the colourful worlds dreamed up by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the original Marvel comics.
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The drama is laughable, the attempted humour is strained and the script simply never allows the special effects crew to do anything particularly inventive.
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A really good film, shorn of glib know-all theatrics, faux profundity and the spangly CG that's usually ushered in as dramatic short hand for, "we got nuthin'." It is, as the old saying goes, a proper movie.
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A sense of heaviness, gloom and complete disappointment settles in during the second half, as the mundane setup pays no dramatic or sensory dividends whatsoever.
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While it never quite becomes a bad film, it can never quite make you forget it is a botched film.
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As an origin story that’s all origins and no story, there’s a hollow, stale feeling to this occasionally admirable attempt to Nolanise Marvel’s dysfunctional family.
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