Fantastic Four (2015) Reviews

• A pointless reboot which fails to improve on the original film in almost every manner possible

  jimbo-53-1865112016-06-23

  Based on a scientific project that Reed Richards (Miles Teller) has been developing (which can transfer matter from one dimension to another) the Fantastic Four use themselves as Guinea Pigs in order to transfer themselves to another dimension (in the belief that there is something in this other worldly dimension that will benefit their own planet). However, something goes wrong for our foursome during the transportation process and they end up with drastic physical transformations (some which are much more noticeable than others). Worse still, they tried and failed to save Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) and leave him behind believing him to be dead. Later on, a team go back to the other dimension and discover that Victor is still alive and bring him back to Earth in order to assess his condition. But Victor has no intention of staying on Earth and is determined to create a new world in this other dimension and will stop at nothing to achieve his objective. Victor has also suffered a physical transformation, but he has become much stronger and more powerful than his former friends and the Fantastic Four find that they must work together to try to stop him from carrying out his evil plans. The film opens up with some promise whereby we're given an insight into how our illustrious foursome ended up becoming the formidable team that we saw in the earlier films. Despite a fairly promising beginning though this reboot completely fails to bring about a lot of the magic that we witnessed in the 2005 version of this film. A big problem for me lay with the tone of the film; firstly it takes itself WAY too seriously and as a result it made the film quite boring to watch. When watching this it felt like I was watching a science documentary (with all its wordy geeky exposition) rather than what should be a fun comic book type movie. This brings me on to my next point 'What fun'? In the 2005 film (and the 2007 film as well) there was much more in the way of camaraderie between the cast making the film much more fun to watch. As a villain Von Doom isn't particularly well-developed here and I felt his motivations for world-domination were a little sketchy here - I criticised Von Doom's motivations in the original film, but compared to his motivations here they now seem more plausible in retrospect. I appreciate that this is a reboot and therefore the filmmaker's are trying to put their own stamp on things (presumably that explains why Johnny Storm is black in this film and also explains why their powers have been attained in a different manner to the original film). The problem with this reboot is that they've failed to do anything to improve on the original film; the story isn't as interesting, the characters are much weaker and are poorly developed, there is no real exploration of their super powers (this was a big thing in the previous films and made sense as they were a big life-changing aspect for the foursome), but here they just kind of have the super powers and then that's it - off to destroy Victor Von Doom. The only real super power that is explored is that of The Thing and even that super power is exploited in a rather lame way. The cast are another big problem with this film as they totally failed to engage with me (as well as each other); Miles Teller is really bland as Reed Richards (even more bland than Ioan Gruffudd was in the original films) which is surprising as he put in a very good performance in Whiplash 2 years ago. Kate Mara is very pretty, but she's terrible in this film (again probably worse than Alba was in the original films). Michael B Jordan tries his best as Johnny Storm, but he lacks the charisma that Evans brought to the role in the original films and as a result suffers badly in comparison. The Thing for me is probably the best character in the film, but he lacks the touching back story that we lay witness to in the original film and again suffers from not being developed sufficiently enough to make me really care about him here. The ending is also poor and lacks any kind of intensity and tension and has the Fantastic Four doing 'the obvious' to wrap the film up. All in all it's a very disappointing film where the serious tone is perhaps a bigger enemy to the film than Doctor Doom. It's big and bloated, but it's also boring, and lacking in both fun and imagination. I'd recommend giving it a wide berth.

• Anything But Fantastic

  DTHCinema2016-09-03

  Fantastic Four (or as many call it Fant4stic) is a comic book movie starring Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Directed by Josh Trank, was produced by Twenty-First Century Fox, and has the run-time of 100mins (1hr40mins). This is the 4th movie (and 3rd theatrical one) in the Fantastic Four Franchise. Now despite the hate i actually liked the last 2 movies in the franchise (Fantastic Four 2005 and Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer, please don't kill me). Now this Movie has been out for almost a year now but has still been getting much hate. To prove my point I would just like to say the movie has a 9% on Rotten Tomatoes which is tied for the worst rated superhero movie of all time. Let me just say I am NOT a professional critic, I just go to movies to have a good time(as shown with my liking of the old Fantastic Four movies) not necessarily to look for major flaws. However this movie makes that goal rather insufferable. Anyways here it is. A lot of people give a pass to the acting simply because these actors have done good work in other movies. Personally I find this to be a terrible excuse. All of these actors such as Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller just seem like they have no soul throughout the entire movie. It's almost as if the whole time these actors had been forced into making this movie. Also the chemistry between them is just awful. Now let's talk about the pacing. Simply put it I have no idea what they were thinking. Why would you make a Fantastic Four movie and have them do absolutely nothing the whole time except for that horrendous fight at the end. Now let me just say Superhero movies without much action can be done well (Batman, X-Men: First Class, etc.) but if your going to do that you have to having interesting conversations and a good origin story which this movie does not have in any way. Speaking of origin stories, am I the only one who almost hated the first half as much as the second half. I mean I know a lot of people who say that the first half is pretty good and all I have to say is how. It's just a drawn out, overly dark useless story that EVERYBODY knows. Then there's the tone, which let my question why did they think that make a dark and gritty reboot of Fantastic Four would be a good idea. Again let me just say, a darker story of a previously existing light heart movie isn't necessarily bad. But it has to have more reason then some executive saying "Hey The Dark Knight was popular let's make this just like that." Then there's the part I was most regretting talking (or writing) about the Action and Effects. Let's get out of the way that Dr.Doom and CGI Miles Teller Face is awful. What I wanted to talk about was the action sequences (or just the 1 action sequence). To be honest it's the most cliché, predictable fight ever. Basically what happens is that Dr.Doom makes this ray thing that shoots into earth from the planet he's in and The Fantastic Four have to stop him. So they go into the other planet and try to fight off Dr.Doom separately and fail so they decide to team up and defeat him. What I hate about this fight (aside from it's predictable nature) is that the whole scene is shot in extreme darkness plus it's all out of frame so you can barely tell what's going on. Last, I would like to quickly mention the forgettable score, the incredible amount of plot holes such as Dr.Storm going to a science fair for some reason, Dr.Doom magically making a cape, and Dr.Doom looking at people and killing them but not doing that for the Fantastic Four. Also just to say it is incredibly obvious Fox wanted to make some sort of MCU with this movie and set up an entire expanded universe around this movie when it cannot hold it's own weight as a good movie to do something like that. Conclusion Now as you could probably tell I do not like this movie, it has awful pacing, terrible effects,a rehashed story,and laughably bad action. While many have pointed out that Fox took over the project and made it a generic superhero movie. I agree with that but I still don't think the part that wasn't taken over was even passable. It was just Josh Trank redoing the exact same plot as the 2005 version but slower. But the worst part is that the whole movie is just a set up for more Fantastic Four movies with a set up scene every 5mins. This movie has been called by many the worst superhero movie ever and I will personally agree with that. At least Batman and Robin had an overly joking theme and never took itself seriously unlike Fant4stic which thinks it is going to be the Next Iron Man which could never happen because Iron Man actually made a good movie before setting things up. Overall i think the movie has too many problems to count such as bad pacing, no structure, and awful effects to even be close to recommending. Rating 1/10 Unwatchable

• This movie is a waste of time

  suhel282016-08-28

  I began watching this movie with great anticipation, however, it really failed me within twenty minutes of it. I still continued to watch it and thought that the movie would get kicked off now but the now never came. The worst thing is that the invisible girl got her powers without going to space and that is so stupid because all my life I have been brought up seeing the girl in space and getting power, not outside of it. More than an hour into movie and there is no action. The villain appears in the last thirty minutes, the fight lasts of 10 minutes and the movie is over. Really a waste of time and money.

• The not so fantastic 4

  alex-magnusson002016-08-04

  Imagine the worst superhero movie you've ever seen. Then forget it because this is by far the worst. When I heard they were doing a remake I thought " this could definitely work". You see the old movies from 05 and 07 was in my opinion somewhat dull and half decent. But all the flaws from there suddenly seemed to pale when I saw the remake. 30 minutes in I found myself staring at a bird outside the window, and that was more interesting than the actual movie. Then 15 minutes or something later something finally happened. Our heroes teleports to this alternate dimension and they got there powers and etc etc. The INCREDIBLY SLOW pace is a major problem with this movie. Then there's the casting. I've seen some things that these actors have don previously, before this. Kate Mara in House of Cards for example. And however good they were there it was zero chemistry here. Then of course there is Hollywood back at it again with the political correctness. I don't consider myself a huge comic-book fan, but every one who has ever heard of Fantastic 4 knows that Johnny and Sue Storm are brother and sister and therefore the flame is not black. There is nothing wrong with a director who wants to do his own interpitation of a comic-book series, but changing something as fundamental as this is never a good idea. Compared to this, the old movies seem good.

• Offensively bad

  michaeljpfitzgerald2016-08-06

  I don't think you can make a movie like this unless you really, truly dislike the content - and harbor a great deal of enmity towards anyone who might like it. The effort necessary to get everything wrong, to miss every beat, to offend every memory that someone might have that would inspire them to go risk *another* attempt at this franchise; that has to come from a place of real disgust, I think. What is amazing is how regularly that kind of pointed loathing seems to be given the reigns of properties that an audience really cares about. Aside from the deep spiritual mistreatment - which is difficult, given how weird and wobbly the Fantastic Four are, to begin with - the pacing is poisonous, with the bulk of the film dedicated to what feels like an attempt at an involved origin story, but where the characters aren't really given anything to do, or to care about. In an attempt to avoid being explicit with motivations, I think, the characters instead limp around under the shadow of intentions - maybe Johnny is upset with his dad? Maybe Ben is looking for purpose? It's possible Richards spent his time in exile trying to help his friends? It's hard to say - better filmmaking could have answered these questions subtly. It didn't happen here. This is a joyless, uninteresting movie, with a cast that looked like they were waiting for something else to start, and I don't understand how they could spend all that money on a movie that looks this bad - designs, to sets, special effects; it's all incredibly dated and generic. One of the worst movies I've ever watched.