Four far from fantastic
FILM | Chuck Koplinski
If nothing else, director Josh Trank has succeeded in doing what I had thought was impossible – he’s made a boring superhero movie. For some inexplicable reason, the Fantastic Four remains the jinxed Marvel Comics property, the one that for some odd reason simply hasn’t been successfully transferred to the big screen. The saga of Reed Richards, his best friend Ben Grimm, his future wife Sue Storm and her hothead brother Johnny has all of the necessary elements to make for a distinctive and exciting film franchise. Their fate – of traveling into outer space only to be pelted with cosmic rays thus triggering a change in their biology that gives them extraordinary powers that reflect their personalities – is replete with tragedy, triumph, redemption, dynamic supporting characters and awe-inspiring adventures and has kept the book, if not a perennial best-seller, at least one of constant interest since its debut in 1961.
If nothing else, the book has always had a sense of fun to it, something director Tim Story achieved with mixed results in his 2005 and 2007 film adaptations. There’s no amusement, mirth or even a bit of whimsy this time out as Trank takes a dour approach that renders this film dead on arrival. The story, such as it is, modifies the origin, this time focusing on an alternate dimension – Planet Zero – where Reed (Miles Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) have succeeded in sending and bringing back matter. This feat, pulled off at their high school science fair, gets the attention of Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg Cathey) and his daughter Sue (Kate Mara), who commission them to assist with their research. Storm’s son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) is also roped into helping with the dimension-straddling gizmo that Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) has invented but can’t quite succeed in finishing.
I don’t have to tell you that the dimension hopping goes wrong, and that before you know it, Reed is able to stretch his body to incredible lengths, Sue can turn invisible and control force fields, Johnny is able to burst into flames and fly and Ben becomes a living brick wall with incredible strength. The problem is that we don’t get to that point until half of the film’s 100-minute running time has gone by. There’s far too much exposition devoted to the science of the movie but too little to the characters themselves. The result is a dull setup featuring people we care nothing for.
You can tell from the start that there’s something amiss. None of the performers seem particularly engaged, each of them delivering even the most mundane piece of dialogue with such seriousness that a sense of dread comes to hang over the entire film. Trank has already distanced himself from the movie via social media. However, from what’s on screen, it’s hard to believe his version could have been altered so drastically by editing or other postproduction work. A director sets and maintains the tone of his movie throughout its filming and there’s no erasing that unless scenes are reshot. No, the fault for the feel of this film lies at the feet of Trank, who only had one credit to his name before this.
By the time the title group goes toe-totoe with Doom on Planet Zero, it all seems like an afterthought, a tacked-on sequence shot only to provide a reason for a follow-up feature. Unfortunately, Fantastic Four is over before it begins, a film that’s one long setup to a sequel that likely will never be made, a waste of time, money, talent and potential that will come to be seen as the worst superhero film ever made.
Contact Chuck Koplinski at [email protected].
