ZERO stars out of Four
Enough already! They need to stop making Fantastic Four movies! None of the cinematic versions have worked. The unreleased Roger Corman-produced cheapie from 1994 (you can find it on YouTube) was a bust and so was the big budget 2005 version. Now there is a new “reboot” that is the absolute worst of the bunch. Maybe it's the source material. I'll probably get into trouble with the comic book nerds for this but maybe, just maybe, Fantastic Four is one of the lesser properties from the Marvel Comics universe.
So, in an experiment, five teen science nerds teleport themselves to an alternate universe which alters their DNA. They all end up with superhuman powers. Reed Richards (Miles Teller) becomes a living Stretch Armstrong, Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) becomes a human torch, Sue Storm (Kate Mara) is able to become invisible, and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) is transformed into a rock monster known as The Thing who looks like a delicious peanut cluster PayDay bar. The fifth member, Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), is all so Emo and, unlike the others, he doesn't make it back from the alternate plain. He gets lost there and is turned into a marble monstrosity with Scanners-like powers to make a person's head explode. Eventually, the good four have to battle this Dr. Doom.
Director Josh Trank's film takes foooooorever to get going. First, we meet Reed and Ben as kids in what looks like an excised scene from Joe Dante's Explorers. Then, they are teens in the high school science fair where they are discovered and recruited to conduct the experiment. When they FINALLY get on with the experiment we see a brief aftermath where Reed runs away, then the movie cuts to ONE YEAR LATER as they are prisoners of the government.
This is such a sloppily structured movie that it should be taught in screenwriting classes on how NOT to write a screenplay. And I am serious when I say that George Lucas writes snappier dialog. There are good actors here, but they can't do anything with this material. It's all dull and humorless.
Everything about Fantastic Four is uninspired and there is nothing to recommend it.
