Fant4stic Movie Review (Spoiler Free)

Marvel’s first superhero family returns this summer to the big screen in Fantastic 4. Was it a good film? No, but I didn’t think it was as terrible as the public made it out to be.

Genre: Action / Adventure / Sci-Fi

Director: Josh Trank

Cast: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Reg E. Cathey, Toby Kebbell, Tim Heidecker & Tim Blake.

Runtime: 100 min.

US Release: 07 August 2015

UK Release: 06 August 2015

German Release: 13 August 2015

This is my final movie review of the Fantastic Four series I started, and I did not find it as bad as people said it was. Don’t get me wrong; by no means was this a good film. In fact, it suffers from some major plot and character issues, but it does not deserve the hate it received.

This brings me to a second point I want to touch upon. I am truly disappointed by some of the other reviewers I follow, who gave the movie the lowest ratings. Yes, we obtained an unfinished product for the exchange of full payment, and yes, it is something that enraged me as well. But the fact of the matter is that this sci-fi thriller has a strong start and keeps being intriguing until halfway through. I really would have liked to see the finished product by Trank, because I am sure it would have been a blockbuster success.

The story revolves around a group of young adults, whose intelligence and social upbringings turned them into outsiders. Together, and funded by the government, they built a machine able to teleport to another universe. While field-testing the machine, something goes wrong, and four of them get involved in an accident that grants them superhuman abilities. Their lives forever changed, they need to learn to work as a team and trust each other if they are to save the world from an old friend turned villain.

This motion picture is a prime example of what can happen when a studio interferes with the direction of a movie, after the terms had been agreed upon. According to different reports, the executives changed their minds during mid-production, messed with Trank and fired him during post-production. Then they cut footage out of the film, reshot the last 20 minutes and pieced everything together, in the hopes the audience would be stupid enough not to notice.

I don’t want to go into detail because I don’t know exactly what happened, but once you reach an agreement on how to do a movie, you should trust the director you hired to be able to do the job. No matter if he is a jerk or not, Trank has the talent.

I really enjoyed the first half of the movie. The way they introduced Ben Grimm and Reed Richards gave the movie some good background and established Reed's passion for science, as well as how he became friends with Ben. The movie stays on course with the path it started, as we get to understand how Reed got into contact with Susan Storm, her brother Johnny and Victor Von Doom.

The beginning act has Josh Trank's fingerprints all over it, and that is what captured my interest. It has that great and epic atmosphere from Chronicle, setting the pieces slowly together along its first half, which was supposed to lead us somewhere eventful. I loved the hardcore science talk and the interaction between Reed and Victor, because this is what the comics are about: the rivalry between two of the greatest scientific minds.

Apart from some structural problems, the plot was moving at a steady pace, and the elements of graphical horror, introduced by the end of the first half, have been one of the strongest aspects of the movie. Then came the second act of the film.

Suddenly, the pacing comes to a halt, and the movie starts slowly switching tone. Scenes that were in the trailers have been either altered as video footage or cut out completely, but the worst thing is that nothing is happening at all. The lead-up from the first act is completely wasted in the second half, with useless dialogue and awkward character interaction.

Out of nowhere, we reach the final act during the last 20-15 minutes, which leads to a forced conflict between the villain who reveals himself to our heroes. From here on, Trunk was completely out of the picture, and we obtain a short, cheesy “let's do this because we are a family” dialogue from Reed, making no sense at all.

The movie ends with one of the most cringeworthy dialogues in cinema history, as the four heroes are trying to establish what they should call themselves.

Apart from the structural problems, this film had difficulties establishing its characters. Apart from Grimm and Richards, the rest of the characters had no real chemistry or connectivity with each other. There clearly was a romantic setup for Reed and Sue, yet it failed, and while we are talking about Susan Storm, her adoption is never explored or truly explained. Johnny and Sue, who, even though not blood relatives, are supposed to be brother and sister, are completely dysfunctional.

My biggest character complaint, though (except how Dr. Doom was mistreated), was how they handled the persona of Ben Grimm. Don’t get me wrong, Jamie Bell was great and he is the best character in the movie, but he was suddenly absent during a good 25 minutes of the film.

Now to the biggest issue, though. Victor’s transformation to Doom was handled completely wrong. This is supposed to be the Darth Vader of comic books, and all we got was a pathetic, bad-looking impaired baddie, who wants to destroy this world for no apparent reason. He not only looks bad, but he also sounds bad.

The effects are all right, I loved how the Thing looked as if he just walked out of the comic book pages (we finally obtained a great-looking Thing!). Susan’s invisibility and force field projection was really nicely depicted, and Johnny Storm on fire was just wow, my jaw dropped at how real it looked.

However, it did not always look good. The rubber and elasticity powers Reed obtains did look horrible, especially in a scene where he morphs his face to look different. The obvious green screen environment from the parallel world needed to be smoothed out. We have the year 2015; this type of green screen effect is not acceptable anymore! My final complaint concerns Dr. Doom’s costume and look: Who came up with such a laughable idea? Seriously!

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Verdict: The idea and premise behind the Fantastic 4 were great, and it had a good and entertaining first half. What harmed this film was the studio that gave up on the movie halfway through, losing faith in its director. If this movie had been made the way it was intended to, it could have been one of the best blockbusters this year. Sadly, I can’t give it more than a 5.0 out of 10.

Leave a comment to let me know what you thought. Thank you for reading!