I heard the rumors, read the reviews and sifted through the endless negative critiques, but I still had hope. I still had my fingers crossed and believed there was no way the “Fantastic Four” remake could be that bad.
I was wrong.
Josh Trank’s “Fantastic Four” takes the four classic Marvel superheroes and de-ages them from the 2005 version to a vague — but implied high-school — age quite unsuccessfully, as the four main actors are all in their late twenties, and they look like it.
We begin with young Reed Richards and Ben Grimm, who become unlikely friends and build a teleportation device that gets Reeds recognized by Dr. Franklin Storm. Reed is whisked away to help Dr. Storm and his team of geniuses build a teleportation machine that will inevitably assist in saving the Earth.
Awesome.
Typical “Fantastic Four” subplots and characterizations unfold. Reed falls for Sue Storm, pissing off Victor Von Doom, who is also in love with Sue because who doesn’t love a totally predictable and non-original love triangle? Johnny Storm swaggers on and off the screen with his wise-cracking jokes as the only character with a personality, and a bunch of white men in suits constantly flock about trying to assert their superiority.
Finally, the first big plot point comes along. The guys decide they want to be the first to explore the other dimension they’ve discovered. Reed invites Ben because besties don’t go into space without one another.
So they go — most notably, without Sue, which is cool. I mean, it’s not like the superhero genre isn’t judged enough for its lack of women — let’s just leave out the only female on the team during the one event that makes the franchise relevant.
They cause a disturbance, resulting in the loss of Victor, and they are caught in a blast of energy that travels with them back to our world and hits Sue — oh yeah, because she exists — who is the one to save their asses.
That is where the movie stops being interesting because every minute after that is just lazy. The villain isn’t introduced until almost the very end, and the fight with him is over in the blink of an eye. They’re superheroes for like five minutes.
I get Fox needed to do something with the characters to keep ownership of them, but this film was so badly done it was an insult to Stan Lee. And, dare I say it, the characters and the franchise would be better off in the hands of Disney.
The hard truth is “Fantastic Four” was written more like a space adventure than a superhero film, and it was disappointing in both genres. The characters were flat, the relationships were weak and forced. The plot was slow and left all the action at the very end for a quick and unsatisfying conclusion.
There was nothing “fantastic” about it.
Lexia Banks
