A young cast of up-and-coming talent tries their best to save the world, while also attempting to save this struggling film property. Spoiler alert: they only save one of the two. Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell are all talented actors who often breathe life into roles. And yet they even seem bored in 20th Century Fox’s third attempt at depicting “Marvel’s first family.”
The most recent adaptation of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s superhero team wants to be a lot of things. Distancing itself from the last filmic failure, this new FANTASTIC FOUR is part character drama, part sci-fi exploration, part coming-of-age story, and part superhero origin film, all painted in a dark and muddy pallet and featuring some of the worst CGI you will see in a theater this year. It has some good ideas bubbling under the surface, but there’s a major clash in tone between some of these ideas. It tries to be a dark and serious film with the super-powered characters being treated more like monsters than heroes, and yet it also includes goofy comic-book style dialogue that feels hokey in a film made in this style. A lame Saturday morning cartoon score is obnoxiously bombastic and glaringly out of place, and only adds to the odd combo of conflicting ideas. I appreciate that this newest comic-book adaptation tries to set itself apart by telling a new version of the story and structuring itself around character development instead of action scenes. But, in the end, a film just doesn’t work when the script is at complete odds with the direction of the film.
We’re first introduced to the characters of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm as little boys. Richards is building a device in his parent’s garage that can transfer particles to an unknown location. Flash forward 7 years and Richards (Miles Teller) and Grimm (Jamie Bell) have now made an updated version for their school’s science fair. Even though the teachers dismiss this invention, a doctor who works for an acclaimed institute and his adoptive daughter Sue Storm (Kate Mara) happen to be walking through the fair – because these types of coincidences happen all the time – and offer Richards the opportunity to build a larger device in their facility. Of course we then meet Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) and Victor Doom (Toby Kebbell) during the building process because this is the Fantastic Four after all. But in this version of the group gaining their powers, the device Richards builds transports them to another dimension; to a planet that is covered in rock formations and neon green goo. Note to self: if you ever get transported to another dimension, don’t touch the neon green goo.
It’s in this middle half after they all get transformed where the film started to pique my interest. An overly drawn out opening feels exactly that, and the final act retreats into the standard heroics we have seen before. The only scenes that really come together take place in the second act. There’s a little bit of a David Cronenberg body horror element once the team arrives back to Earth from the other dimension. We see them disfigured and scared. A genuine sense of fear as to what they are now and what they are capable of is effectively shown. Seeing Reed Richards elongated in an unnatural state and strapped down to a medical table is quite an alarming image. The same can be said when we see Johnny Storm burnt and unconscious, still smoldering from being ignited in flames. These images are frightening and provide a unique alternative look to how super powers are typically shown.
It is moments like this where you can see what Josh Trank was trying to do with the film. Much like his previous film CHRONICLE, he seems to want to show the superheroes as more like outsiders or monsters. It’s a novel idea and it’s closer in tone to what Bryan Singer has done with the X-Men series. But I suspect that too many cooks in the kitchen ruined the original concept. I imagine Trank had an idea, but the result of two other writers and studio heads kept pulling the film into a more sellable product. The dialogue and characterizations go one direction while the visuals and concept go another. It’s like seeing Reed Richards stretched out so thin trying to grasp at polar opposite ideas. Since Josh Trank is no superhero, this task is too much for him to handle.
Considering FANTASTIC FOUR tries to be soooo different and to be soooo many things, it’s sort of shocking how dull it winds up feeling. None of the characterizations, ideas, and themes ever stick. So much is lazily setup, but then never developed enough to make the audience truly care. As these super-team films repeatedly teach us, you can’t save the world unless everyone works together as a team. With FANTASTIC FOUR, there is nothing that works in unison to save it from imminent doom.
Overall rating: 2 out of 5
FANTASTIC FOUR is now playing in theaters everywhere
