Review of Fantastic Four (2015) by Leon B — 01 Feb 2016

Review:

What a load of rubbish! None of the new characters have the screen charisma as the original ones and the whole dark, gloomy feel of the movie, just didn't work. I totally got fed up with the technical jargon, which took up the first hour of the film and the movie seemed to jump from when they got there powers to them being used as weapons by the US government, so you don't see them exploring with there newly found powers. The "Thing" looked like a total mess and Doom just looked like a man in a suit with green eyes. The chemistry between the characters was also pretty bad, until they come together at the end and you don't really get to see any detail, because of its dark look. The storyline lacked wit and I got fed up with the stupid teleporting machine, which took up most of the movies concept. I'm glad that I got that off of my chest! Anyway, best friends Reed Richards (Miles Teller) and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) have been working on a prototype teleporter since childhood and during a demonstration, they get the attention of Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey), whose the director of the Bacteria Foundation, a government sponsored research institute for young prodigies. Reed gets invited to join Storms squad, which includes his adopted daughter, Sue Storm (Kate Mara) and his son Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), to complete a Quantum Gate, which was originally designed by the wayward Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell). Victor eventually joins the team, especially when he hears that Sue is on board and after a successful experiment, the facilities supervisor Dr. Harvey Allen (Tim Blake Nelson) plans to send a group from NASA to venture into a parallel dimension called Planet Zero. As Reed, Sue, Johnny and Victor came up with the initial idea for the machine, they decide to make the first journey to Planet Zero but Sue decides to stay behind to guide them. Reed recruits his best friend, Ben to join them on the journey and when they reach Planet Zero, they see some weird green lava, which Victor attempts to touch and causes it to erupt. Whilst running for there life's from the green lava, Victor is left behind because of the collapsing landscape and the others are brought back to earth by Sue, who overrides the controls. They then realise that they have super human powers, due to the explosion that happened in there ship while they were trying to escape from the lava and they are placed in government custody for further testing. Reed can stretch like rubber, Sue can become invisible and generate force fields of energy, Johnny can fly and turn into fire and Ben is a giant rock type figure who has amazing strength. Reed escapes from the facility and tries to find a cure for his friends while Johnny Storm is being used as a weapon for the government. After being in hiding for a year, Sue tracks down Reed and Ben is sent to bring him back to the facility. Now, with there new enhanced suits, they head back to Planet Zero to try and find a cure for there powers and they find Victor who has all of there powers along with telekinetic abilities, so they bring him back to facility, only to find out that he wants to destroy earth so he can rebuild Planet Zero in his image. Victor uses his powers to kill scientists and soldiers, including Dr. Allen and Professor Storm and he returns to Planet Zero with the four scientists in pursuit. Now under the name of Doom, Victor activates a portal that begins to consume the landscape of earth. He is then confronted by the four and after getting beaten down by Doom, they join forces and Ben punches Doom into the portals energy beam while Johnny closes the portal. When they return to earth, they are awarded for there heroics, with a huge operational base and they decide to call themselves the Fantastic Four. Sounds good on paper but it was complete rubbish. I must admit, the first franchise was a bit childish, with some unrealistic concepts but it was much better than this. At least they had some decent actors! With all of these studios rebooting there comic book franchises, after the success of the darker Batman, I'm not surprised that they wanted to reboot the Fantastic Four but they made a right shambles of it. Due to hype, it made a decent profit at the box office which proves that a movie doesn't have to be good to make money. Anyway, they really need to go back to the drawing board with this one because the whole thing was a right mess. Awful!

Round-Up:

This movie was directed by Josh Trank, 31, who brought you Chronicle in 2012. For his second project, I think he took on a franchise that really needed someone with some more experience and he over complicated the storyline when he really didn't have to. Everyone is familiar with the history of the Fantastic Four so he didn't have to come up with a technical reason for there powers. If he does come out with a sequel, he really needs to concentrate on the characters more that the technical references, which are really not that interesting.

Budget: $120million.

Worldwide Gross: $168million.

I recommend this movie to people who are into their action/adventure/sci-fi movies starring Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey and Tim Blake Nelson. 2/10.