Everyone has been waiting for a comic book movie bomb and we have to wait no longer. Fox's 2015 "Fantastic Four" has officially been the bomb we were waiting for. As a critic, a goal is to not completely say a movie is absolutely terrible because it's not true. As of now, it's difficult to string things together that would allow a good review of this movie to be written. At first, it seemed like the internet was just making memes and that was what destroyed The Fantastic Four's momentum. That is not the case. So, what made this movie so bad?
Here's some good news: Ben Grimm and Reed's relationship was done right. Great job on how they are friends and why they stick together. Victor von Doom was an arrogant, self centered, jerk. He nailed it. Doom was a big concern for comic book fans. While he may not have talked in the first person or was Lord of Latveria, they made mention of his homeland and also his lack of respect for authority and humanity. Unfortunately, that is where the good of the movie stops.
From a movie goers standpoint, it seemed like the writers had no idea how to write character development. There was no time spent on the relationship between Johnny, his dad Franklin Storm, or his adopted sister Sue. At first glance, we can assume that there is some animosity between them and it's because Johnny feels that his dad loves his adopted sister more than he loves him. Why was there no time spent on this? Give us (the audience) a reason to really get invested in them as a family. It makes the events that happen later more interesting and more heartfelt. There was no reason given to care about Sue or Johnny. Johnny is a rebel and Sue follows the rules? Ok...what else is there? We need more than that. Reg E. Cathey as Franklin Storm was emotionless and Kate Mara had the emotional range of Kristen Stewart, the whole movie giving this writer even more of a reason to not care about anything either of them did.
Now, from a comic book fan's perspective there are a million things that could be mentioned that were wrong with this. Let's stick with the most obvious. Whoever wrote this movie didn't know anything about the characters except what they read on Wikipedia. They have powers. They are different. They eventually become a family. It takes more than that to make a movie, let alone a movie that has established characters. It seemed like the writers were going towards more of a Ultimate Fantastic Four feel and they missed the mark with the exceptions of their powers being given via the teleportation snafu. While a movie shouldn't have to follow the comics directly, but certain nods to the characters in the comics are what make the Avengers and X-Men franchises so popular. Fox just missed an opportunity to bring Marvel's first family into the light again.
Rating: 4.5
It may seem like this is just an angry dork ranting about how his beloved comic book characters were badly done, but it is not. This was just not a good movie and it hurts to even write that. There are a couple of good things that will come out of this. One, if Fox decides to do a part two, the characters are already established. Two, if Fox loses their rights to Marvel and Disney, we get Dr. Doom, Galactus, and the Skrulls in the next Avengers movie.
