Fant4astic
A little background first. 20th Century Fox obtained the movie rights to several Marvel Properties in the 90's. These properties included Daredevil, the now very profitable X-Men, and Fantastic Four.
Fantastic Four is now infamous for having had a movie made that was never supposed to see the light of day, and was only made to keep the movie rights to the property for a now defunct company. This was unsuccessful however and the movie rights reverted to Marvel soon after. Marvel put them up for sale again, and this time 20th Century Fox picked them up. Fantastic Four sat in development hell for almost 10 years, with writers coming in and out, and directors being attached, and then dropped several times. Finally in 2004, Tim Story was attached, a rewrite of the then current script was made, and the 2005 FF4 started production in April of 2004.
The 2005 release starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans (Yes that Chris Evans), Michael Chiklis and Julian McMahon, was to put it mildly: barely O.K.
It was not the best comic book movie, but it was certainly not the worst. It did in hindsight however mirror the dark future the FF would have in its main villain's story arc. However it was a fair attempt at adapting the source material. It may not have seen the success that Iron Man would see 3 years later, but it still garnered enough attention and box office earnings to warrant a sequel.
The sequel however would turn out to be much much worse. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer chose villains that were really beyond anything seen before, and then mistakenly tried to ground them in reality. If you are going to pick Galactus as your main villain, then you need to go all out and embrace the ludicrousness of it. Otherwise pick someone else, say, The Mole Man for instance. The movie had issues... lots of them... and turned out to be quite bad.
After the Silver Surfer failed in 2007, Fox debated about what to do with the FF. In 2009 they announced a reboot. Yes, a mere 2 years after the Silver Surfer flop, and during the time period where Phase 1 of the Marvel Cinematic universe was beginning to emerge, Fox decides its best to start again from scratch. Again going through several directors, writers, potential cast members and screen plays, they finally found Jeremy Slater to write the screenplay.
Jeremy Slater is a guy who has exactly 4 credits to his name in his IMDB page, and they hire him to write a screenplay for a Movie about 4 of the most important Marvel comic characters in existence.
In what I can only assume to be a move to offset this decision, they paired him up with Writer/Producer Simon Kinberg of the good X-Men movies.
But then, in comes Josh Trank, a guy who up until that point had only 2 other directorial credits to his name. 5 episodes of a Tv series, and the found-footage movie Chronicle which he also wrote. It was a decent attempt, but the filming style is really annoying, at times makes no sense and is not really a good movie in the end.
I know FOX was running out of time, but really this is the team you assemble for this? You had 7 years to do this.
Anyway, in 2014, Trank, Kinberg and Slater, begin actual production of this movie, and it all went down hill from here.
So lets take a look at Fant4astic.
In what was apparently an effort to distance themselves from the previous movies, the producers decided it would be best to take a new approach to the FF. Basing there new story on the Ultimate version of the FF4 was seemingly a decent idea.
The Ultimate (Universe) as its called by Marvel was an attempt to start fresh with many well known Marvel characters and allow new readers to come in without having 40+ years of stories and lore that they needed to be familiar with to understand the books. Instead giving these characaters a fresh new take on their origins, and making them there own distinct characters even if they did still share many key elements with the originals. This gave the producers a brand new clean slate many people would not be familiar with.
However as the movie progresses you realize they made some really strange decisions.
The movie begins with Reed as a child working in his garage on what he calls a Matter Transporter along side Ben Grimm. He is apparently successful as the transporter brings back some dirt and rocks from somewhere.
Several years later, he attempts to present this transporter as his science fair project in high school, only to be shot down by his science teacher. The same one that shot him down years earlier when he gave his presentation about it as a kid.
Incredibly enough in comes Franklin Richards who somehow was scouting the seemingly normal science fair for child geniuses. And I know this is inline with the comic book story, but its the one thing that makes absolutely no sense. Here is this big shot government scientist walking around a children's science fair looking for potential recruits? They could not have made it so Sue was at that same science fair and her dad was there because well that's what dads do?
Anyway, Reed is recruited and brought to a laboratory where *gasp* they are working on a similar matter transporter to his own with Victor heading the research. Reed is able to help them finish it and for a first test they send a monkey which successfully arrives at what they call planet Zero, and is returned safely.
The government officials decide its time to send actual trained humans. This causes discontent among the team which leads Victor to suggest they go before the NASA guys do. They setup their trip, and Reed calls Ben to participate and is able to easily infiltrate him into the Baxter building a apparently secure government building, the night of their trip. Sue stays behind to monitor the test.
During their trip to Planet Zero, disaster strikes as explosions happen and Victor is left for dead when he falls into a pit of green energy. The pod is bathed in this same weird green energy giving them all their super powers. As they return an energy discharge occurs and Sue is bathed in this energy gaining her powers.
The Government officials decide to hold them for further study, but Reed escapes through the ventilation ducts and promises to return for Ben who is now encased in rock. Reed never really does this, which causes Ben to bear a grudge against him which is immediately forgotten.
As time passes, Ben free of the rock encasing, Johnny and Sue are trained to use their powers as government agents to take part in what they call covert missions, one of which has Ben destroy a tank in broad daylight and in full view of everybody. How is that covert?
Eventually they track down Reed, and convince him to help them rebuild the transporter to go back to Planet Zero. He agrees reluctantly, and completes the new transporter which sends a new team to Planet Zero where they encounter Victor now transformed into a metallic being with the green energy coursing with in him. He collapses before them, and so the take him back to Earth. Where he awakens and starts killing people. Out of nowhere he decides he wants to go back to Planet Zero, and will destroy Earth if required to do so Planet Zero. He is shown to have really strong telekinetic and telepathic powers going as far as exploding the head of the head government official with his mind.
Eventually he gets back and opens a large black hole that will suck earth into itself. The team is sent back to planet Zero to fight him in the most underwhelming final battle ever put to film, and when Victor suddenly forgets he has all these powers, simply lets Ben clobber him into his black hole.
This apparently destroys him, and the black hole for some unexplained reason, and all is well.
The 4 are given a new facility in which to explore their powers and Planet Zero more in depth after reed out right threatens the top brass in a meeting, and the movie ends.
The movie goes by really fast and neglects to answer even the most basic of questions about these characters. Also the romance between Sue and Reed is so incredibly forced its annoying, and finally the actors cast to play teenagers are in their late 20's or early 30's as is the case with Kate Mara who plays Sue and Miles Teller who plays Reed. She's a talented actress, and very beautiful, but a teenager she is not.
Overall the movie feels rushed, and slow at the same time. I'm pretty sure they were expecting a sequel but that is very unlikely at this point in time.
Fant4stic is again clearly a cheap attempt at keeping the movie rights to these characters for a bit longer. But 20th Century fox has proven they cannot make a good FF film to save their lives. So why doesn't Marvel simply take back the rights?
I would expect Marvel to attempt to get the rights back and make one themselves likely after Phase 3 is completed.
For now the FF will live in infamy as their 3 films have been major disappointments. The sad thing is with a better director and a tweaked screenplay this reboot could have worked very well. It has lots of potential but is all squandered in strange decisions. Its very very sad when the best thing about a movie is its Blu Ray packaging. I'll give it 1.5 out of 5 reels.
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