Fantastic Four (2015)

Fantastic Four started catching my eye in the casting stage. Seemingly not giving a damn about the source material, it was refreshing to see those kind of balls especially from Marvel. While I welcome Michael B. Jordan as The Human Torch, I wish I could say the same thing about the rest of the film. Fantastic Four is merely a reboot that loses its steam after the first act. Coming in at just over an hour and a half, the film is a rushed piece of reject summer movie drab. The characters are paper thin and about 10 years too young for their respective roles. The visual effects are far from stunning, especially The Thing, whose transformation into the ghastly beast is something closer to a PS2 game than an actual film with a $100 million price tag. Miles Teller proves here that his performance in Whiplash is truly a fluke. As Mr. Fantastic, he struggles to sound like he knows what he is talking about. Perhaps a little more rehearsal time and a little less focus on that cheap looking silver streak in his hair could have benefited him. Kate Mara as Susan Storm is about as idiotic as it can get. Mara is a great actress, there's no other way about it but Kate Mara as Susan Storm is terrible and borderline embarrassing. The biggest shock here in this film is where all the controversy started...Michael B. Jordan as The Human Torch. Jordan's ability to be a badass likable gear head is insanely good. He's the best part of this film by far. If there is anyone that could single handedly carry this film on their back, it is him. The film overall is too dark for Fantastic Four and too shallow for Marvel which leaves it drifting somewhere between ridiculous and not necessary...and at times, both. If there's any movie to see this summer, I can assure you, Fantastic Four is NOT it.

Fmovies: Just because you can do it doesn't mean that you should – and this wholly unnecessary and woefully terrible reboot of Marvel's most famous superteam is proof of that axiom. Say what you may about Tim Story's earlier cinematic adaptations, but as generic and middling as they were, they were at the very least entertaining. Unfortunately, the same cannot even be said of Josh Trank's back-to- basics origin story, which plays like a humourless retread of his debut film 'Chronicle' but on a bigger budget – and lest there be any doubt, it is far, far from fantastic.

Not that it doesn't demonstrate such promise; the first act which establishes the friendship between the visionary Reed Richards (Miles Teller) and his tough-guy longtime best pal Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) as well as the team dynamics between Reed and the other members of his research team – the equally brilliant Sue (Kate Mara), her hot- headed younger brother Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), and malcontent genius Victor Von Doom (Toby Kibbell) – capably lay the foundation for what could have been a character-driven drama based on their clashing personalities. Indeed, after the boys sans Sue decide on a whim following a night of intoxication to put their teleporting machine to the test, how they respond to their newfound super-powers individually and as a team should be an organic evolution from how they were before.

Alas, Trank, who co-wrote the screenplay with 'X-Men' veteran Simon Kinberg and Jeremy Slater, doesn't quite know where to go from there. Rather than setting them on a course that would follow the perennial 'X-Men' theme of inclusiveness versus insularity against the rest of society, our teenage super-heroes are pretty much seen only in an isolated military facility where they are trained and from which they are deployed on covert operations overseas. While Johnny relishes the opportunity to be different, powerful and useful for once in his life, Sue and Ben are not quite so sanguine and participate insofar as there remains a possibility that the Government's research on them would yield some way of reversing their abnormalities. In the meantime, Reed has vanished off the grid, while Victor is presumed dead on the planet they had landed up on in the other dimension.

One senses a conscious decision on the part of Trank to eschew the usual superheroics seen in the recent profusion of Marvel and to a lesser extent DC comic book adaptations, but the middle act drags precisely because Trank never quite finds a compelling substitute. Johnny's potential conflict with Sue and Ben over the Government's exploitation of their super-powers never amounts to anything more than a playground squabble. The estrangement between Johnny and his father (Reg E. Cathey), whose Baxter Institute had overseen the ill- fated project, is under-cooked. And last but not least, Reed's guilt over his teammates' fates as well as his strained friendship with Ben seem to vanish as quickly as he is apprehended and brought back to the facility to aid them in version 2.0 of the same project.

Trank's intention of emphasising the tension within the quartet is evident and admirable, but is ultimately undone by a script that doesn't develop it in any substantive manner. Worse still, it leaves an audience looking for visual spectacle severely wanting, that not even a very busy third act manages to salvage. Doom makes an unsurprising return here as their common enemy, driven by a fusion of body and

Terrible movie as previous reviewer writes the pacing is all wrong the characters are bleh you don't feel any attachment to them with them creating no chemistry.The middle section of the movie is drawn out while the climax feels rushed like the director went gosh where running out of time quick rap it up. After the recent awesome avenger movies and the Thors this felt like some hacked together 1990s offering.The story has so many gaps in it with supposedly super smart scientist doing super stupid things and Miles Teller playing Mr Fantastic is just a terrible choice he has no screen presence as a leader. Wait for DVD or what ever and let it go quietly in to the past .

Fantastic Four fmovies. I would like to start by saying no. Just no. Oh my gods No! Josh Trank, I assume your name is short for 'Tranquilizer', yes? I cannot think of a single thing that can save this film. Kate Mara, you are gorgeous and a wonderful actress and I admire your work and, most importantly, I hope this willfully awful thing has not destroyed your career.

So: Script = No. Direction = No. Characters = No (which is odd, because the Fantastic Four are great characters, and yet you have managed to get a 'no' with them. Remarkable!). Miles Teller = No. Josh Trank = No. Even for cereal commercials, no.

Recast the original Fantastic 4 movie and reboot THAT. What you have done is bad. I'm stunned. This was worse than Batman & Superman vs Storytelling, and you can read my review on that travesty on IMDb to learn just how badly you have done!

So when I saw that they're "rebooting" Fantastic Four, I thought, "this could actually be really good. This has the chance to start things over and be something great." The trailers showed potential - they featured a new premise with some great new concepts. Also, take note that I'm not a superhero/comic book fan. I am a filmmaker, though.

Josh Trank is the director of this film. He also directed the film Chronicle, and I think that's a great movie, with several characteristics that are actually similar to this film.

I think the first major clue for me that this movie was doomed was, surprisingly, its tagline. "Change is coming". As a filmmaker, I know that a big concept movies want to have nowadays is "everything changes" - the idea that everything is started over or some big event is going to happen. One of The Amazing Spider-Man 2's taglines was "everything changes". Transformers 4 had the tagline of "the rules have changed" and "everything will change". This film's taglines are "change is coming", and "when you change the world, prepare to defend it". Movie taglines dealing with "change" are typically weak and overused methods of making movies seem like they're creating a "clean slate", or for lack of a better word, a reboot. If your movie tagline deals with change - at least make the film somewhat memorable. These three movies weren't memorable.

Another major clue for me that this movie was doomed was its running time of 100 minutes. Why? Because when you have a film like this - a reboot, where it has to introduce various new characters, set them up and a new premise/universe, the movie isn't going to be an hour and a half long. It's going to be two hours. Those extra twenty- thirty minutes can make a difference. For the record, the first two Fantastic Four movies had around the same running time. The original film was only six minutes longer. But that movie wasn't the best one, either.

I reminded myself of X-Men. X-Men was a great movie. It had a similar running time, but not the same task, as it wasn't a reboot. Yet as the first installment in a franchise, it did a fantastic job at setting things up. There isn't much that's fantastic about Fantastic Four.

Now to tell you what's wrong with this movie. First off, the pacing. The running time really is a problem. This film is rushed beyond belief and its plot is nonsensical. The characters' introductions are decent enough, particularly the Fantastic Four, but their roles throughout the rest of the film are disconcerted. It gets very boring when things are meant to be exciting. Exposition can be tiring, but after the exposition ended and the action was supposed to pick up - it didn't. Second, the plot. As I said above, the film's plot seemed interesting. It had potential and it looked like it could go somewhere, especially considering how superhero movies nowadays have managed to flesh out their stories and make them very enjoyable. There are even hints at awesome things to come at certain points. But the film's in shambles. You hope and feel it will go somewhere, but in its hour and a half running time, it feels so empty. One of the reasons for that is the third thing, the writing. The writing isn't good - the film's climactic conflict feels backed up into the end of the movie, because there wasn't enough time to set it up. The writing cause

Over the last decade, we have seen a number of superhero movies get a much needed reboot. After the atrocious Batman & Robin, Batman was brilliantly brought back to the big screen in Batman Begins. When the Spider-Man franchise hit an embarrassing rock bottom with Spider-Man 3, it was reinvigorated with the very likable The Amazing Spider-Man.

Eight years on from the dud that was Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and it's time that Marvel's first family got a reboot. With a lot of rumours flying around about trouble on set and the studio not seeming to have total confidence in their product, could 2015's Fantastic Four do these iconic comic-book characters justice?

Reed Richards (Miles Teller) is a brilliant young scientist on the verge of discovering how to both transport matter to another dimension and bring it back. Recruited by Professor Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey), Reed is given the resources and help, in the form of Sue Storm (Kate Mara), Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) and Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), to to finish what he started in his younger years.

When they finally crack inter-dimensional travel, Reed invites his childhood friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) to travel to another world along with him and his team. An accident causes their physical form to drastically change. Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben must learn to harness their powers and work as a team to stop Victor, who is hell bent on destroying Earth.

The one thing that stood out to me about Fantastic Four is just how unbelievably dull it is. For characters who have such a rich and colourful history in the comics, this really is a pretty drab affair. The film only has a 100 minute runtime however, it feels much longer, dragging its feet and feeling very tired right from the very start.

When a superhero movie gets less exciting after they get their powers, something is very very wrong.

I had some hope for this film and one of the main reason was down to the fact that Josh Trank was sat in the director's chair. Trank hit the big time with Chronicle, a film that combined the superhero genre with found footage. I can't express just how disappointed I am with Trank because everything about Fantastic Four is just so sloppy.

The story is weak, the script is cringeworthy and the special effects are average at best. It all culminates in one of the most boring finales you will ever witness in a superhero movie. Compared to what else you see happen in other superhero movies these days, it all looks and feels amateur.

Then there are the performances. Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell are all young actors who have the world at their feet. They have each impressed in their own way prior to Fantastic Four but every single one of them has the range of the cast in Tim Story's Fantastic Four films and waste their talents in Trank's reboot.

Fantastic Four is a film very much out of time and place in today's market of superhero movies. Ten or fifteen years ago a studio might have been able to get away with it but not today. Audiences like to be entertained and with the competition offering much more excitement, I don't see audiences taking to this, at all.