Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Man, I hate being the guy that jumps on top of a dogpile, but I just got home from a screening of Fantastic Four and my head hasn't stopped shaking in disbelief.
A lot has been said about the last act and I thought I was prepared for it. I can tell you right now that nobody is prepared for just how terrible the finale of the movie is. Nobody. It's a failure on every level. Its structure is mind-numbingly truncated, the dialogue is vomit draft bad, the energy is non-existent and every single character motivation is the worst kind of convenient “just because” I've seen in big studio filmmaking in a long time. But its worst sin is that it's not fun.
Fine, jump into a typical greenscreen-laden punch-em-up if you want, but for fuck's sake have some fun. Structure the action so there are peaks and valleys. You know, thrill us.
We know from Chronicle that Josh Trank can build to a successfully entertaining third act, so I'm hesitant to lay all the blame on his shoulders. I'm sure that poor bastard entered into this eager to make the best Fantastic Four movie he could, but it's clear that Fox's only interest was to ensure they held onto the rights and that's clear throughout the whole movie, not just the disastrous third act.
The film opens with young Reed Richards and Ben Grimm becoming friends and it's the most lively the film ever gets. Even so, only young Evan Hannemann as kid Ben Grimm shows any personality. The rest is fairly flat, including young Reed who feels like he's reading off of cue cards for most of his big moments.
I'm not bullying little Owen Judge. It's not his fault. The whole movie has a Reed Richards problem and this is coming from someone who has thought Miles Teller is one of the most interesting young actors since his traffic-stopping turn in Rabbit Hole.
The reason the character works on the page is because his heart is as big as his brain, but in this iteration they only focus on the brain. His friendship with Ben is put in the far background in order to explain his super smart science stuff and he never does more than awkwardly flirt with Sue Storm, so the family aspect (which one could argue is the most important thing to get right in a Fantastic Four movie) is missing.
When Richards is just the brain without the heart he's a pretty boring character, so no matter how good Teller is (or young master Judge) they've only got so much they can show us.
Ben Grimm is also given the short shrift, but I was surprised by how much I liked Jamie Bell in the role. The problem with Ben isn't when Bell is human. He gives us personality and shows a complex guy in just a few scenes. You can tell he's proud of his best friend, but also a little sad that he's being left behind while Reed goes off to do science with the big boys.
The real issue comes after the accident. The digital work on The Thing is pretty solid. The way they amplify Bell's voice is pretty perfect, but they make a very curious decision to make The Thing kinda hate Reed Richards, which unfortunately kills the tiniest amount of character connection that survived by the hour mark.
The Storms are all good. Kate Mara as Sue is made a little too grumpy for my tastes, but she sells the powers and is naturally likeable enough to make the character work. Michael B. Jordan is an inspired pick for Johnny, but is sadly wasted. There are a few moments where his humor comes to the surface and it'll make you wish that was at the forefront of the character instead of the eager to go use his powers to kill people guy they show us post-accident.
That leaves Dr. Doom. I'm coming to peace with the fact that Fox just flat out refuses to make Doom be the guy I read when I was growing up. It's too silly, apparently, to have a horribly scarred evil dictator in a mask and cloak (nobody tell them Disney just made three quarters of a billion dollars with a movie starring a talking raccoon and a walking tree). Okay, so maybe I haven't fully come to peace with that, but I went into the movie accepting I wasn't going to get the Doom I've wanted to see onscreen since they've started pumping out FF movies.
And I gotta say that pre-accident Victor Von Doom was pretty decent. He's not the hacker as rumored (unless that was changed with reshoots and some quick fixes in post... I did notice a lot of off-screen dialogue and obvious ADR'd lines in regards to that character), but every bit Reed Richards' intellectual equal. They don't overplay the jealousy angle and the only time these guys really start to feel like real friends is right before everything goes wrong.
It's an important moment that should have been the feeling of the entire first act instead of just a flash before the shit goes down.
Toby Kebbell milks the live action stuff for all its worth and turns in one of the best performances in the movie. Until he actually becomes Dr. Doom.
The Doom powers are pretty righteous, but his turn to villainy is so goddamn rushed and makes such little sense that when it propels us into the final CG battle sequence I felt like I missed an entire act of the movie.
Plus he looks no less silly than if they stayed true to his look in the comic.
The small flare ups of personality that pop up every 10 minutes or so only underline how flat the rest of the movie is. The tone is way too dour and serious with no pay off. The one big action scene in the movie doesn't even hold a candle to the intimate close-quarters elevator fight in Winter Soldier.
Will audiences respond to such a thrill-less superhero movie? I can't speak for everybody, but I didn't. I mean, Ant-Man has more spectacle on display than Fantastic Four and that's just plain old unforgivable.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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