Really felt like a TV pilot that they tried to pass off as a movie when the series didn't sell. Its basically all set-up and introduction of characters, then wraps up and introduces a new base at the end just like a pilot would do.
You can't make me believe they went back to the comics when conceiving of 2015's Fantastic Four (mockingly called Fant4stic). It's clearly an adaptation of the failed movies - a Doctor Doom with powers and a boner for Sue, lots of faffing about with the origin, etc. - and like a game of Chinese whispers, we're getting further and further away from what the FF ARE and SHOULD BE. Basically, they've looked at the previous films and thought the problem was that they were too silly and unrealistic, but one of the problems in FF 1 and 2 was that they were ashamed of their comic book origins and tried to "logic it up". This one's even worse. What if the FF were teenage X-Men and Doom was emo Kylo Ren, in a world of murky grunge, dull REALISTIC aesthetics and almost no superheroics (though lots of people saying "shit"). They hang around at the school for gifted youngsters. Then some of them get turned into military weapons. I swear, if Doom is the villain (as opposed to, say, the scriptwriter), he shows up with his undefined powers at 1h18 to initiate ye olde sky laser, and it's all over 11 minutes later! The foursome are a team for a lot less than that, and never get to wear the uniform at any point. That'd be fine if only they had personalities, but no, the movie forgets to give them that too. Now, I was all in with the trip to another dimension as the spark for their powers - the original was a space race story that needs be updated - but that's where you bring in the Negative Zone and Annihilus and lots of asteroids and Kirby tech. But you have to be unashamed of the source material to do that. When you are, you give us a dead lump like this.
The main issue was definitely the shortness of the movie. The general plot is constructed well, the actual origin story itself is probably better than the previous movie incarnation of this franchise.
The most lacking thing for me was that, because of the shortness of the movie, there was very little time given to exploring the powers of each hero in a setting other than those used in driving the plot forward.
There must be a conspiracy going on here: Give this movie so much shit that Fox gives the rights back to Marvel.
The movie was advertised as an origin story, and if you go into it with that expectation it's not that bad. It works well as an origin story, and the only real problem is that the movie is a little short. The last fight is over before it starts, and if they had more time they could have developed this and Doom more.
Don't listen to the haters, it's an ok movie, and it was interesting through the whole movie.
"Where'd the rocks come from?
From the same place the car went to.
Where is that?
I don't know yet."
During my youth I spent many hours next door with the neighbor boy. Not just for having fun or horsing around, but also because in their veranda there was a disused closet with sliding doors where you could always find some old comics lying around. I suppose these were from the older brother who was a real comic fan. Many hours I spent sitting in front of that closet, reading them all. Comics like "Archie the man of steel", DC comics and of course Marvel. My favorite was "The Fantastic Four". This series I found extremely fascinating and that because it was a collective, consisting of several superheroes with different super powers. They formed a close-knit family and their identity was known to the population so these heroes had a rather family character. Actually, they were a little bit the forerunners of "The Avengers" and the figure of "The Hulk" resembled that of Ben.
Unfortunately, this film is labeled as an unnecessary and worthless reboot. I partially agree with that. The only thing is that I can't judge whether this is an unnecessary reboot or not. I've never seen the previous films made in 1994 and 2005. Saying this is a failure or total disaster though, is something I don't fully agree with. A big part of the film I enjoyed watching and personally I thought it was interesting enough. The introduction of the various members of the unprecedented four was extremely captivating. The beginning showed a young Reed Richards (Judge Owen). A genius who seemed to come from Mars, according to some of his classmates, and who's building a futuristic machine in the garage. A missing component he finds on a junkyard where he bumps into young Ben Grimm (Evan Hannemann). The experiment proves to be a success and things can be materialized to an unknown destination and brought back again. Years later Reed (Miles Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) attend a science fair, where they attract the attention of Dr. Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his daughter Sue (Kate Mara). And before they know it, they are in a sophisticated lab rebuilding their invention on a large scale.
This introduction was the most successful part for me. It felt like an adventure film in which a boy pursues the realization of a dream. In an amateurish and childish way, the prototype of something big is made out of junk (a bit like in "Project Almanac"). Also the introduction to the various members who become part of "The Fantastic Four" in the Baxter Foundation, made this film different of other superhero movies. Mostly this part is kept short so they can move on to the action part immediately. The moment things start going wrong with the four noticing something happened to their bodies after they've jumped to the other dimension (while being drunk), it's still interesting enough. You witness how each of them discover their new capacities. But when the action-packed part of the film starts, it's no longer fantastic. It turns into an uninspired, quickly made up heroes-movie. As if they suddenly realized that stuff should be in it too. The visuals of the other dimension are still enjoyable, but the final stage feels rather flat and not very original. And certainly because nowadays as a moviegoer, you're buried under tons of superhero-movies.
Ultimately, this film emphasizes the formation of and relationships between the members of "The Fantastic Four". The superhero action that you ultimately expect, is fairly limited. A film that takes 90 minutes, with only a demonstration of superpowers and a final clash of fifteen minutes, can hardly be seen as a superhero movie. Perhaps this change was welcome anyway, after all the Marvel releases in recent years. The fatigue comes into play when it's about this genre. Perhaps the final part of the movie wasn't so great, but it wasn't painfully bad either. And now I'll just wait for "Deadpool" ....
I can't really understand what this movie was supposed to be because the first part was dark and gloomy and the second part was rushed. There are many open questions left and while the cast is amazing and clearly has chemistry, as you could see on various talk shows when the movie was promoted, the movie itself seemed chopped up in many pieces.
We know all the cast members can act so they're clearly all hampered by the uninspired dialogue in this one.
Is it just me or were the effects really poor also? Johnny's flame and flight especially looked TV quality. Also Human Tourch's powers are fire and flight, how can he plow through giant rock pillars like he's Superman?
But the biggest issue is the classic, "why didn't he just..." dilemma of a character too powerful to be practical.
Doom is godlike, popping heads and tearing away walls with a glance... until he encounters our heroes. When he reaches his dimension where he shound be all powerful why doesn't he decorate his adopted home with their insides instead of throwing rocks at them? Victor should have been weaker on Earth, separated from the source of his power. There could have been a great sequence where the 4 individually match him, a gauntlet where Doom is seemingly defeated until he narrowly escapes to his dimension and turns the tables.
Anyway... what's done is done. They might get it right next decade.
pros:
The main characters are well developed.
The movie looks slick. Its eye candy yes but the visual tone and production design and all the other visual aspects are great to look at.
Dr Doom looks cool, And so do the Fantastic Four.
cons:
Underdeveloped main villain.
The final fight. Seriously it has a pretty good build-up at the start but Dr Doom gets beat in only a couple of minutes in what could have been a cool, memorable, epic confrontation à la Dragon Ball Z (that is what it reminded me of anyway).
conclusion
Overall it was okay but left me with an unsatisfied feeling afterwards. It is not a movie I would recommend spending money on.
Better characters, more logical plot development, stronger acting, and a more menacing villain than many other recent superhero movies. I don't think this is a good film, but I'm staggered at the degree of vitriol that's been leveled at it, almost as if people we determined this was going to be atrocious and derived some sort of satisfaction from having their expectations fulfilled.
Sure you need to treat it as a b-movie, complete with gleefully cheesy one-liners, utter predictability the whole way through, and self-aware indulgence in genre tropes, but then the same can be said of literally every Marvel studio film, and people seem to gobble those up like they've paid for an all-you-can-eat buffet. The cast is strong enough, and the team behind the camera talented enough, that I think you could do a lot worse with your 90 minutes, even if the film could have benefited greatly from a slower pace and elongated runtime.
Hopefully they get another crack at the series now that the origin story, which is always the least interesting part of any superhero franchise, is out of the way.
As a huge fan of the Fantastic Four comics, especially the original run from Kirby and Lee, I avoided this movie for almost eight years because of its reputation. Well, I finally watched it and for the first half hour or so, I thought maybe I didn’t have anything to worry about since the setup was pretty decent. I was irritated that
Sue didn’t go to the other dimension
but I really disliked when
Reed was on the run for an entire year. This is supposed to be Marvel’s First Family.
The creatives behind this film misunderstand the point of the entire concept of the comic book and what makes it good.
You know, the first half of this movie isn't that bad. It follows Ultimate Fantastic Four-- which I've always thought did a nice job of modernizing the origin story and making it easily adaptable. But everything turns to hell after that first drunken trip to the Negative Zone-- I mean-- Planet Zero or whatever. It made me believe Trank's version could really be better than the mess we got. Everything starts happening as if they were trying their hardest not to hit the 120 minute mark. This results in rushed character development and idiotic attempts to close storylines and explain character motivations. Let's be clear: the movie is pretty stupid all around, but the second half made me want to kill myself. It really has the worst first-draft dialogue I've seen in a comic-book film. Just AI-written motivational speeches and evil plans. Dumb exposition given in short, blunt sentences that they want you to shrug off like a small kid watching a bad episode of Star Trek. It does shit the bed hard. Still-- that first half is not that bad. That's something.
After so many years I finally got around to seeing this, and I have to say I honestly expected worse from the amount of hate that exists for it. The whole film is just so amateur, the first half kind of flows well but then it just gets totally lost in the story and the fight scenes are laughably bad.
However, I couldn't let it go unsaid that they utterly butchered one of my favorite villains in Dr. Doom yet AGAIN. One of these decades they'll finally give Doom the royal treatment he so richly deserves. C'mon guys, read one of the comic books with him in it for crying out loud.
Add your comment
Comments 1 - 15 of 23
northwest8
Really felt like a TV pilot that they tried to pass off as a movie when the series didn't sell. Its basically all set-up and introduction of characters, then wraps up and introduces a new base at the end just like a pilot would do.Siskoid
You can't make me believe they went back to the comics when conceiving of 2015's Fantastic Four (mockingly called Fant4stic). It's clearly an adaptation of the failed movies - a Doctor Doom with powers and a boner for Sue, lots of faffing about with the origin, etc. - and like a game of Chinese whispers, we're getting further and further away from what the FF ARE and SHOULD BE. Basically, they've looked at the previous films and thought the problem was that they were too silly and unrealistic, but one of the problems in FF 1 and 2 was that they were ashamed of their comic book origins and tried to "logic it up". This one's even worse. What if the FF were teenage X-Men and Doom was emo Kylo Ren, in a world of murky grunge, dull REALISTIC aesthetics and almost no superheroics (though lots of people saying "shit"). They hang around at the school for gifted youngsters. Then some of them get turned into military weapons. I swear, if Doom is the villain (as opposed to, say, the scriptwriter), he shows up with his undefined powers at 1h18 to initiate ye olde sky laser, and it's all over 11 minutes later! The foursome are a team for a lot less than that, and never get to wear the uniform at any point. That'd be fine if only they had personalities, but no, the movie forgets to give them that too. Now, I was all in with the trip to another dimension as the spark for their powers - the original was a space race story that needs be updated - but that's where you bring in the Negative Zone and Annihilus and lots of asteroids and Kirby tech. But you have to be unashamed of the source material to do that. When you are, you give us a dead lump like this.Tidorith
+1 FanFu.The main issue was definitely the shortness of the movie. The general plot is constructed well, the actual origin story itself is probably better than the previous movie incarnation of this franchise.
The most lacking thing for me was that, because of the shortness of the movie, there was very little time given to exploring the powers of each hero in a setting other than those used in driving the plot forward.
FanFu
There must be a conspiracy going on here: Give this movie so much shit that Fox gives the rights back to Marvel.The movie was advertised as an origin story, and if you go into it with that expectation it's not that bad. It works well as an origin story, and the only real problem is that the movie is a little short. The last fight is over before it starts, and if they had more time they could have developed this and Doom more.
Don't listen to the haters, it's an ok movie, and it was interesting through the whole movie.
Micaescalada
Don't go to watch this awful film. It is a joke.ikkegoemikke
"Where'd the rocks come from?From the same place the car went to.
Where is that?
I don't know yet."
During my youth I spent many hours next door with the neighbor boy. Not just for having fun or horsing around, but also because in their veranda there was a disused closet with sliding doors where you could always find some old comics lying around. I suppose these were from the older brother who was a real comic fan. Many hours I spent sitting in front of that closet, reading them all. Comics like "Archie the man of steel", DC comics and of course Marvel. My favorite was "The Fantastic Four". This series I found extremely fascinating and that because it was a collective, consisting of several superheroes with different super powers. They formed a close-knit family and their identity was known to the population so these heroes had a rather family character. Actually, they were a little bit the forerunners of "The Avengers" and the figure of "The Hulk" resembled that of Ben.
Unfortunately, this film is labeled as an unnecessary and worthless reboot. I partially agree with that. The only thing is that I can't judge whether this is an unnecessary reboot or not. I've never seen the previous films made in 1994 and 2005. Saying this is a failure or total disaster though, is something I don't fully agree with. A big part of the film I enjoyed watching and personally I thought it was interesting enough. The introduction of the various members of the unprecedented four was extremely captivating. The beginning showed a young Reed Richards (Judge Owen). A genius who seemed to come from Mars, according to some of his classmates, and who's building a futuristic machine in the garage. A missing component he finds on a junkyard where he bumps into young Ben Grimm (Evan Hannemann). The experiment proves to be a success and things can be materialized to an unknown destination and brought back again. Years later Reed (Miles Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) attend a science fair, where they attract the attention of Dr. Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his daughter Sue (Kate Mara). And before they know it, they are in a sophisticated lab rebuilding their invention on a large scale.
This introduction was the most successful part for me. It felt like an adventure film in which a boy pursues the realization of a dream. In an amateurish and childish way, the prototype of something big is made out of junk (a bit like in "Project Almanac"). Also the introduction to the various members who become part of "The Fantastic Four" in the Baxter Foundation, made this film different of other superhero movies. Mostly this part is kept short so they can move on to the action part immediately. The moment things start going wrong with the four noticing something happened to their bodies after they've jumped to the other dimension (while being drunk), it's still interesting enough. You witness how each of them discover their new capacities. But when the action-packed part of the film starts, it's no longer fantastic. It turns into an uninspired, quickly made up heroes-movie. As if they suddenly realized that stuff should be in it too. The visuals of the other dimension are still enjoyable, but the final stage feels rather flat and not very original. And certainly because nowadays as a moviegoer, you're buried under tons of superhero-movies.
Ultimately, this film emphasizes the formation of and relationships between the members of "The Fantastic Four". The superhero action that you ultimately expect, is fairly limited. A film that takes 90 minutes, with only a demonstration of superpowers and a final clash of fifteen minutes, can hardly be seen as a superhero movie. Perhaps this change was welcome anyway, after all the Marvel releases in recent years. The fatigue comes into play when it's about this genre. Perhaps the final part of the movie wasn't so great, but it wasn't painfully bad either. And now I'll just wait for "Deadpool" ....
More reviews here : http://bit.ly/1KIdQMT
Reira-chan
this movie is not good.I can't really understand what this movie was supposed to be because the first part was dark and gloomy and the second part was rushed. There are many open questions left and while the cast is amazing and clearly has chemistry, as you could see on various talk shows when the movie was promoted, the movie itself seemed chopped up in many pieces.
neocowboy
Still not a fan of the Frivolous 4.We know all the cast members can act so they're clearly all hampered by the uninspired dialogue in this one.
Is it just me or were the effects really poor also? Johnny's flame and flight especially looked TV quality. Also Human Tourch's powers are fire and flight, how can he plow through giant rock pillars like he's Superman?
But the biggest issue is the classic, "why didn't he just..." dilemma of a character too powerful to be practical.
Doom is godlike, popping heads and tearing away walls with a glance... until he encounters our heroes. When he reaches his dimension where he shound be all powerful why doesn't he decorate his adopted home with their insides instead of throwing rocks at them? Victor should have been weaker on Earth, separated from the source of his power. There could have been a great sequence where the 4 individually match him, a gauntlet where Doom is seemingly defeated until he narrowly escapes to his dimension and turns the tables.
Anyway... what's done is done. They might get it right next decade.
mrpinbert
pros:The main characters are well developed.
The movie looks slick. Its eye candy yes but the visual tone and production design and all the other visual aspects are great to look at.
Dr Doom looks cool, And so do the Fantastic Four.
cons:
Underdeveloped main villain.
conclusion
Overall it was okay but left me with an unsatisfied feeling afterwards. It is not a movie I would recommend spending money on.
lachyas
Better characters, more logical plot development, stronger acting, and a more menacing villain than many other recent superhero movies. I don't think this is a good film, but I'm staggered at the degree of vitriol that's been leveled at it, almost as if people we determined this was going to be atrocious and derived some sort of satisfaction from having their expectations fulfilled.Sure you need to treat it as a b-movie, complete with gleefully cheesy one-liners, utter predictability the whole way through, and self-aware indulgence in genre tropes, but then the same can be said of literally every Marvel studio film, and people seem to gobble those up like they've paid for an all-you-can-eat buffet. The cast is strong enough, and the team behind the camera talented enough, that I think you could do a lot worse with your 90 minutes, even if the film could have benefited greatly from a slower pace and elongated runtime.
Hopefully they get another crack at the series now that the origin story, which is always the least interesting part of any superhero franchise, is out of the way.
essaywhu
As a huge fan of the Fantastic Four comics, especially the original run from Kirby and Lee, I avoided this movie for almost eight years because of its reputation. Well, I finally watched it and for the first half hour or so, I thought maybe I didn’t have anything to worry about since the setup was pretty decent. I was irritated thatThe creatives behind this film misunderstand the point of the entire concept of the comic book and what makes it good.
ucuruju
You know, the first half of this movie isn't that bad. It follows Ultimate Fantastic Four-- which I've always thought did a nice job of modernizing the origin story and making it easily adaptable. But everything turns to hell after that first drunken trip to the Negative Zone-- I mean-- Planet Zero or whatever. It made me believe Trank's version could really be better than the mess we got. Everything starts happening as if they were trying their hardest not to hit the 120 minute mark. This results in rushed character development and idiotic attempts to close storylines and explain character motivations. Let's be clear: the movie is pretty stupid all around, but the second half made me want to kill myself. It really has the worst first-draft dialogue I've seen in a comic-book film. Just AI-written motivational speeches and evil plans. Dumb exposition given in short, blunt sentences that they want you to shrug off like a small kid watching a bad episode of Star Trek. It does shit the bed hard. Still-- that first half is not that bad. That's something.DisneyStitch
After so many years I finally got around to seeing this, and I have to say I honestly expected worse from the amount of hate that exists for it. The whole film is just so amateur, the first half kind of flows well but then it just gets totally lost in the story and the fight scenes are laughably bad.However, I couldn't let it go unsaid that they utterly butchered one of my favorite villains in Dr. Doom yet AGAIN. One of these decades they'll finally give Doom the royal treatment he so richly deserves. C'mon guys, read one of the comic books with him in it for crying out loud.
Armoreska
The director sorta disowned this before release on twitter lolAdamov10
not that bad, Its ok to good, I enjoyed watching it, time went fast unlike watching Age Of UltronShowing items 1 – 15 of 23