Movie Review: Fantastic Four

Some movies just aren’t.

They aren't movies, that is.

Sure, they have a trailer, and a poster, and an IMDB page.

They are even ostensibly directed and written by professionals, and they feature actors of note who have been hired to stand in front of very expensive cameras to perform very specific instructions.

However, the cinematic illusion can only be maintained for so long. Eventually, people will witness the resulting blob of content and realise they’ve been duped. In the case of Fantastic Four, the latest failed attempt to bring Marvel’s First Family to screens, its masquerade of movie-ness is as see-through as Sue Storm.

Josh Trank is the director, hired off the back of Chronicle, a found-footage flick that was not especially good, but made money and had young people in it.

He was the perfect choice, then, for a Fantastic Four do-over that sought to overwrite the candy-coloured inanity of the 2005 attempt that starred a pre-Captain America Chris Evans and a post-Honey Jessica Alba. Trank would help smear some grime and dirt into the lens and make Marvel’s cosmically-altered quartet gritty, sexy and relevant.

Nope.

The final, shapeless product – written by Trank, Simon Kinberg and Jeremy Slater – twiddles its thumbs, wastes its appealing cast, mistakes 'grit' for 'humourlessness' and finishes before it begins. It’s without a doubt the first superhero instalment with a single, lonesome action sequence. And it’s right at the end. And it’s terrible.

At least actors you like collected paychecks for their troubles. Miles Teller, fresh from Whiplash, plays Reed Richards, aka the eventual Mr. Fantastic. In this ‘reimagining’ – a buzzword as annoying as the project to which it’s being ascribed – he’s an 18-year-old genius who figures out interdimensional transportation in his parents’ garage, assisted ably by grunting buddy Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell).

Reed is swiftly offered a scholarship to the Baxter Foundation by Professor Storm (Reg E. Cathey), where he goes to work on developing a “Quantum Gate” that’ll allow humans to travel from one dimension to another. Assisted by Storm’s kids, Sue (Kate Mara) and Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), as well as the ominously named recluse Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), they actually figure out how to send organic matter to a parallel dimension. Do I need to tell you that their quick jaunt to what they’ve dubbed “Planet Zero” ends with the lot of them biologically warped?

Now, Sue can turn invisible. Johnny can burst into flames. Ben becomes a giant rock monster. Reed’s limbs can extend far beyond the reaches of convincing computer graphics. Victor Von Doom ends up resembling the homeless woman from Mulholland Drive.

What a viewer might not anticipate is that the inevitable, drawn-out march towards the Fantastic Foursome gaining their powers is basically the only story being told here.

The introduction of and big battle with a suddenly super-powered Doctor Doom takes place within the final fifteen minutes, in the least convincing CGI-hellscape this side of Green Lantern.

That would be forgivable if we were interested in the lives and needs of the heroes prior to that sequence. We’re not. Fantastic Four is the kind of bad that sneaks up on you; that you don’t full realise until the credits start rolling, and it dawns on you that neither fun, nor emotional investment, nor exhilaration ever arrived. Its sole achievement: it brought you 100 minutes closer to death.

Fantastic Four had begun its doomed journey to cinemas with such promise; casting Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, riling up the worst kind of comic-book purists (read: racists) and bringing some much needed diversity to a genre starving for it. Most importantly, Jordan was right for the role; he is effortlessly charming and cheeky, especially astute at portraying characters with a chip on their shoulder. Not that it matters here. Jordan gets maybe five scenes in which he’s not entirely on fire.

Jamie Bell, so sad eyed, should have also been a boon as the tragic Ben Grimm. He’s barely in it.

By default, Teller winds up the face of the franchise, having to carry most of the scenes and deliver the clunkiest dialogue. (His already-infamous Esquire profile will make it easier to not feel too bad about it.) Kate Mara, as the second lead, at least has the luxury of escaping our visible spectrum on command. You can imagine her on set, once the reality of the shoot had set in, asking her agent to convince Trank and the other screenwriters to have Sue be invisible more often.

Fantastic Four isn’t a movie. It’s just a thing – pun intended, because we must find amusement somewhere - that happens for 100 minutes.

Even using the verb ‘happens’ seems too generous. Fantastic Four doesn’t happen; it just is.

1/5

In cinemas now. Rated M for fantasy themes and violence.