Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four…. well, it’s anything but fantastic…. I’ll be frank, this movie was garbage. The sad part is though, is that it wasn’t garbage through out! This film had potential, but squandered it. The plot was a wreck, but because the studio: Fox, got involved. Every mistake actually, can be attributed to Fox shooting itself in the foot.
The plot is a wreck and a half. To be fair, this movie had been in production hell for a bit of time, and it is also known that the film was partially produced just so Fox could keep rights to the name (which they probably shouldn’t care about, seeing as how the Fantastic 4 comic was canceled earlier this year, ). The movie actually had an initial cut that was entirely Trank’s vision. I’d love to see that cut, because this cut was garbage. You can see when this film goes between Trank’s film and Fox’s film. It’s so obvious that it hurts. The tone shifts, the plot diverges, and oh yeah THE INVISIBLE WOMAN’S HAIR COLOR CHANGES! Yeah, since Fox had a bunch of reshoots, they had to bring Kate Mara back in after the fact and put her in a wig. It’s obvious, and it hurts. The one positive I can give this one is that the film’s middle portion, which revolves around a body horror style of shooting, was really cool. But that was all Trank, and they should have let him run with that vision.
To start, the casting was off. Miles Teller (from the instant classic Whiplash and not so classic 21 and Over) was just not the right choice for Mr. Fantastic. It’s not his age either. He’s too sheepish, and Reed is a loud personality. Jamie Bell as The Thing was just frustrating. The first half of the film he speaks so fast you miss his lines, then when he’s all rocked out as The Thing he acts even more wooden than he already did. Kate Mara played The Invisible Woman, and she was just…. Well pretty. She didn’t do much wrong, just nothing right enough to stand out. The one GOOD acting choice was Michael B. Jordan (from Chronicle) as the Human Torch. Energetic, eccentric and ready for action; oh yeah, this guy was born for this part. Finally we have Toby Kebbell as Dr. Doom. I just…. I can’t even describe how misunderstood this character was to the writers. It’s bad. Kebbell’s performance was fine, but he was playing a loose idea of a character. Sadly the idea was not that of Dr. Doom in any of his incarnations.
Stay away. Stay away from this film. Don’t waste your time. PLEASE.