It’s very easy to discredit Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four.
Tonally, it’s entirely confused. It wants to be a gritty reboot, a splashy summer blockbuster and a body horror sci-fi tale interchangeably, leading to its disastrously bumbling mess of a third act. The VFX effects are astoundingly awful, bringing hot flashes of Green Lantern to mind in an instant. The foundation for the characters is completely sloppy — loosely establishing character dynamics, then tearing them apart before inexplicably forcing them back together again for unearned emotional beats on family. The exposition in the dialogue, especially in the end battle, is shockingly on-the-nose — even by comic book standards. The mood is often too glum or too goofy and never quite finds the right balance, save for some fine moments in the middle. But that’s not all.
The superhero movie also takes itself far too seriously, bringing down any anticipation or fun the audience (or characters) should have before expecting us to be entranced with excitement at the worst possible moment in the narrative. The villain and his motivation are completely lightweight. Character motivations are established and quickly dropped. Also, this is all without mentioning how one character’s signature line is cremated from his older brother abusing him as a child. Sadly, this is just the beginning of Fantastic Four’s woefully wrongheaded problems, and knowing how troubled it becomes is even more depressing when one remembers how many talented people committed their services.
As one can see, judged as a whole, Trank’s movie doesn’t come together. It’s rushed, unevenly paced and even a little pigheaded regarding its confidence for future installments established by a “solid” structure laid here. Studied based on individual moments, however, it’s not nearly as bad. There are more than just a handful of good things to like, though they come often at the expense of other joys. The screenplay, written by Trank, Jeremy Slater (The Lazarus Effect) and Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past), takes a respectable amount of risks with the ‘60s comic’s lore and tries to level the characters down-to-earth and establish stronger personalities. In making a blockbuster centered on five scientists hit with galactic radiation and gaining powerful superhuman capabilities in the process — including elastic limbs, fire conquering, invisibility, rock-powered super-strength and inter dimensional kinetic proficiency — such notions aren’t necessarily sagacious but are commendable in their own way. The problem is less with good intentions and more with execution, capitalized by a brave-but-inexperienced filmmaker his discernibly muffled sense of purpose with the material.
Even regarding how these super abilities-driven superheroes come into their origins is devised from a more grounded approach. Childhood friends Reed Richards (Miles Teller) and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) are madly curious 19-year-olds on the verge of creating a way to teleport objects through dimensions. Their high school representatives don’t see the specialness of their designs, but someone else does: Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey), who gives the former a full scholarship to work under his high-tech division. Placed alongside his mentor’s adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara), power-hungry protégée Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) and, eventually, his purpose-seeking son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), they create a device transporting life through different dimensions, particularly to an unprecedented territory named Planet Zero. After months of building this machine and bonding as a team, the project is designed and highly successful. Just when they begin to send themselves through the machine, though, head supervisor Dr. Allen (Tim Blake Nelson) believes such matters should go to NASA or, you know, people even slightly trained for such otherworldly activities.
Drinking away their sorrows as young adults do, Victor, Reed and Johnny decide their due their trip to the planet, strap on their space suits and go for one wild ride with Ben tagging along upon Reed’s instance. When unspecified green goo sends all four on the verge of death, their teleportation device — operated by Sue just moments before disaster strikes — sustains the radiation and sends them back, but leaves them physically impacted forever. As their bodies shift forms and their potentials are beyond simple human comprehension, they must learn to bond together in moments of individual crisis.
From here, Trank warps his Chronicle follow-up into the kind of body inspection sci-fi character piece David Cronenberg would develop in his prime. It’s a noble, thoughtful effort, exploring the humanity in abnormal people discovering themselves and their powers in moments of terror and transcendence. It separates the characters, but it sometimes lets them become timely and mindful of today’s surroundings throughout the process. This is particularly the case with The Thing. The broad shouldered 5’7 Bell isn’t who you’d first expect to play the role, but the actor gives the gruff character the right amount of anguish and frustration to become quietly compelling and sometimes haunting. His motion capture is also often the single good special effect to be found. Teller, too, gives his nebbish lead a little more heart and sincerity than the funny books ever gave him. Though the end constantly clouds his motivations, the actor tries to make Reed resonate, and succeeds towards the beginning.
This can also be said for Jordan, making Johnny a more contemplative and damaged character than he ever was in print form. Cathy also becomes the appropriate anchor of gravity inside this otherworldly odyssey. Nelson is fine, but shortsighted by the screenplay and this is where the compliments come to an end. Mara’s confused performance is bland and uninviting, with her impact disappearing more than her superhero persona. Odd supporting roles from Dan Castellaneta and Tim Heidecker are throw performances at best and Kebbell, once so great in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, is positively awful as our poor-constructed villain. With his intentions overstated yet rarely crystal clear, he washes any seriousness this Fantastic Four wished for and wolves down scenery as fast as a man without a mouth for half his screen time can. It’s an embarrassment, and not the only one here certainly.
This Fantastic Four owes a lot to other movies, but never gets what made them spark. It prides itself on the younger versions of these beloved characters, like J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek did, yet our under-20 all look at least five years too old for their parts. It attempts to play loosely with its various genres in the superhero cannon as Captain America: The Winter Solider would, but never finds its footing and slaps on the worst save-the-world finale since the aforementioned Green Lantern. It also tries to become a bold vision of the popular series like Christopher Nolan’s Batman films were, but adheres more to the jarring ugliness of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance than properly studying the heavier themes of responsibility and loss through pulp characters, something Batman Begins did almost effortlessly.
It’s a hodgepodge of build-up with very little set-up, providing all the right building blocks but never the right connections. It’s a perplexing movie to review, and even more so to watch. It’s a failure, but it’s at least an interesting one — which is more than one can say for Avengers: Age of Ultron. With just one film, the series flamed out, but it did try to stretch itself further than most, even though it was to doomed results.