“This was one of those that I felt obligated to see, just because it was a big name release and was sure to be the center of some future conversation somewhere. The consensus in the buzz I was hearing was that it was a lot of buildup that never really led to anything, except a shoehorned in action sequence. Yeah that was pretty accurate.
I was ready to use the same phrase I use to describe The Amazing Spiderman franchise (the Andrew Garfield ones) which is that it/they “”didn’t need to exist””. Except I found out there’s a very specific reason that Four exists and that’s because Fox had a deadline on their rights agreement they had to meet. In other words, the studio would rather put out a crappy movie than let the rights revert to Marvel. That says so much about the film industry, and none of it is good.
The fact that we’re starting off with yet another superhero origin story (yawn!) didn’t bode well. But since few studios seem to believe that if you’ve seen one origin story for your characters, you don’t need another one, so here we are. We have a lot of science that doesn’t seem entirely plausible that just stretches out for most of the movie. Minor conflicts here and there, but nothing substantial enough to sustain the film.
And then before you know it (because you were asleep for most of it) we’ve got a big crazy act 3 battle sequence. Word on the street is that there were a ton of reshoots after director Josh Trank was effectively fired, and most of those reshoots were here. I kinda wanna see the film again, only to identify the origin of each take, which is supposed to be obvious once you realize that the reshoots have Kate Mara in a wig. Anyways, so we have a big battle for some unknown reason (well, unknown to the plot) against a villain that is basically there because he’s supposed to be, and not because of growing animosity between adversaries. Some cool effects, but really absolutely zero gained from watching this. Really? So Fox wanted to hold on to the franchise to do more of this? Ugh.
The one strength in the movie, and the one redeeming quality I counted on that (sorta) delivered was the cast. I kinda trusted that Miles Teller, Michael B Jordan, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell would be fan–no, not gonna say it-really good. Jordan in particular has been quite the up and comer to watch, and Teller has been moving up the Hollywood ranks. And they did the best they could with what they had, acting as hard as they could. But as every superhero eventually learns, some things just can’t be saved.
Fantastic Four – \m/ \m/”