Fantastically forlorn
Has Marvel’s First Family’s film franchise finally met its doom?
the thing needs to do something about his no- pants situation. Before he became the thing, a bicycle was all Ben grimm ( Bell) could lift. reed and Sue get their dramatic faces on. Hey, this is supposed to be a dark and gritty superhero movie, ok? Director: Josh trank Cast: Miles teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, toby Kebbell
FUN, family, friendship, fantasy ... these are all words that can be used describe the Fantastic Four in the comics. However, after this movie, I had a completely different F- word in my head, and it was certainly not “fish”.
When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four back in 1961, the comic kick- started a whole new age of Marvel, and made their superheroes relatable and cool at the same time. Without the success of the Fantastic Four, there would probably be no Spider- Man, no Iron Man, no X- Men, and no Avengers.
Reed “Mr Fantastic” Richards, Sue “Invisible Woman” Storm, Johnny “Human Torch” Storm, and Ben “The Thing” Grimm – these are characters who readers actually cared about, whether individually or collectively. Over the years, the Fantastic Four has seen countless victories and tragedies, and has even been reinterpreted several times. There were also two frankly forgettable live- action movies – Fantastic Four in 2005 and Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer in 2007.
In this new screen incarnation of Marvel’s First Family, Richards ( Miles Teller) is a teenage genius who discovers a way to open a portal to another dimension. After he and his best friend Ben ( Jamie Bell) enter it in a high school science fair ( and lose to a potato clock), he is recruited by Dr Franklin Storm ( Reg E. Cathey) and his adopted daughter Sue ( Kate Mara) to help them with THEIR dimensional portal, along with mechanical genius ( and Sue’s brother) Johnny Storm ( Michael B. Jordan), and ominously- named Victor Von Doom ( Toby Kebbell).
To cut a long story short, something goes wrong with the portal, Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben end up getting superpowers, and the Fantastic Four is born!
There’s more to the story than this of course, but not much, really. What’s of greater concern is this – how did a movie about a fun family of superheroes become such a forlorn affair?
While director Josh Trank seems to be drawing from Marvel’s more mature and realistic Ultimate Universe version of the team, his “contemporary reimagining” doesn’t quite work. The lead characters are morose and angsty teenagers, the “villains” are dour, despicable military types, and the tone of the entire movie is dark, dull, and drab. And The Thing doesn’t even have any pants on.
Sure, the 2005 Fantastic Four movie ( starring Jessica Alba, pre- Captain America Chris Evans, and er, two other guys) wasn’t that great a movie, but at least that one had some semblance of fun and the fantastic, and was more in line with what the comic book Fantastic Four is like, rather than this dour version.
These two movies do have one thing in common though – both dished out a despairingly dull depiction of Doctor Doom. Come on, guys, is it really so hard to portray him as he is in the comics – a mysteriously masked genius scientist/ sorcerer who is one of THE greatest supervillains ever, the ruler of the fictional country Latveria, and currently god and overlord of an entire planet of pocket Marvel universes? Including even ONE of those elements would have made him a whole lot more interesting than what Trank goes with here.
This was meant to be the Fantastic Four’s big comeback, its ticket to the major league of superhero movies. There was even a crossover with the X- Men franchise planned. Unfortunately, Trank’s film tanks. There are a few positives – The Thing is a lot more imposing here, while Teller makes for a reasonably decent Reed Richards, but that’s about it.
For the most part, Trank tries so hard to make it different from the previous Fantastic Four movies that he forgets one fundamental factor – a Fantastic Four film should be, well, fantastic. This one doesn’t even come close.