Fantastic Four Review (spoilers)

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I wasn't expecting anything good from this movie, and was debating whether or not I'd bother watching it, but what I got was, well, terrible. It wasn't disappointing since I was expecting it to be trash given Fox's Marvel track record, but it was still damn bad. It was mostly bad because, well, damn, it was so freaking dull, boring, and pointless.

In typical non-Marvel Studios super hero movie fashion, there's no color for most of this movie. Just gray the whole time. I understand the story follows the Ultimate series more than the classic Fantastic 4, but I still felt like those characters were really damn young. I mean, they were little ass kids in 2007. That wasn't even ten years ago. These kids must be 17 or 18 years old. Weird. But, the ages aren't the problem. Everything else is. All the characters are incredibly uninteresting. Reed Richards is the closest thing to a likable character this movie has, and even he's kinda dull. I liked him more at the beginning of the film, but by the end I didn't care about him any more than the rest of the boring cast. I found Susan Storm to be incredibly dull and bland, and obnoxiously snotty and egotistical, as Hollywood often mistakes for a "strong woman". Making an already boring and unlikable female character a snotty asshole doesn't make her respectable, it just makes her suck. All other characters are barely developed or are just dull and predictable. Victor von Doom, before becoming Dr. Doom, is an annoying little brat and a stereo-typical angsty, anti-government little punk rocker kid. When he becomes Dr. Doom, he's cliche and forgettable. 

There was a bit of seemingly useless and stereotypical "humor" thrown in at moments, and really weak drama. There are really, REALLY loose references to each characters upbringings, like Reed Richards having a bad stepdad and a mom who both ignore him, or Ben Grimm growing up in a violent, broken home. Ben, more than any other character, really gets no fleshing out, which is really weird, because his friendship with Reed is one of the biggest themes of the film. But, then again, we have Johnny Storm, who gets practically nothing, too. Actually, come to think of it, Reed and Dr. Franklin Storm are the only characters who really rack up a lot of screen time, and even then, we learn practically nothing about Franklin's story. He's just kind of the important guy who takes in the four and tries to protect them from being used by, who would have guessed it, the evil, weapon-obsessed government. Yes, you can't have a movie without an over-the-top douche bag who says nothing but condescending comments, acts like a total asshole snob all the time, and chews gum obnoxiously in every scene who's working for the government and wants to turn living creatures into expendable soldiers. Just two months ago they wanted raptors, now they want super heroes. Seriously, is nobody sick of these predictable, unnecessary evil-government stories? Are we all still in high school? I think most people get it - you can't always trust your leaders. How many movies do we need spewing the immature message to not trust your government at all costs? Isn't it bad enough we have DC riding that train hardcore? These movies never even do it in an intellectual way, like "hey, some things your government does may not appeal to you and may be wrong, but there's also lots of good things they do, too, so let's look at both sides of this coin like civilized adults and actually try to reason a logical opinion on them" rather than just "everybody who wears a suit and makes 6 figures a year deserves to die!". 

One of the major things that DIDN'T bother me about the movie, actually, was the changes/inaccuracies. I didn't care that Johnny was black, I thought he was fine, I didn't care about dimensional travel versus space travel, I actually found the dimensional travel story a bit more interesting, and I didn't mind the ages too much, though I personally would have liked them a bit older. The changes would have been fine had the movie not totally sucked in every other way. To be honest, there are changes I would have liked to see made, like I wish they just wore their original costumes (don't get why Fox is so against that and all for black, bondage, Edward Scissorhands outfits) and I would have liked to see Doom done properly, but the major flaws lie in the blandness and badly written story/dialogue. There are too many cliche movie lines used in this film to mention. There was also a ton of footage not used in the movie that was seen in the trailers. I know a scene or two unused is common, but this movie had A LOT of cut scenes, leading me to believe they pulled a TMNT 2014 deal, obviously editing the film based on fan rants up until the month before release. Doom was originally stated to be an angry blogger/internet troll, and, LUCKILY, they changed that, but the killing thing is, in all the cuts they must have made, they didn't bother to put anything else in its place. The movie is so dull and empty. The writers clearly didn't even care about the characters, so why should we?

The last thing I want to touch upon are the special effects... man are they bad. Like, I'm talking late 1990's level bad. The Human Torch looks just as bad as the 2005 one did, the Thing looks fake as hell, and, worst of all, the fucking chimpanzee. Why couldn't they just use a real chimpanzee??? It doesn't do anything a real chimp couldn't do. It literally just sits in a chair for one scene. It probably would have been cheaper to just sit a real chimp in a seat than create a ridiculous looking CGI one. Seriously, it looks like a cartoon. They may as well have just put fucking Diddy Kong in the seat. Why not, there's already so much shameless Nintendo product placement in this movie. Good move Nintendo - be stingy with your properties when Disney asks to use them in an amazing movie, but whore yourselves out to amazing classics like Fantastic Four and Pixels. Seriously, whoever makes the movie deals at Nintendo is a fucking idiot. All the special effects in this movie look extremely fake. It's honestly embarrassing to watch them. But, fear not, you won't really have to, because there's pretty much no action in this movie anyway. There's one fight scene at the end and it's probably less than 10 minutes long. I still don't get how being engulfed in flames allows you to survive inter dimensional travel unprotected.

The movie sucks. Don't waste your money. If Ant Man's still in theaters by you, go see that instead. This movie is painfully boring, bland, badly animated (special effects), badly written, poorly structured, predictable, and, well, just fucking bad. A lot of people are saying it was too short. I think it was long enough, they just didn't really utilize that time well and actually develop anything. The highlight of this crumby film is a Fire Flower ornament hanging from Johnny Storm's rear view mirror.

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FischHead's avatar
Man, the Fantastic Four just can't catch a break, can they? This makes what? 4 bad movies now?
I still really want to see Roger Corman's take on the franchise.