Review: Fantastic Four

There are two things to keep in mind coming into and watching Fantastic Four. One, it is directed by Josh Trank. Two, it is a Marvel movie made by 20th Century Fox. (It is also worth noting that this is Fox's second stab at this material, having released the generally unacclaimed 2005 film and its equally derided 2007 sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer).)

This reboot is Trank's second feature film, but not his first foray into the genre. His debut, Chronicle, was an inventive and resourceful found footage look at how three high school friends dealt with their mysteriously acquired superpowers. Fantastic Four concerns itself with the same theme and goes one further, in many respects intending to be a superhero origin story that willfully avoids its final destination as a superhero film. In this respect, Trank's approach matches the route taken by Gareth Edwards in last year's Godzilla, in which Edwards shrouded the main attraction until the last possible moment. Now, there's nothing wrong with this tactic but it does go against what audiences are primed to expect. Who knows how Trank's Fantastic Four would have turned out under the supervision of Marvel Studios, but one gets the strong sense that Fox studio heads interfered, resulting in a partial and severely compromised version of Trank's original vision.

The film starts at the beginning of the friendship between science prodigy Reed Richards (played as an adult by Miles Teller) and Ben Grimm (played as an adult by Jamie Bell), who lives in an abusive and dysfunctional home. Reed has been building a teleporter, a shuttle that can transport matter through space, but it isn't until his school science fair project is seen by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara) that Reed gets the opportunity to fully carry out his creation.

Ben accompanies Reed to the Baxter Institute and, realising the academy is exactly where his childhood friend belongs, bids farewell to Reed. Dr. Storm assembles Reed, Sue, his hotheaded son Johnny (Chronicle alum Michael B. Jordan), and former prized pupil Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) to work together to perfect the teleportation device in order to access an alternate dimension from which potential resources can be mined. Brows are furrowed, eraser boards huddled over, and computer screens stared at. An ill-advised visit to the alternate dimension concludes with the group cursed with powers. Reed develops the ability to stretch his limbs, Johnny becomes a human fireball, Sue has the capacity to turn invisible and cast force fields. Ben, whom Reed had coaxed along for the ride, transforms into a rock creature.

The acquisition of their powers is where Trank most upends the usual tropes of the genre. Unlike most films of its ilk, the quartet's special abilities are no cause for celebration. Thematically, this is closer to X-Men than The Avengers but even the former, with its socio-political commentary on those outside the parameters of convention, never displayed such horror at the changes its protagonists have undergone. The sight of Sue flickering in and out of visibility may be mild, but Johnny screaming at full flame, Reed's limbs stretched to unbearable lengths, and Ben's wailings emanating from the boulder that has become his body border on the grotesque, tipping the film into horror territory.

And then the film flashes forward to one year later and proceeds to fall apart at an alarming rate. Fantastic Four suddenly rushes to become a superhero film and then ends on a chipper note, a frankly discordant chord that betrays all the notes that came before it. One can blame the truncation and overall stop-and-start pacing on the studio's meddlesome mandates, but Trank's vision was by no means perfect and he does bear some responsibility in how his foundation was so easily weakened. There is a lack of connectivity that plagues the film, and it diminishes the conflicts Trank and his co-writers Jeremy Slater and Simon Kinberg establish throughout the film.

One never feels the bond between any of the characters. In fact, it would not be the least bit surprising if all the actors had been separately filmed and then spliced together in the editing room. The leads are a talented group and they do the best they can, but they fail to generate any interest. It's difficult to engage in their professional and personal entanglements - this is where the actors' ages work against the film since it sometimes feels like Fantastic Four High - and even harder to accept the planetary peril at hand when much of the film takes place in either the hermetic confines of the institute or the barren environs of the alternate dimension.

For all the film's many flaws, there is a certain watchability to this so-so offering though Fox would be well-advised not to greenlight a sequel.

Fantastic Four

Directed by: Josh Trank

Written by: Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg, Josh Trank; based on characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

Starring: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson, Toby Kebbell