‘Fantastic Four’ is not so fantastic
– Film Review by Cate Marquis –
Marvel Comics continues its movie juggernaut with “Fantastic Four,” a reboot with an origin story and a fresh cast of young actors. Despite some serious acting chops, particularly the talented Miles Teller, this franchise relaunch fizzles, precisely because it fails to take advantage of the cast’s talent to craft characters with depth.
This is the third attempt to launch a Fantastic Four movie franchise, after the 2005 version starring Ioan Gruffudd, Michael Chiklis, and Chris Evans failed to gain enough traction to dominate movie screens. That one featured the grown-up already established team. This one goes back to younger characters and adds some much needed diversity and updating. The film deserves some credit for that but director Josh Trank should have gone back and looked at what worked for “Iron Man” and Robert Downey Jr. It was not just the story and special effects – it was the character and his relationships with those around him that made the film engrossing and believable. Just throwing special effects at the screen is not enough – the film has to give the audience a reason to care about the people, and to buy into the fantasy world they inhabit. Good special effects – and the effects here are very well done – cannot carry a film by itself, as countless big-budget flops have demonstrated. And “Fantastic Four” had the tools with this cast , refreshed with some multicultural casting. It just fails to use those tools.
“Fantastic Four” goes back to the beginnings. Even in grade school, Reed Richards (Miles Teller) was an inventor, building a transporter in his family’s garage. Neither Reed’s parents nor his teachers get him, but Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), a kid from a rough, junkyard family, does, and helps the brilliant boy with the more practical parts of building his invention. At a high school science fair, Reed’s teachers still don’t get it, but a visiting scientist, Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) of the Baxter Institute, does. He gives Reed a scholarship to a special program at his company, where the young inventor/scientist meets Storm’s gifted adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara) and his rebellious son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), as well as a brooding graduate of the program, Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell). As the young scientists work on a project to take them to a different dimension, the military has its eye on the project, and Baxter Institute board member Tim Blake Nelson wants to sell it to them.
The cast is packed with talent, all wasted. Particularly appalling is the failure to tap into the talent of Miles Teller in the lead role, after Teller was so astounding in last year’s “Whiplash.” But the rest of the cast has impressive credentials – Michael B. Jordan’s moving performance in “Fruitvale Station,” Jamie Bell’s countless excellent performances going back to “Billy Elliot,” even Reg E. Cathey and Kate Mara in “House of Cards,” and Tobey Kebbel in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.” How could a movie that includes so much talent fail to develop its characters? Yet Reed Richards, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm – even Victor von Doom – all remain two-dimensional characters sketched out in the first few minutes that we meet them. Little or nothing is done to develop relationships between them.
The waste of the talented cast is sad but it is not the only flaw in this movie. “Fantastic Four” tries to cram too much story in, going from the childhood friendship between Reed and Ben to a battle with their Fantastic Four’s greatest villain. The plot covers too much territory, leaving too little room for anything else except the special effects. As good as they are, it is just not enough to carry a whole film. Even serious fans of the comic books have to feel a bit letdown by this reboot, and it seems unlikely to drawn in new fans.
Given how movie franchises work now, the sequel (or two) are already in the works. Fans of the “Fantastic Four” will have to hope the next one brings out the characters more – because they are what hooked those fans on their adventure to start with.
© Cate Marquis
