Review by Thomas Cowley
I’m not going to lie, I went into this movie honestly hoping I would be disappointed. After witnessing the amazing turn around that Marvel was able to pull off with their other bastard son Daredevil, I was hoping that another failure on this series would result in Twentieth Century Fox saying “Fuck it” and Marvel would get it’s baby back. But what were the chances of that? The first two were atrocious failures, and yet they still attempted a reboot nearly a decade later. If Marvel was ever going to get their original super hero team back, this movie would have to be truly abysmal. After having seen it, I’m almost sad that my wish came true. Fantastic Four (2015) is not only the worst of the Fantastic Four franchise, but possibly one of the worst superhero movies to date. And yes, that includes all those early 2000’s attempts.
How could that be? How could it possibly be worse than the 2005 version? Well, the biggest difference there is that stuff actually happened in the 2005 version. At an hour and forty minute run time, we don’t actually see any super powers until an hour in. Trust me, I timed it. I was that bored. The first 60% of this movie is watching the characters act stone faced around each other as they stare at computer screens and write down numbers. I felt like I was watching a work place tutorial for an accounting firm. “Wow! Someone talking about lines of code and repeating the science behind a fictional machine for the eighth time!” That’s exactly the high octane thrill ride I was hoping for…if you were my fucking great grandfather circa 1922. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that things improve once they do finally reach their superhero puberty. Apparently self-loathing is a side effect of incredible powers that allow you to escape the boring day-to-day existence of everyone else. Who knew?
Every single character in the movie delivers their lines with the kind of stoic boredom that I would expect from a C-SPAN hearing. No one is happy on screen. The only time anyone even smiles is when they are in the background, and even then I think there was a studio mandated punishment of 30 lashings per smile. Everyone is so down, so miserable, so dead inside that you start to get the feeling that the monochromatic blue and grey hue of the entire film is meant to be a self-referential joke. The only time the actors are allowed to even laugh is when they get drunk, right before operating the teleporter that leads to them gaining their powers. Well if you had to act in it and I have to watch it, then at leastsomeone should be drunk. And as plot devices go, that is possibly one of the dumbest ones for this movie. These characters, these kids no less, are meant to be the brightest minds in the country or even the world, and your telling me that they decided on a course of action that LMFAO would call a bad idea? Seriously? Can we try a little harder on the next draft please? Or at least play a round of Russian Roulette first?
The shorter version of this is that the movie is a mess. The plot is shallow and dumb, the dialogue tries to be witty and somber at the same time and makes everyone in it seem like they are a social recluse who doesn’t understand basic human interaction. The tone is inconsistent and the mood is low that Satan could trip over it in his wine cellar. The pacing works at the speed of erosion for the first 80 minutes, to stampedes at the end like a fat man at an all-you-can-eat buffet line that started giving away free hookers with every plate.
“Well what about Dr. Doom? He has to at least look cool, right?”
Let me leave you with this visual comparison between the new Doom and a crash test dummy. That’s basically all you need to know.
Published Source: http://98kupd.com/a-fantastic-failure/