WHEN the news about the reboot of the Fantastic 4 movie franchise came out, it was for me one of the best move 20th Century Fox made right after they successfully resurrected X-men from its Last Stand downfall with First Class and Days of Future Past.
When the movie trailers came out, I was taken for a front seat ride with high anticipation for the movie. Weeks before the worldwide release of the movie, there was so much chatter on line from movie critics on how much Fox really held back, only revealing that the pre-screening will be made two days prior to the release of the film.
That sounded bad, most Hollywood movie companies would have the pre-screening of big budget films with blockbuster hopes a week or earlier. This sounded like there was a problem the company tried to fix or in other situations – hide.
During the first half, the tone of the film had a more science fiction style genre approach, which initially for me was good for a comic book based origins film. A bit far off from what the original and other versions from the comic but feasible, overall the first act was good.
The beginning had potential, for me it was way better than the other Fantastic 4 movies that were released. It showed some chemistry with the friendship of Reed Richards played by Miles Teller and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) and the human background of the struggle they had from childhood as well as a hint of the family relationship they had.
But all of the sudden it just got dumber and dumber, literally the storyline, and the chemistry got sloppy. After Reed got recruited by Professor Franklin Storm (Reg Cathey); director of the Baxter Foundation, a government-sponsored research institute for young prodigies, the story started to go sour.
Scientist Sue Storm (Kate Mara) was introduced without a hint on her humanity and how she was even adopted by Professor Storm and the agonizing dilemma on the real child Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan). You can feel that there was a disconnect between Sue and Johnny, a family issue that I waited to be capitalized and expressed further but it was not there.
They did try to express further the issue between the father and son relationship of Johnny and Professor Storm but it was a very blunt attempt. The funny part was that Johnny Storm was supposed to be the hotshot “he can create” anything technician but could not even completely make his own car better? Then the professor wanted him to construct the "Quantum Gate" teleportation transport. A hotshot daredevil who was afraid to even climb down the rocky alien planet.
And then there was Toby Kebbell who portrayed Victor von Doom, one of the most epic super-villains in the Marvel universe. Doom came, then bye. It was like what the heck were they thinking? They did not even manage to elaborate further the genius behind Doom or why with all the hate and anger towards the world that he wants to create his own world minus any form of living beings.
I was expecting something better, but unfortunately by the second act until the end it just got bitter. The development of the characters just got arrested as the film progressed. After all the failed comic book movies in the past you would have expected that Hollywood has learned more but with Fantastic 4 it just went farther backwards.
By the time Doom was killing everyone else except for the Fantastic 4, I was totally disconnected on how moronic it just went from point A to point zero. How Doom managed to manipulate organic matter with all the human beings around and yet failed to do so with the Fantastic 4 was just literally mind blowing.
The best action sequel I saw was a fight between Reed and soldiers, the last fight scene was a ridiculous fall for a trying hard move to resurrect the movies downfall and then they killed it further with one of the worst movie endings. A movie with a budget of 120 million dollars just plummeted out of orbit.
Fantastic? They just went from four to zero.