Random Movie Review - Fant4stic

As far as cinema runs have gone, Fantastic Four haven't really had that great of a run. Their first ever film was so bad that it ended up being unreleased to the general public. Then Fox's two original films came out with a cast who were just popular at the time and there for eye candy. But somehow despite all the problems Fox had with making the films they managed to make two films that felt like a Marvel film (at least compared to the MCU). Then following Disney buying Marvel, the two companies began work on reclaiming the rights to all their characters and from Fox, they managed to take back Daredevil and characters belonging to that franchise. Lots of people have theorised that Fant4stic only exists so that Fox can keep the rights to the titular super hero team, having failed to make another Daredevil film since 2005's Elektra and thus giving the rights back to Marvel as previously stated. That and the fact that the cast were specifically asked not to read the comics for inspiration means that this film could be a stinker. Well we'll see as I review this "fantastic" film:

So as this is a reboot, any connection to the first two films by Fox is non-existent. We meet childhood friends Reed Richards (played by Miles Teller from Divergent and Whiplash) and Ben Grimm (played by Billie Elliot himself Jamie Bell) who for years have been working on a prototype teleporter which eventually attracts the attention of the director of the Baxter Foundation Professor Franklin Storm (played by Reg E. Cathey from House of Cards). The pair are invited to join his team in helping them complete a Quantum Gate that is designed by his protege Victor von Doom (played by Koba and 2017 King Kong himself, Toby Kebbell). Along with help from Frank's children Johnny (played by Rocky's protege, Michael B. Jordan) and Susan (played by Kate Mara, also from House of Cards), the experiment proves successful, but the team are denied access to use it to explore planets as NASA have an interest in sending their own people. The team then use the machine to travel to Planet Zero where from that point on, they are forever changed.

So let's address the problems. To me, the soundtrack feels like something from early 00s superhero films which isn't a bad thing, but to me, it doesn't quite fit into a film like this. Then there's the fact that its uses very dull and dark colours which works well for many DC properties, but can be hit or miss for Marvel and its a miss this time. Also, no harm in a bit of humour in your films as long as its executed well. I could go on, but the bottom line is that this doesn't feel like a Marvel film for a lot of reasons and I honestly think that Fox could have done better. Rushing projects like this is never a good idea even if its just to keep the rights and interfering with a director at work is also a bad move. Sorry Fox, but if you want to make a good Fantastic Four film, you need to do better or do a 50/50 deal with Marvel like Sony are doing. Plus no harm in actually researching your characters rather than following what a director tells you. 6/10