What a Marvel-ous no. Having seen the previews for the new "Fantastic Four" movie, I went in with expectations high. I expected a thrilling, gritty, maybe even darker retelling of the story. The trailers showed epic fight scenes and I thought nothing could be quite as bad as the first renditions of these movies. Right?
Well, I found the previews to be a terrible case of false advertising. The characters were impossibly boring, the fight scenes (or lack thereof) equally so. I was hopeful, given the actors hired to play the Fantastic Four team, they would be handed complex and engaging rolls. I greatly admired Kate Mara in her portrayal of Zoe Barnes in "House of Cards," and was praying she would be given a similarly dynamic character to play in "Fantastic Four." This was not the case.
In this movie, nothing came of Reed Richards, played by Miles Teller, being romantically interested in Mara’s character, Sue Storm, despite them being married in the comics. I can appreciate that she remained her own independent person, though. Even being shown as a woman for Reed to pursue, she was never needlessly sexualized.
That said, I am always wary when there is only one leading lady in a film, and I really did have a reason to be hesitant this time. While Sue was quite brilliant and had her part in the complex construction of the sci-fi teleportation machine, she was just as easily tossed aside when the boys decided to take the machine for a spin on their own, and failed to invite her along. Bam! Thrown to the side, unneeded when it came to the actual adventuring.
Additionally, Sue was painfully one-dimensional, as flat as comic book pages, not nearly as exciting as the words and pictures that bring those pages to life. Sue was given no beautiful words and illustrations, having little to no backstory besides the fact that she was adopted by Dr. Storm.
The other characters got a little more of a history. Sue’s younger brother, Johnny Storm, also known as the Human Torch, was shown to have a troubled past, as he often was busted for racing cars. Otherwise, his basic personality was not quite as hot as his powers.
Reed and his good friend, Ben Grimm, portrayed on screen by Jamie Bell, were both given the most backstory. They were shown growing up together and creating the first edition of the teleportation machine, then entering it in the science fair. They were eventually drafted by Dr. Storm to help with their own inter-dimensional travel project.
Victor Von Doom, our eventual resident super villain, was shown to be a trouble-making genius that had already gone against Dr. Storm before. Knowing this, why were they all so surprised when he eventually went dark-side? For shame.
Put five disjointed characters with little to no backstory together, and nothing good is bound to come of it. Any time the characters had to be social with each other, it felt awkward and forced. The dialogue between the characters fell flat, many one-liners making me cringe. When The Thing declared, “It’s clobbering time!” as he was about to punch Doctor Doom, I just wanted to clobber the writers. Repeatedly.
With all these issues and boring characters, I was hoping for an epic fight scene to make it all better. I was left feeling as betrayed as Dr. Storm. All the build up at the beginning of the movie led to the shortest, most disappointing fight scene I have ever seen. The writers gave Doctor Doom incredible powers, as they should have. He is one of the biggest and most threatening villains in Fantastic Four history. They then took this literal god and gave him twenty minutes to showcase his powers, if that. The Fantastic Four team banded together and emerged victorious after ten minutes of bland fighting. Dr. Doom did no real damage and was gone, just like that.
Marvel, I get that times were tough and you were strapped for cash when you sold the movie rights to Fox. I’m sure you regret it now and I can forgive you. But gosh dang it to heck, Fox, please just give those rights back! They could do so much better, and it would save us all the trouble of being subjected to these movies in the future.
In other news, the previously scheduled "Fantastic Four" sequel has already been dropped. Maybe there is hope on the horizon.
