Fantastic Four (2015)

[Calamity Panfan]

I've been meaning to make this thread for about a week now, but haven't because thinking about it makes me upset. But here I am at almost 3 in the morning and I can't seem to fall asleep, so let's talk about the joyless mess of a film that is this year's Fantastic Four reboot, what I consider the worst movie I've ever seen (it's either this or M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender adaptation)

The first and biggest problem with this movie is that the tone of the movie does not work with the source material. There's something off about a DARK and GRITTY adaptation about a team with a guy who stretches and a rock dude who says "IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME." I think lighthearted fun when I think of the F4, not CRONENBERG BODY HORROR. It's fine to add your own twist to an existing product but it takes a lot to pull something like that off. The Fantastic Four in general are kind of goofy, so if you're going to take the Batman Begins route with it you have to do it well. There's probably a reason most superhero movies take the "Iron Man" approach to things, and don't try to take themselves too seriously. I can think of probably at least two good fun, lighthearted comic book adaptations for every successful "serious" adaptation, especially in recent years. Those few successful "serious" adaptations usually are based on characters that are less... fantastical than the average superhero (Nolan Batman and TV Daredevil are probably the best recent examples). Less serious comic book movies have their fair share of stinkers (most notably Green Lantern and the last two Fantastic Four movies), but a superhero movie that ends up corny and stupid is better than one that ends up joyless and stupid.

I've seen this film described as a superhero movie that's ashamed of being a superhero movie which is why it has the tone it has, and that's a good description. I think there are some remnants of jokes in the movie, but it was hard to tell if they were intentional or not. This movie makes Man of Steel, a film where Pa Kent tells Supes that he maybe should've let a bus full of children die, look like a fun time.

spoilering the rest of my thoughts ahead, most of which will probably be more bullet points of everything i hated

[spoiler]OK WHERE TO BEGIN

One of the examples of how the DARK tone of the movie doesn't work comes in the opening sequence. It's pretty clear that Ben Grimm doesn't exactly have the best childhood. He doesn't seem to have a lot of friends before he meets Reed and he lives with his family where they own a junkyard. His brother seems to torment him a lot, and yells "IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME" when he starts beating Ben. The Thing's fun catchphrase has its roots in childhood trauma! I'm disappointed that they cut the scene where the Human Torch's mom dies in a tragic fire right after she yells "FLAME ON!"

Reed Richards, despite being a boy genius, does not get taken seriously. His teachers don't care that he's like a prodigy and his parents "don't understand him." Nobody seems even remotely interested that as a 12 year-old boy is building a matter transporter.

The childhood scenes are supposed to take place in like 2007 (I think?) but the scenes look like they're the 80's or 90's. One of the things that really makes the timeline unclear is that Reed uses N64's to power his transporter when a more time-specific choice would've been a PS2 or Xbox. But they didn't care enough with this movie to get things like "accurate portrayals of the time period" right.

Richards and Grimm build their matter transporter and show it off at their high school science fair (which is also a grade school science fair? Richards steals a model plane from a little kid to transport it). He could've probably brought this to peoples' attention by contacting any scientist (telling people HEY I BUILT A MACHINE THAT CAN TRANSPORT MATTER OUT OF BOTTLECAPS AND KNICKNACKS would probably pique the curiosity of somebody) but he's gonna show those teachers that doubted him who's boss. It's successful but when he transports the plane back a backboard breaks and they accuse Richards of witchcraft.

Sue Storm and her dad just happen to be at this random science fair looking for geniuses for their genius school to help them find a way to travel into different dimensions, so it's such a coincidence that Reed Richards' transporter actually transports items through the alternate dimension they want to go to! ok then

Sue notes that if Reed messed up the design of his transporter that he could've easily caused a black hole that would suck up and destroy the entire earth. She asks him if he considered that possibility. Reed says no. Genius Reed Richards did not once consider the implications that building a matter transporter might have on spacetime.

I don't know how old people are supposed to be in this movie. Reed and Ben are supposed to be seniors in high school. Doom is mentioned as being a few years older than them. Doom was possibly romantically involved with Sue, making Sue also older. But Reed and Sue kind of have a thing? I mean age gaps between romantic partners are ok but I just want to know how old these people are supposed to be. It doesn't help that you have late 20's/early 30's actors who don't look remotely like high school/college aged people playing these roles.

Johnny Storm starts off wasting his potential in street races instead of being a scientist like his father and adopted sister. Mr. (Professor?) Storm bails him out and tells him he can get his car back if he helps the transporter project. Storm's storyline about his wasted potential and criminal activity is never brought up again.

Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Doom build a large-scale model of transporter. A chimpanzee is successfully sent to the alternate dimension, and the government starts talks with NASA. The four who built the transporter are upset that they're talking with NASA, though.

Reed, Johnny and Doom decide to get drunk. They talk about how it's unfair that they don't get to go to the new dimension. They talk about how it was unfair that ****' BUZZ ALDRIN AND NEIL ARMSTRONG are famous but not the REAL SCIENTISTS who engineered the Apollo shuttles (seriously). In their drunken stupor they decide to go themselves (because the multi-billion dollar matter transporter in the government building has no security SERIOUSLY)

They don't invite Sue to drink with them, and they also don't invite Sue to travel with them even though she played just as key a role in building the transporter and was just as upset that they didn't get to be the ones that went on the mission. They did, however, invite Ben (who lives 40 minutes away from them) to come along. **** Sue, I guess.

When they do travel, an alert goes off on the building, but only on the computer where Sue was coincidentally working. Sue does not tell anybody else about what's happening and wants to stop it herself. Good security system, government! A+ work. Gold star.

While on the planet, our three heroes and future villain decide to not just visit the planet, but explore. Like, really explore. They go down a massive cliff to look at this weird energy source. Doom decides to stick his hand in the weird energy goop, and it doesn't seem to work well! Did I mention these are ALL GENIUSES!?

Doom presumably dies when things SHOCKINGLY go bad with the energy goop, the other three get their powers (Reed because he was holding the door that wouldn't shut, Ben because rocks went through the transporter with him, and the Human Torch because he got set on fire.) Sue gets powers because she was... in the same room as the transporter? I'm not sure.

The next scenes are Cronenbergian body horror and surprisingly gruesome and horrific as they discover their power. I hope any parents who brought their kids to see the movie left at this point.

Richards escapes the secret government facility they're being held (the government is really bad at security). A year goes by. Ben Grimm agrees to be a killing machine for Uncle Sam (with DOZENS OF CONFIRMED KILLS). Sue just wants to get better. Johnny is considering becoming a killing machine as well. For different reasons, they want to build the transporter again. They can't do it without Reed, because... apparently they didn't have any blueprints or anything for the original transporter? A team of the world's most brilliant scientists (many of whom worked on the original project) can't repeat the work of a 19 year old kid? whatever

They capture Richards. He builds the machine. While scientists are checking out the dimension, they find Doom and bring him back. But he didn't want to be brought back and all he wants is to be left alone on his planet (so why did he go back with the scientists when he could've stopped them? no reason really). Doom goes on a murder spree until he can go back home in the transporter. The killings are pretty gruesome for PG-13 standards (people explode! Blood splatters all over the place!) People try to stop him even though all he wants to do is go home where he won't kill people. But he goes home and then immediately for reasons unknown to the audiences decides to swallow earth in a black hole and terraform the other dimension. ok

Initial fight efforts from the fantastic four fail but they win with the power of TEAMWORK[/spoiler]

That's not even all of it. This movie is a miserable experience. The characters lack motivation and any logic despite all being supposed geniuses. Apparently there were big studio disputes. The director was supposedly an erratic jackass and he had disputes with the higher ups. He wasn't allowed in the editing room and they did re-shoots without him (it's clear too, because in some scenes Sue has Kate Mara's natural hair and in other scenes she's wearing a wig). Josh Trank said his vision would've been actually good, but it's hard to see any of this movie actually being worth watching.

[LOOT]

let's be honest

Fantastic Four just do not fit in with the Marvel universe anymore, they just don't seem like they should fit in the Marvel universe beyond "Mr. Fantastic makes device that **** over the multiverse ten times over". Invisible Woman has some strong suits recently but other than that, bleh. The Thing is supposed to be able to fight the Hulk somewhat but because of Hulkbuster suits this is a moot point. Human Torch is a background hero at best then.

I brought up the Power Pack in WoT as merely being mediocre but goddamn, I feel like they would have been better subjects of this "dark gritty heroes movie" and even then they would tone it back because they're kids... and that would make it better!

[ScottyMcGee]

That sounds awful. I didn't really care and read the spoilers because I care very little for it after hearing how bad it was.

Trends in comic book movies often go from campy to serious to campy to serious again. Batman was serious way back in the 40's serials then in the 60's became a total joke then in the early 90's became serious again then campy once again and now serious again. It's like when you play a video game you want to care about and then somewhere along the line like 4 hours later you just start entering cheat codes for DK mode and suddenly decide it's much funnier to have your avatar walk around in their underwear with the name "MASTER POOPFACE".

I'm a bit split on how I think comic book adaptations should go. Moderation is key but you don't really want to lean towards the gritty side unless the source material was meant to be gritty. If you want to make a gritty version of four superheroes that have catchphrases like FLAME ON and IT'S CLOBBERIN TIME you're probably going to have a hard time. The campyness is already inherent in its creation. You'd have to eliminate those things and create something else entirely, but then it's not really Fantastic Four anymore is it?

I was always of the opinion that Tim Burton Batman films are like watching comic books and Nolan Batman films are like watching graphic novels. At the end of the day though, I enjoy the Tim Burton films far more than the Nolan films. It's not just that I grew up with them but because I know there are parts in the Nolan films that I want to skip because they're asking philosophical questions about law and order and that dumb bimbo Rachel is being all "meh, I can only be with you if you stop being Batman" and Bruce is like "meh but I'm Batman I'm not a hero" and it goes into this melodramatic spiral with minimalist Hans Zimmer music in the background. Meanwhile Tim Burton Batman has this beautiful conglomerate of film noir and German expressionism and pulp and it's like WOW. It's like admiring a really beautiful piece of mad artwork.

Marvel has this balance of tragedy and excitement. I said a while ago in another thread that one big difference between DC and Marvel is that Marvel was created with the same group of people, so things fit better and complement each other. DC characters were made by a wild variety of different people with different agendas and then someone thought that for some reason it'd be a good idea to mix a cityscape vigilante wearing a bat costume with space aliens and space policemen. It just doesn't click. This is kind of why I think DC films keep jumping back forth between seriousness and campyness - because DC is so goddamn old that nobody can really put a finger on how this should feel. But with Marvel it's different. The Marvel Studios movies have that perfect balance seen in the comics (and even other non-Marvel Studios movies like the Sam Raimi Spider-man and X-Men). So now this new Fantastic Four movie tries to be like Man of Steel like "Let's try that" but no. 100% grittiness just doesn't work with Marvel. They suddenly made the previous two Fantastic Four movies look like Academy Award nominees.