I made fun of this movie a lot over the past few months and I figured I should, at the very least, watch it so I can continue to talk about what a horrible movie it is. I did and I kinda regret it, it really is a bad movie that I probably could have just made this review up and no one would know any different. But that would be wrong.
Rather than give a long winded synopsis about the director, writers, actors and DP I'll sum it all up in one sentence. The two (hell, three) Fantastic Four films are far superior to this film in every category and this is the worst written superhero film I have ever see. With that said, here is why this thing falls apart.
First I'll concede this one fact, Jamie Bell as The Thing/ Ben Grimm is the only redeeming quality out of this movie. It's clear he came with the right intentions and everyone else showed up to collect a pay check. He makes you feel for The Thing, but undermines the entire performance at the very end. It's a strange contradiction here.
The story has three acts, the first act runs a bit long and ends right after they get their powers and Reed escapes, leaving his friends behind, to solve the problem he caused. Then a weird one year later jump and then we're off to the worst...I don't even know what to call it, it felt like someone just started cutting stuff out. Seriously, It felt like a narrator should have been talking the whole time saying " And Then, This Happened".
The second act maybe lasts 12 minutes and has one fight with Reed trying to elude capture, but Ben shows up and stops him. After some chit-chat, Reed fixes a new teleporter with a few lines of code and that is the end of the second act. There is a few scenes with Sue and Johnny, but they serve no purpose other than to show they have powers. (No shit they have powers, that's why we are here watching the movie. We want to see them USE the powers.)
I really want to know how something like this gets through all the people who have to put their stamp on it? You know who I really feel bad for, the two editors who had to piece this pile together. Those guys have worked on some awesome movies and to be forced into cutting this had to be a nightmare.
The third act is maybe 15 minutes and makes no sense. Doom shows up and it's just a mess. He looks like a mongoloid mashup of C3PO and Dot Matrix from Spaceballs. His power is the ability to not get hit by anything, yet he gets hit and killed by the Four. Then the movie is over but not before the come up with the name Fantastic Four......In the worst way possible. Ben Says " What we did was pretty Fantastic", then Reed replies "say that again", cut to Fantastic Four title.
The movie suffers from bland acting, an incoherent story, poor digital FX and a studio who had no intentions of making a good movie, just retaining the rights to the characters. The only good thing to come out of this movie is it shows how lucky we were to get the previous two Fantastic Four movies.
I think it will be awhile before we see Trank helm another movie and that is IF another studio wants to work with him. He did a fine job of burning bridges at FOX by placing all the blame on them the day of the release. I believe he has a chip on his shoulder and was in over his head. That being said, I'm sure that's why he was booted from the Star Wars project.
Rating 3/10 Stars