I honestly went into this one with an open mind, but if I had
to sum up the movie in one word it would be, disappointing. Clocking in at 1
hour and 45 min in length this movie just feels like its missing a 30 min
segment right smack in the middle. Now be warned I’m not going to bother sparing
any spoilers in this review (though I’ll do my best) because my first recommendation
would be to not bother spending your hard earned cash on this summer action
flick. Instead I would recommend you go see the new Mission Impossible instead.
One of
the first issues right off the bat for this movie was its timing. Coming out so
soon after Ant-man swept the Box office, was a poor decision. I honestly forgot
this movie was even coming out until I started seeing news about it on the web. I’m all for having 3 superheroes
movies a year but releasing them this close together didn't do them any favors.
However the overall issue with
Fantastic Four is the simply empty story. Completely devoid of anything remotely
original, and simultaneously trying too hard to be nothing like its predecessors
ended up creating a dull and pointless experience that literally had me saying
to myself “wait that’s it” as the final fight scene began. Another
major fault of this film was its complete predictability. Not only is the entire
film shown in the preview, but from 20 min in I could already explain to you
how the entire plot was going to play out.
The movie spends basically the
first half just getting to the point where they get their powers and then skips
a year ahead to where they supposedly have now mastered their abilities yet
still are not a team. The whole time I was wondering why we didn’t get to see
them learn how to use their new found powers and was missing out on all the
cool action that seemed like it would have actually added more depth to the
plot. Especially since one of the biggest parts from the trailer (the Thing
falling out of a plane to break into something) wasn’t even included in the
actual film.
The final fight came down to the
same lame fight as the first Fantastic 4 movie, with the whole “lets all attack
him one at a time and get our butts whooped then learn our lesson and fight
together so then we’ll win!“ cliché. All of which is accompanied by the now
standard blue energy pillar of doom that has been used far too many times recently.
I’m a firm believer that a good villain
is what can truly make or break a story. It’s villains like Joker, Bane, Loki,
Ultron, Vader, and Voldemort who are compelling, engaging, and sometimes witty.
The kind who make you go oooh this guy is awesome (or scary). They make you
think, they have complex and interesting motives for their actions and in the
end, often make a more lasting impression than the actual heroes.
Dr. Doom unfortunately
fails to be any of these things. I still can’t really tell you why he
wanted to destroy the world. He basically was just suddenly evil for no real
reason. It was almost like they said "hey he’s been off screen for 30ish min, now he’s the bad
guy. Ok now everybody fight!" Even his master plan of coming back to earth for
no reason just to then turn around and return to the other world to destroy
earth makes absolutely no sense to me. What was the whole point? Why not just
stay there in the first place? I can honestly say that i enjoyed the first set of Fantastic 4 movies better than this one and I didn't even really like those much either.
While I have nothing bad to say
about the acting, the visuals were nothing special and the action scenes always
felt like they about to get awesome just before they ended. The same goes for
the drama and relationships between the characters. Each time it felt like some
sort of real depth was about to be reached between the variety of team members,
the scene would end, leaving you with just a feeling that something was missing.
Unfortunately that’s just the general feeling I was left with after watching
this film. If it had been 30 min longer then maybe I would have something good to
say about it but overall it just was lacking anything of real worth.
