Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Fantastic 4 is it worth it?



             

              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.

No comments:

Post a Comment