The year was 1996 and I was a senior in high school. At this time I've read Spider-Man and X-Men comics in the past but in 1996 Marvel launched their Heroes Reborn event and this was my first exposure to the Fantastic Four. A little late to the party, I'll openly admit to it, but I immediately fell in love with the science of it, the four members, Silver Surfer, the Inhumans and especially Dr. Doom.
I have since gone back and read a lot of Fantastic Four comics dating back to the 1960s. I was also in my local comic shop buying each new issue of Ultimate Fantastic Four when that title launched in 2004. I couldn't get enough of Doom and, to me, he is a biggest reason I have always enjoyed the Fantastic Four.
Now that my Fantastic Four comic cred has been laid out let me talk about the newest FANTASTIC FOUR movie.
I'm going to be brutally honest because of my Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom fandom and this is Fox's third swing-and-a-miss for the franchise. I'm also going to tell you exactly how things go down in this film.
Here is where I'll give everyone a big old SPOILER ALERT. Read on if you dare and I'll let you know when the spoilers end below.
The first half of the movie keeps your interest more than the second half. Because it has that wonderful feel like it could have been part of a movie from the 80s. You know, two kids who discover something amazing when Reed Richards builds a working dimensional travel device in his garage. Ben Grimm is there because he seems kind of interested but his family owns a salvage yard and Grimm catches Richards trespassing while looking for a power converter. Grimm gets him one and they perform the first successful test using Richards' machine.
Fast-forward seven years and Richards is presenting his updated version of his device at a science show at high school. Miles Teller and Jamie Bell do not look the appropriate age to be in high school. Anyway, their device works and out of nowhere Franklin Storm shows up with Sue Storm and offer Richards a scholarship.
Fast-forward again and Richards is working for Franklin at the Baxter Building to build his machine for dimensional travel. But Victor Von Doom is needed to build the machine because he tried to build his own a decade earlier but failed. So he has too has knowledge of dimentional travel devices (don't we all?). So Franklin goes to get him and Doom is sitting behind a desk with bloodshot eyes with what looks like half a Google glass on his one eye staring a multiple monitors online and with source coding and other hacker-like visuals on all the monitors. Yeah... that report from months ago claiming Doom was going to be a hacker looked like it was totally correct. It was most likely fixed and changed in post-production. (There were reportedly 40 pages rewritten during post-production and for reshoots.)
Here is right about where things started to feel less like a kid with big dreams science story.
Johnny Storm joins the party only after he wrecks his car during a fast and furious street race and his father promises he will get his car back only if he works on the dimensional machine. So of course Johnny does.
Sue's part of all of this is really underwritten and somewhat ignored throughout while the guys all build the device. Once it is finished Richards, Johnny and Doom get drunk because they are told NASA is coming in to take the trip in the machine. The drunken guys then decide they should go first, so Richards calls Grimm to join them and they all go to this other dimension. It's always a great idea to go to another dimension with a good buzz, right?
Things go bad on this other planet after Doom touches some green liquid-y stuff on this other planet and the ground begins to break apart. Doom is a casualty while Richards, Johnny and Grimm get back to Earth but only after acquiring their respective powers from a blast of green liquid-y stuff (which is never clarified as to what it really is) the moment before the machine leaves. There was a moment of feeling in this sequence where there was some excitement because of what was at stake on their (drunken?) mission but it quickly disappears.
Sue didn't travel with them but she helped override the computer program to bring them back. Then only to get caught in some kind of aftershock blast that gave her her powers when the machine returned.
Sue, Richards, Johnny and Grimm all wake up in Area 57, after being knocked out from the drunken expedition. They weren't shown as being drunk in the other dimension but they did decide to go that same night they were drinking. The military are testing on all four of them because of their new abilities. Richards wakes, visits Grimm but instead escapes on his own.
Another year passes. Grimm is now being used by the military for operations and both Johnny and Sue are learning to use their powers. Richards is hiding because he was said to be scared so he ran away and escaped, but he still wants to cure them all.
Obviously the military want to go back to the other dimension because they'd like to harness the power of the green liquid-y stuff and use it for military purposes (how original). But they need Richards to get the source coding right on their brand new dimensional travel machine to visit again. The military finds Richards after a year and some not-so interesting investigative work online by Sue, that could have been done any time early during the year that past. Regardless, Richards fixes the code.
The military sends a group of soldiers to this other dimension and they find Doom still alive and limping toward them but all powered up and looking like you've seen him in the TV spots. Doom is brought back to Earth where he is apparently no longer injured and almost immediately wants to go back. So he frees himself and begins to use his new powers which give him a ridiculously amount of abilities. Like to be able to move things with his mind, use a force field to block bullets and use his mind to explode others' heads. Doom is pretty much invincible even though he never uses the head exploding ability on Sue, Richards, Johnny or Grimm.
So Doom gets back to the other dimension with the military's new machine and decides to destroy Earth because he wants all the power for himself and doesn't want the military to get their hands on it. He creates a black hole between the dimensions which begins to suck Earth into his dimension to destroy it.
Sue, Richards, Johnny and Grimm get sucked into Doom's dimension through this black hole and they start to fight Doom. Again, Doom can use his head exploding ability on them but he doesn't and the foursome defeat him... and kill him... he was shown breaking apart into nothingness by the black hole. So Doom is presumed dead, which is absolutely stupid because Doom is one of Marvel's greatest villains.
This all ends with the four getting back and talking with the military who then give them their own place in the middle of nowhere. The four joke around trying to give themselves a team name. And that's it. Seriously.
End of SPOILERS.
Usually, I don't go into this much detail in my reviews but this movie is an exception because it was really boring at the end without any gratification. It was like two different movies (one good, one really bad) pieced together which, again, might be a result of all the alleged rewrites and reshoots.
The actor performances weren't bad but none stole the show and it was tough to see director Josh Trank's influence in the performances and especially in the second half of the film. Also, the reboot seemed to think it was funnier than it really was. There was maybe one or two tiny laughs but otherwise there wasn't much funny at all. Sue tried to make a joke about Doom being "Dr. Doom" but it really didn't come off as anything more than being lame. Speaking of Doom, he was a ruined character in the second half but you'll have to see this for yourself when/if you go to the theater.
Bottom line, I understand reviews are more personal opinion than critical critique anymore and perhaps this falls into the latter. But I've also been said to have a bias toward comic book movies and giving them good review scores because this is a comic book movie website. Well let this end the bias talk because this score shows there is no bias or fluff here.
Fox should move focus from their Fantastic Four franchise and keep that focus on building their X-Men movie universe. This is the plan with DEADPOOL, GAMBIT and WOLVERINE on the way but they need to expand further. Maybe it's time to green light their X-FORCE movie that's been in development to replace a sequel to FANTASTIC FOUR.
I'm convinced the only way a Fantastic Four movie can ever be done right is if its franchise rights revert back to Marvel Studios. And Dr. Doom really, really, really needs to be fighting the Avengers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe anyway.
3 out of 10
