Tag Archives: fantastic four

07.25.25
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps

It seems like the third time’s the charm for Marvel’s first family — after three different iterations on screen, the Fantastic Four finally get a film that’s not only watchable, but irresistible. Since this film is set in a parallel universe to the 36 films preceding it in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it gets to build a new world from scratch. The eye-popping visuals will leave you in awe, including extraordinary costume and production design. The retrofuturistic approach to this new world recaptures that feeling of wonder of humanity embarking into space for the first time, while imagining a reality where all of humanity rallied together behind reason, morality, and science. This idealism and dream-like wonder bring a beautiful look and excitement that’s distinct from Marvel’s other outings that are set in a world with undertones much more like ours. Pedro Pascal gives his star-like charisma to Reed Richards, but the film wisely gives Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm much of the film’s emotional weight. Kirby is given a journey unique to Marvel and the screen, and she and Joseph Quinn fit their roles like a glove. Ebon Moss-Bachrach is a highlight as the deeply heartfelt and lovable Ben Grimm, and the family’s dynamic together is sweetly reminiscent of a team like The Incredibles.

The action-packed pace wastes no time, even when it sometimes skips time with detailed character arcs, their relations with one another, their world, and their roles in it drive the film very well, even when the conflict may be priority. The only shame is that talented supporting players Sarah Niles and Natasha Lyonne weren’t given a little more screen time. The effects and action always entertain, and even the world-devouring giant Galactus is given a serviceable motivation to give his presence weight, including Ralph Ineson’s powerful voice. Meanwhile, his herald Shalla-Bal, the Silver Surfer, is given an interesting portrayal by Julia Garner. The Fantastic Four: First Steps doesn’t set out to surprise, but it certainly wows and stands out among the MCU, finally giving the characters a great outing and vivacious portrayals with a gorgeous aesthetic that takes a life of its own and gives the film a stunning feeling of enjoyment throughout.

08.09.15
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Fantastic Four (2015)

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Four young outsiders teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe which alters their physical form in shocking ways. The four must learn to harness their new abilities and work together to save Earth from a former friend turned enemy.

Fantastic Four brings the 4 heroes back to the big screen. For good? Unfortunately not. The movie was only made so that Fox could keep the rights to the characters. And despite the studio also making the film to re-imagine the franchise for a new decade, no good effort comes out of this movie. The  script is lousy, cliche, and couldn’t be more predictable. It’s everything we’ve seen before, and nothing new came out of it. The directing isn’t good either, and although director Josh Trank apparently had a much better version of the movie before its release, Fox interfered and forced him to re-shoot. The result is something that couldn’t be more cliche, and like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, was interfered massively by its studio, resulting in the movie being worse than the director’s original idea. I am tired of this happening in post-productions, especially with high-budget films. I don’t believe a studio is there to avert a movie from the director’s vision, is the director is the most important person behind the camera of a movie.

The cast members are all horrendous. They are not interesting to watch on screen, as they do not bring their characters to life well. Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell all deliver boring performances and aren’t special at all. Sure, they are great actors in other movies, but they didn’t work well with the script in this movie, especially because they didn’t deliver their lines well. Toby Kebbell gives a decent approach at first, but by the time his character becomes a villain, starts saying villain-y things and doing villain-y stuff, he isn’t interesting, either. Like the rest of the cast, Reg E. Cathey and Tim Blake Nelson are extremely boring, as two very cliche and predictable supporting characters.

Like I was saying earlier, everything about the story is extremely cliche, from the themes about family to the opening story about curious children wanting to solve the mysteries of science. There wasn’t a single bit of it I didn’t find to be familiar, just like my first impression of the movie when the first trailer was released back in February. The movie’s pacing is actually alright. It takes its time at first, but later it spends 40 minutes trying to convey the same thing over and over again, and then it ends way too early. It should have been at least 20 minutes longer, although no one would want to sit through 20 more minutes of utter garbage. By the end of the movie, the film’s approach is so awful. The ending is very weak, and they way they try to set it up for a sequel is in the most cliche and frustrating way possible, ti the point that I hope the sequel is scratched along with plans for a shared universe with the X-Men. I can’t yet decide what’s worse: this, or the dreadful 2005 Fantastic Four movie.

Unsurprisingly, Fantastic Four doesn’t satisfyingly bring the characters to the big screen, and more than that, it makes us want them to leave the screen. It’s time to put this franchise to rest.

Fantastic Four 2015 poster.jpg