Fantastic Four 2015

• Stylized as FANT4STIC
• Directed by Josh Trank
• August 4, 2015 (New York City) / August 7, 2015 (US)
• Based on the Fantastic Four created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

A group of intelligent teenagers build a trans dimensional portal causing them to gain superhuman abilities when they use it.

These days in my humble opinion it is not uncommon for superhero movies to take character names and concepts and attach them to barely similar things. Fantastic Four 2015 does just that with Marvel’s first family.

Fantastic Four 2015 is one of those movies that feels a strong need to ‘reimagine’ the heroes it uses. Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Miles Teller) here has more in common with Peter Parker in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films that he does with the Ioan Gruffudd version or even the comic book inspiration.

Then again Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Michael B. Jordan) is not a hotshot charming pilot but a jerk with daddy issues. Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Kate Mara) is no actress but just as intelligent if not more so than Reed. Reed is so not supersmart the he does not even understand his breakthrough. Sue explains it to him with some help from her dad. Ben Grimm/The Thing (Jamie Bell) is generic muscle that quickly gets over being a pile of rocks. He is not a person with a rocky exterior but an actual pile of rocks for a bit!

Sue is almost hostile towards Reed. If anything she has more of a personal connection with Doom than she does with her most noted romantic match. That relationship has always been an important factor regardless of Reed’s character or emotional status.

Each character needs to bring something different to a team. In this film they are just variations of the same character. It’s not the powers that make the team special. It’s their interactions and personalities. I am also at a loss on who the leader is. Reed barely factors.

Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) is just a bitter douchebag and not a charismatic individual with the intellect and accomplishments to back up his ego. Much like Fantastic Four if it weren’t for one line you would not know Doom is from another country. A defining aspect of the character is his ethnic heritage. It’s what drove him in the direction of magic and science.

Character motivations are kind of murky at a good moment. It’s kind of hard to understand where anybody is coming from. It comes off like Josh Trank wanted some cross between the MCU and the Snyderverse and comes up short on both. Even the muted color palate on the screen is a superficial attempt at depth.

I can actually say I would view this movie a lot better if it was called anything else. It’s so unlike anything I am familiar with and I’m betting a large portion of the audience is familiar with when it comes to the Fantastic Four. They’re not a super team that’s looked up to by the world but work for some never really defined agency or military branch.

This kind of beats you over the head with its environmental themes/conservation themes/whatever you wanna call them. Rather than travel into space for the science of it, the quartet jumps to a reality in a search for resources to give Earth a second chance because plundering another reality is the way to go. The military sees what it did to the famous four and want to use it to make super soldiers. Weirdly though there’s no hint that the team the military sent after Reed and pals developed any kind of powers. Nobody even mentions or questions that.

On the environmental front, when Doom is discovered in the alternate reality he comes back and eventually kills a couple of people with his powers. Why? Because he doesn’t want humanity to go over there and mess up that world like they did Earth. Gone is a megalomaniac and would-be conqueror. In his place is an environmentalist crusading for another reality by swallowing up the Earth with a black hole.

There is not a lot of actual story. Something weird happens and then they go off and must punch the bad guys. That’s your basic superhero story but it’s just not much occurs in between from credits to climax.

Fantastic Four 2015 is just kind of crap. It tries so hard and fails.