More drastic, than fantastic...

The Fantastic Four 2015 style

Why does Hollywood still struggle with the idea of a Fantastic Four movie? They hit it out of the park when it comes to the Avengers but the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine leaves them stumped.

There have been four attempts. I actually have a soft spot for the 1994 version which is not as bad as most of those who haven’t seen it insist it is. The 2005 version was encouraging although the sequel fell a bit flat. But this new version commits the unforgiveable crime of being unbelievably dull; not to mention incoherent. It plays like 100 minutes of blah in an excitement-free zone..

This is a re-imagining  of the super-powered quartet in their teen incarnations from Marvel’s Ultimates Universe which wondered what classic characters would be like if they had been invented post-Millennium. Even though the characters are younger this film lacks the gee-whizz enthusiasm of the Ultimate series.

In the original incarnation scientist Reed Richards, his girlfriend Susan Storm, her brother Johnny, and Reed’s college buddy Ben Grimm went into space but cosmic rays bombarded their spaceship. When they returned to earth they had strange new abilities. Reed could stretch, Sue turned invisible, Johnny burst into flames, while Ben became a hulking giant with skin like rock. Their powers, if you like, were manifestations of their subconscious selves.

Nonetheless they became costumed adventurers, spurned the usual comic book trope of the secret identity, and lived their lives in public. They were super-celebs with all of the attendant problems that brought.

The first 114 issues of the comic were written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby and constitute the single best, most thrilling, most exciting, and just plain fun series of episodes in comic history. Just look at these covers. This is four-colour magic.

 

At heart Lee and Kirby realised that they were dealing with a family, an almost literal nuclear family. This was the superhero as soap opera and Stan and Jack embraced the whole glorious absurdity of it all. That go for the gusto approach is what’s missing here. The Avengers is essentially a Western – a bunch of good guys team up to defeat the villain – but the Fantastic Four is character-based.

That’s where this film falls down; we need to love them but here we barely know them. It is an emo-version of the Fantastic Four. Costumed adventurers become mopey teenagers as Reed attempts to conquer trans-dimensional travel. Their visit to this other world with their slacker pal Victor von Doom – a characterisation that borders on heresy – leaves them with strange abilities. But the second half of the film makes so little sense we don’t really know how they feel about this; evidently waking up to find himself literally on fire from top to toe doesn’t bother Johnny too much.

Although the film starts promisingly it quickly runs out of steam. Incidentally by my calculations the FF in this film are about 17 yet they are played by two 28-year-olds, a 29-year-old, and a 32-year. Remarkably that’s not the least of this film’s problems.

It just doesn’t make sense. I get the impression that heroics have been performed in the cutting room to get some kind of film out there but my feeling is there just isn’t enough coverage to get anything resembling a coherent drama.

The whole film is like a trailer for another movie which I don’t especially want to see. But given the box office showing of this film, and the alleged row between the studio and Marvel, I don’t think I’m going to have to worry about that for quite some time.