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.

 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sit back and have fun

Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise

There is something ineffably pleasing about watching people doing the sort of thing for which they have a supreme talent. Messi playing football, for example, or Domingo singing, or Astaire dancing, are so good that the only appropriate response is often to smile in wonder.

To that list I would also add the sheer unadulterated pleasure of watching a big studio movie in which everyone is at the top of their game. It’s a perfect marriage of creativity, commerce, and primarily sheer entertainment. That may be why I spent most of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation with a smile on my face. As a piece of adventure movie-making it is ridiculously pleasing.

I know it is very easy taking pot shots at Tom Cruise and heaven knows I’ve done enough of that in my time, but as a movie star and leading man he has few equals. He is undoubtedly the biggest star in the world and, on screen at least, he wears it fairly lightly. I cannot think of another actor who could pull off the role of Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible series with as much style or guile as Cruise.

There’s a moment near the start of this film where an impressionable young contact is slightly overawed at meeting Hunt. ‘You’re really him’, she says. Cruise’s non-verbal response is one of the many grace notes that he brings to the role he was born to play. It betokens a confidence that is shot through every aspect of this film.

Whether it is Christopher McQuarrie’s screenplay and direction, Robert Elswit’s superb cinematography, Eddie Hamilton’s cutting, or the immaculately constructed cast this is a film that is designed to thrill from first to last. Much has been made of Cruise strapped to a plane for the opening sequence, which you would need to have been living in a cave not to have seen, but this is possibly the least of the film’s spectacular set pieces. It is a mere amuse bouche for a menu of top quality mayhem.

I won’t dwell at length on the plot because it’s not really important. There’s a criminal organisation out to destroy the Impossible Missions Force, and a superbly sinister mastermind played by Sean Harris who may be the one man Hunt cannot beat. All of this is the frame on which to hang some superb action sequences.

The charm of the later entries in the Mission: Impossible series is their link to the spirit of the original TV show. The show was a product of the Sixties spy boom and ever since J.J. Abrams came on board the films have channelled the spirit of that show. At a time when Bond has gone for grim and gritty, Ethan Hunt and his cohort are having fun.

Where they have taken a leaf out of Bond’s book is in the use of what Ian Fleming referred to as ‘thrilling cities’. In their Sixties heyday when the world was a bigger place Bond films relished exotic locales and this film takes a leaf out of that book. Vienna and London are the backdrop for major action set pieces while Casablanca plays host to one of the best car/motorcycle chases in recent years.

Whatever the location we know that Ethan Hunt will always escape; no death trap is ever enough to finally put paid to him, and that is part of the fun. He is more than human but not quite superhuman; the scene after that thrilling car chase when Hunt attempts a Starsky and Hutch car bonnet slide is another of those grace notes that humanises the character.

What is extremely gratifying however is the way he is frequently unmanned by the latest member of the team, Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust. She is the sort of kick-ass heroine who makes the Avengers Natasha Romanoff seem positively matronly. She is the sort of strong female character we need to see in films like this and the story makes no concessions to her gender. We avoid the sort of shoehorning in of an unlikely romance and instead she and Hunt are respectful equals.

We are left in no doubt that these two might meet up again further down the road when Ethan and the IMF get back together. I for one can’t wait.