Ten Statements About....FANTASTIC FOUR (2015)

"Hey, guys...I built one of those motors you used to
find in your toys!"

“You're counting on these guys? A guy who can stretch, a girl I can't see, a human torch...I don't even know what he is.”

1) Man, this is one dark movie--not dark as in somber, but dark as in dark.  The film seems to take place in a continual twilight, and there are moments when you literally can’t figure out what is going on.

2) I’m sorry, but I don’t believe Miles Teller’s Reed is one of the smartest boys in the world.  There’s something...petulant about his performance that makes his Reed unbelievable.

3) You know what is the major problem with this film?  It’s that the leads are exactly the same person.  They’re all teens-to-young-adult geniuses who can easily see how to build a gate to another dimension.  With the exception of one brief sequence depicting Michael B. Jordan’s Johnny loving speedy cars (an aspect that is dropped immediately after it is introduced), they’re given no indication of a life outside of the lab.

4) Boy, is the sight of a pantless Thing disturbing.

"Sir, I've seen photos of Doom.  I've read about Doom.  You, sir,
are no Doom."

5) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again...when you change enough of the backstory of a property, it no longer is that property.  And this should probably have been named something else to divorce it from the property it claims to be.

6) The pacing of this film is truly out of whack.  It take almost half the film for our heroes to gain their powers, about three quarters before the menace is introduced, and it can be argued the film is almost over (counting the credits, which had to eat up seven or eight minutes, there was twenty minutes left) before the actual conflict arises.  I know director Josh Trank has done one good super-hero-y movie before, so I can’t understand why he lets this one get all lopsided.

7) Yeah, a sinister government organization looking to weaponize our heroes.  Because we haven’t seen that before...

This is as brightly lit as this film gets...

8) Why isn’t being super-smart enough for directors when it comes to Doctor Doom?  Giving him ill-defined abilities does not make him more menacing; it makes him more generic.

9) I swear, it seems like Trank is more interested in making a horror movie.  The trip to the alternate dimension and the sequence where the Sinister Government Organization is testing/examining our heroes is played out as something disturbing.

10) Okay, so Reed escapes from the Sinister Government Organization before they give the other three the suits that control their powers, right?  Then why is Reed wearing one of these suits when they track him down to South America?

Overall...dark, dismal and tedious, this is a Superhero Movie That Doesn’t Want To Be A Superhero Movie at its worst.  Avoid.