If I had to guess, I’d say the studio here planned for a seven or eight hour Fantastic Four reboot, and then somebody sent the only copy of the four-hundred page screenplay to Kinko’s for copying and it came back missing most of the second and third acts. I’m not blaming Kinko’s here; losing the bulk of the screenplay is the best thing that could have happened.
Cashing in on the Whiplash of popularity about Miles Teller (I know the guy is young, but personally I think we’ve already seen the best Miles Teller has to offer), Fantastic Four decided to explore the childhood of Reed Richards. Mad science gotta come from somewhere, right? Reed’s (who named him “Reed?”) adoptive parents don’t get his desire to make a teleporter. And the story suggests nary an adult for a full decade can appreciate Reed’s teleporting attempts on through high school. Let me re-explore that thought – here’s a genius kid who wants to learn how to move matter the same way sound and light move and when he’s partially successful at it, nobody wants to hear about it. Right now, I can’t tell if this is bad writing or frustrated writing.
Minutes later, I got my answer when every single teleportation takes the toy car, toy plane, carnival ride, etc. to exactly the same place in space – an energy planet just past the ozone layer – huh, wonder how we missed that?
Say, how many useful applications are there for transporting matter to exactly the same point every.single.time?
Act I goes on for more than an hour. I’m not kidding. More than 60% of this film happens before these guys get special powers. And boy do they need them, because there’s nothing special going on with the eventual invisigirl (Kate Mara), eventual big rock guy (Jamie Bell), eventual flying fire guy (Michael B. Jordan), and eventual villain (Tony Kebbell). I love how the villain’s name is Victor Von Doom before he gets super po
wers. “Yes, I’m descended from the Harlequin-Von Doom blood lines; my forefathers, the VonDommes, split the line centuries ago in Evilvania, er, I mean ‘Amsterdam,’ yes, Amsterdam, creating the Von Dooms and the Van Dammes. I’m fourth cousin to Jean-Claude Van Damme.”
Anyhoo, after a looooooong prologue, these guys successfully manage to return something from Planet Terror or whatever. Naturally, the science boys are pissed off that the government invested so heavily in this idea with little practical application and zero successful trials, so, and I’m not kidding here, they get drunk and take their creation for an interstellar joy ride. There isn’t really an over on the amount of wrong here. You could try to overstate it and fail every time, so I’m not going to try.
I think the worst part of this Fantastic Four is that the kids don’t get to enjoy their powers much. How do you make a film about four different dudes with four different distinct super powers and zero distinct fun? These four went straight from the brooding “how do I get rid of this?” introspection to the final conflict without any segue. 
Nobody is going to confuse the Jessica Alba, Chris Evans version of Fantastic Four with greatness, but at least those films knew to celebrate the powers a little. This is where the film gets enjoyable; how did you miss that? Those films were bad, but Joss Whedon-esque compared to the reboot.
Fantastic Four has already been slotted for a sequel. Unless you’re dealing with Part I or a trilogy or something, I thought it ridiculous to schedule a second before you’ve seen the results of the first. The 3.9 on imdb, fellas, that might not give you pause? I wonder if there was a contract provision that a sequel was contingent on a certain assumed success level of the original. Ironically, I think a sequel would have to be better by virtue of the fact that there cannot possibly be another hour of clumsily turning bland people into super bland people.
Young folks open a space door
To see worlds we’ve never seen before
They return with skillz
Not run-of-the-millz
And make this story a fantastic boor
Rated PG-13, 100 Minutes
D: Josh Trank
W: Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg & Josh Trank
Genre: Painful reboot
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Kate Mara’s mom, maybe
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Fanboys
