Fantastic Four is a fantastic flop

Last updated on: August 11, 2015 at 12:42 pm by Andrew Collins

Fantastic Four is a fantastic flop 2015-08-11T12:42:58-06:00 Andrew Collins

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Review of Fantastic Four, Directed by Josh Trank

Fantastic Four will go down in infamy with The Green Lantern and Ben Affleck’s Daredevil as a great big superhero fail. It’s too campy to be taken seriously, and not campy enough to be so-bad-it’s-good. Maybe if I were still in Jr. High I’d enjoy lines like “It’s clobbering time” and eat up spoon-fed truisms about how heroes are only strong enough when they stand together. Maybe, but I’m not. Given the current flourishing of the superhero genre, I expected much better.

With the challenge of early-reboot syndrome, Fantastic Four was a risky project from the get-go. The recent Spider-Man films featuring Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, for example, are decent superhero movies in their own right, but they arrived a little too closely on the heels of the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy. Garfield brought a fresh juvenile awkwardness to Peter, but that still didn’t stop the films from losing some of their appeal. There are so many movies out there, so many great stories to be told, that providing a compelling reason why we really need to hear this one again is a high bar to clear. The same onus of proof is on Fantastic Four. The prior films were by no means stellar, but if you’re going to reboot, you better have a darn good reason. This one just doesn’t.

Image Source: Wikimedia

To be fair, the film starts out somewhat interesting. It has talented lead actors, namely Miles Teller and Kate Mara, (of Whiplash and House of Cards fame, respectively), and overall the casting is pretty good. Teller and Mara give the story’s exposition some darker portents and prime it for what might actually be a thoughtful reimagining of the story. We’ve got four genius kids who probably wouldn’t be friends otherwise, each with their own inner demons, improbably brought together to solve interdimensional travel for the greater good.

Ok, I thought, I’m listening…

Their first attempt to travel to the primordial world of the new dimension naturally goes awry. They return with freakish powers, with a nice emphasis on the “freak” – at first. The film captures their first pitiable moments in which Reed (Mister Fantastic) lies stretched out on a table (literally, stretched), Sue Storm flickers in and out of visibility, as if she were flickering in and out of consciousness, her brother Johnny lies on a table like smoldering ember burning into oblivion, and Ben (The Thing) curls up in a corner like a lifeless pile of rocks. But from that point on, the film craters. We fast forward one year—for some reason skipping the standard plot progression of superhero films in which they come to grips with possessing and using their powers. The clichés start rolling in, and they don’t stop.

It starts with the power-hungry, domineering government personified by the smarmy Harvey Elder (Tim Blake Nelson). The authorities don’t look trustworthy for a second, so it’s not surprising when we learn that government wants to harness the powers of the four. In the short run, it wants to use them as weapons, but more sinister than that, it wants them to reconstruct the inter-dimensional portal and return to the other world of self-generating energy.

Both heroes and villains fail to compel, however, due to poor, accelerated character development. Take the bad guy, Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell), for example. He is one of the brilliant engineers of the interdimensional team, but clearly has some authority and ego issues. The same goes for the government that seeks to harness the power of his discoveries. Obviously they aren’t going to get along, but when Dr. Doom shows up from the netherworld, he starts popping everyone’s heads and immediately decide to condemn the entire earth to a black hole so that he can reign over a primordial universe in solitude.

“The end of your world… is the beginning of mine!” he declares. The line is supposed to be deeply terrifying, I think, but it seems a bit much.

And as for our heroes, by the time they reach their showdown with Doom, the film feels painfully self-aware that they’re in the last pages of a comic book. There’s not the slightest chance one of them can take on Doom alone, they quickly realize, but if they work together as a team? Well of course they can’t lose, because, you know, that’s the moral of the story.

The entire arc of this individual-to-team realization, by the way, takes five, maybe ten minutes. It’s packaged, forced, obligatory, and may very well be the weakest climax I’ve ever seen in a superhero film.

While I will not be recommending Fantastic Four to anyone, it wouldn’t be in Christian charity to write it off entirely. It has themes of importance, and poorly executed though they may be, here are a few worthy of consideration. Power corrupts, as we see in Victor Von Doom and the government big-shots (but there are exceptions, such as the Fantastic Four themselves); humanity has sinned, corporately against our world and against each other, and someday we will have to give account for it; and lastly, as the ancient sage of Scripture writes, a cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

And a cord of four strands? Well, that’s downright superhuman.

Previous Post

August 7, 2015

Ricki and the Flash want us to forgive ourselves

Next Post

August 18, 2015 Writers to Read: A Short Demonstration of Christian Engagement with Culture

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Action AFI Top 100 Animation Best Picture Winner BFI Top 250 Biography Biopic Books Childrens Christian Classics Classics Comedy Crime Documentary Drama Editor's Choice Family Fantasy Fantasy Films Foreign Historical Historical Fiction History Horror Horror IMDB Top 250 Indie Memoir Modern Novel Musical Mystery Non-Fiction Oscars Philosophy Poetry Popular Literature Reading and Writing Reality Romance Science Fiction Science Fiction Silent Sports Thriller TV Show Uncategorized Western Westerns Young Adult

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 June 2017 January 2017 December 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What is the Bible's teaching on contentment?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Never rest Be content with what you have Complain Always want more