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Fantastic Four (2015)
Fantastic Four (2015)
2015 | Action
Not much to say about Fant4stic that hasn't already been said. I feel that there's a good movie in there somewhere (right in the depths) and I believe Josh Trank when he talks about severe studio meddling.
The finished product however is a trainwreck. I thought The Thing looked quite good. Dr Doom looks like an actual gimp.
  
Fonzo (Capone) (2020)
Fonzo (Capone) (2020)
2020 | Biography, Crime
Hmm, what can I say about this film? I guess... this film did indeed shit the bed.

First, this movie was directed by Josh Trank, the dude responsible for that clusterf*** of a Fantastic Four movie.
This movie didn't really have a main plot. It was Tom Hardy, being completely immersed in a role. It was kind of like a train wreck, I didn't want to turn it off, mainly because I wanted to see if the slightly interesting sub-plot line about a possible $10mil buried somewhere.

I do have to give all the supporting actors credit, it must have been incredibly hard to keep straight faces the entire time.

At least I only wasted 85 minutes of my life on this.
  
Fantastic Four (2015)
Fantastic Four (2015)
2015 | Action
An absolute snooze
Here comes yet another superhero film. Ending Marvel’s year that has included the charming Big Hero 6, the overstuffed Avengers: Age of Ultron and the surprisingly excellent Ant-Man, the Fox produced Fantastic Four reboot has a tough job trying to get audiences to forget the horror that came before it.

It’s been a tough ride for the quartet of heroes, but does director Josh Trank’s modern day reimagining of Marvel’s first team do enough to change perceptions?

Not by a long shot. Despite some excellent special effects, this yawnfest of a film that was plagued by rumours of constant behind-the-scenes tension and last-minute editing doesn’t have an ounce of originality in its short 100 minute running time.

Miles Teller (Insurgent), Kate Mara (Transcendence), Michael B. Jordan (Chronicle) and Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) take on the roles of Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm respectively and are fine, if lacking in any real chemistry.

Fantastic Four is above all, an origins story as the four young adults try to crack interdimensional travel. Naturally, things don’t go quite to plan and they, alongside fellow colleague Victor Von Doom end up with an unusual set of powers – with Doom becoming the main antagonist.

Unfortunately, the plot, devised by no less than three writers is a complete bore. There is hardly anything of interest throughout the entire film as Trank pushes his cast from one underwhelming set piece to another.

When things do get tense, it’s only for a five minute scene involving Doom breaking out of a research facility. This is when we get to see what Fantastic Four could’ve been, a dark and brooding film with a disturbing villain at its core.

However, it seems this has been pushed back to make way for an unusually flat sense of humour and an uninteresting origins story. Marvel films live and die on their comedic elements and unfortunately Fantastic Four is as poor as they come.

Nevertheless, the film’s special effects are on the whole, very good. The other dimension looks fantastic and The Thing in particular is rendered using excellent motion capture animation.

An underwhelming climax wraps up a bitterly disappointing outing for the four heroes. Most superhero films end with a spectacular showdown of good versus evil but Fantastic Four has none of this. The ending is clichéd, short and has no real payoff.

Overall, expectations were already low for this reboot and despite director Josh Trank’s obvious talent for direction, this talent is nowhere to be found in Fantastic Four.

A cast that doesn’t gel together, a poor soundtrack and a lack of tonal balance ensures it will rest alongside X-Men Origins: Wolverine as proof that Marvel Studios needs the rights to all of its heroes returning to it.

https://moviemetropolis.net/2015/08/09/an-absolute-snooze-fantastic-four-review/
  
Fantastic Four (2015)
Fantastic Four (2015)
2015 | Action
If you hold the film rights to an iconic and beloved comic book series, one would think you would do everything possible to see that it flourishes under you watch. For 29th Century Fox, The Fantastic Four is an asset that should be a gem of their studio as the long-running Marvel comic series has had legions of fans for generations.

The previous two films did well enough but still had their detractors amongst the fans. So, Fox opted for a hiatus and then a radical reboot of the series complete with casting choices that were considered very questionable.

The new version features Miles Teller as Reed Richards, a young man obsessed with teleportation to the point that his teachers and other students laugh at him for his odd and obsessive ways.

His only friend is Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), who despite a lack of scientific knowledge supports Reed in his efforts which eventually allow him to be recruited by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey), who discloses that he is working on a large scale teleportation device and seeing how Reed pulled it off with a device he made in his garage, is eager to see what he can do at a fully-funded facility.

Reed meets Franklins adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara), as well as his son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), while they work with the mercurial Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), to complete the device.

When the team finds success, they are horrified to learn that the government plans to take over control of the project so Ben, Victor, Johnny, and Reed opt to use it themselves to visit the other dimension in order to leave their mark in history.

Things at first go well but when a mysterious force envelops them, odd things start to happen when they return home. Reed is capable of stretching himself, Johnny is a living fire, Ben is covered in rocks, and Sue is phasing in and out.

Flashing forward the group is under the watch of the government and Reed has fled not wanting to be a part of whatever is going on. Ben is used for special operations and blames Reed for abandoning them as Sue and Johnny are prepped for the field.

Now one would think a setup like this has some potential at the very least for some action and great FX. Sadly the film lurches ahead fairly light on action. The threat to the film appears, and within 10 minutes has moved to a fairly underwhelming final conflict that is so obviously done in front of a Green Screen that it loses much of the intended impact.

The best I can say for the film is that it is a forgettable and flawed film that tries to launch a new franchise in a new way. But the casting choices in the film are so wrong, that it undermines it at every step. Setting aside the debate over an African American Johnny Storm, Miles Teller is so bland; he just does not scream leading man or driving force behind the team.

The same can be said for pretty much the entire cast. The backstories hint at various things but their actions conflict several aspects of the film which to be honest are fairly forgettable.

The entire movie is like watching a Jr. College Fan Film where the cast has a Green Screen and studio funding, but not a clue on how to carry out a story, modern action sequences of character development.

Fox needs to take a serious page from Sony and work with Marvel if they are going to continue this franchise, or return the rights to Marvel so fans can finally get a film that does justice to the source material.

I am glad that Director Josh Trank is no longer associated with the pending Star Wars film as this movie is a train wreck that spits all over the history and legacy of the source material.

http://sknr.net/2015/08/07/the-fantastic-four/