



★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆





Fantastic Four – Marvel’s latest re-working of their classic comic book series – I entered the cinema truly wanting to be the dissident, the lone voice who found something of a gem within a troubled eventuality. Alas, my hopes were slowly but surely turned to ash as a laborious and suffocated production dragged itself across the screen. Quite possibly the worst thing a film can do to you is betray you. Now I know that sounds like hyperbole, but despite the large and varied prejudices aimed at– Marvel’s latest re-working of their classic comic book series – I entered the cinema truly wanting to be the dissident, the lone voice who found something of a gem within a troubled eventuality. Alas, my hopes were slowly but surely turned to ash as a laborious and suffocated production dragged itself across the screen.





The story will be somewhat familiar to anyone who knows the original comic, but for those who don’t: aspiring scientist Reed Richards (Miles Teller) creates a device capable of inter-dimensional travel and is hired by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey in permanent motivational speech mode) to help develop the machine for NASA. Richards and his companions Johnny Storm, Victor Von Doom and childhood friend Ben Grimm (Michael B. Jordan, Toby Kebbell and Jamie Bell respectively) take a journey to another dimension but are ravaged by cosmic radiation, as is Franklin’s daughter Sue (Kate Mara) when the capsule returns to Earth. Whilst Victor is left behind, the remaining four friends wrestle with strange and powerful new abilities.





Interstellar-like ‘shoot for the moon’ attitude, a hope that extraordinary discovery is just beyond the horizon. Weirdly, the second is a complete clash with this wide-eyed optimism, and appears when the group return from the alien world. Their new powers – far from wowing them or enthusing them to reach for new heights – hurt and traumatise our young heroes, presenting their mutations as a Croenenbergian body horror nightmare. The tiny spark of a good idea that I wanted to be much larger manifests itself here in two forms: for one, the opening thirty minutes is mostly character building; developing the dynamic between the young scientists and exuding an-like ‘shoot for the moon’ attitude, a hope that extraordinary discovery is just beyond the horizon. Weirdly, the second is a complete clash with this wide-eyed optimism, and appears when the group return from the alien world. Their new powers – far from wowing them or enthusing them to reach for new heights – hurt and traumatise our young heroes, presenting their mutations as a Croenenbergian body horror nightmare.





Sadly, the compromised nature of the film (supposed falling out between the director and the studio, extensive re-shoots, re-workings of the script to name but a few) means that any initial promise is cruelly snuffed out. This is surely a case of the ‘making of’ being a more interesting, exciting and funny final product than the joyless feature it produced.





While at least Teller and Jordan appear to be enjoying themselves, everyone else on screen slips into a stupor by the 40-minute mark, so the promised depth of character and narrative plods to a standstill. One can only imagine how/if the original second half might have saved the project, but for now we’re dealt a clear point where Trank’s film ends and the studio re-shoots begin. The final act is rushed forcibly into empty and unfulfilling action sequences with lumpen dialogue, a cliché villain and super-powers that are arbitrarily introduced when required for the plot and never properly explained.



