Movie Monday: Fantastic Four (Spoilers)

Fade in: House Party

Ayen: Throws up on his shoes

Ralph: You need to learn to hold down your liquor, dude.

Ayen: I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm going to be o– Throws up again

Zira: Gulps down a keg

Elliot/Jason: Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!

Zira: Finishes and raises arms in victory

Elliot/Jason: Celebrates with her

Ayen: Guys, guys! I have a great idea! We should use that highly advanced transporter we've been working so hard on and be the first to go to a different dimension!

The others look at Ayen blankly.

Ralph: Ayen, you're drunk.

Ayen: No, no, guys. It's a great idea. We can go and be back before they even know we're gone, even though they have hundreds of people monitoring the machine in all hours of the days and night.

The Others: … Okay!

Ten Minutes Later

Ayen: Electricity flows through his body

Zira: Is floating in the air

Elliot: In an armor suit with a gas mask for some reason

Ralph: Skin camouflages with the room

Jason: Is made out of green slime

Ayen: I can't believe we did that.

Ralph: I can't believe you stuck your hand in the slime.

Jason: Fuck off!

Zira: I didn't do anything. I was just standing back minding my own business and I got blindsided!

Elliot: I'm going to become a supervillain. Leaves

Jason: I'M COVERED IN SLIME!

Zira: Can we just agree that this is all Ayen's fault?

Ralph: What, he dragged us to the alternative dimension at gunpoint?

The three starts to argue.

Ayen: QUIET!

The three shuts up.

Ayen: I take full responsibility for what happened. I fucked up. We'll find a way to fix this, but in the meantime let's all agree to use these powers responsibly, and for the love of God don't let Fox make a movie about it!

I'm not even kidding, the entire origin story can be summed up in, “A bunch of kids got drunk and thought it'd be hilarious to visit another universe.” I don't claim to know a great deal about the characters, but I'm pretty sure the reasoning behind getting their powers weren't motivated by such blatant stupidity! Much like a bandage, the best thing to do is rip it off quickly. This is the Fantastic Four!

  Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!

Let's start things off with Reed Richards, otherwise known as Mr. Fantastic. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, wasn't Mr. Fantastic older? Well, in this movie they decided for whatever reason to make everyone a teenager. Because... we didn't have enough teenagers watching superhero movies?

Reed is portrayed as a child prodigy and how do people respond to his genius? They just don't understand it. Yeah, he builds a transporter in his garage with car parts, and displays the perfected model at a science show and it gets written off as magic. What? Do they live in Tennessee?

But eventually somebody DOES recognize his talents and puts him in charge of a top secret inter-dimensional travel project to Planet Zero (do you think they stayed up all night working on that name?) where eventually he gets drunk with his colleagues, calls up his best friend, and transports themselves without adult supervision, and things go horribly, horribly wrong. The greatest scientific minds of our generation, folks!

He later disappeared for a year after they all get their powers until found out by Susan and brought in by the Thing. What was he doing that whole time? Twiddling his thumbs. Don't bother to come up with a plan to save your friends, or anything.

I wanted to like him, and for a while I did, but he develops into such an unlikeable character that it diminishes all the good scenes he does have. This is the leader of the Fantastic Four. The main guy you're supposed to like, and he's a dick. We're getting off to a mighty fine start here, aren't we?

  Music is all about patterns, and anticipating the patterns, and then we can see the patterns in people that makes them predictable – do I sound sciency yet?

Susan Storm is the adoptive (yeah, I'm groaning, too) daughter of Franklin Storm, destined to become the Invisible Woman. At the risk of throwing up in my mouth, I do have to give the film some credit, Kate Mara fits the part fairly well and does good with what little she has to work with. They aren't cranking up her sex appeal or just using her invisibly as an excuse to take her clothes off.

With the obvious exception of the Thing, I think Susan has more reason to be angry than anybody. She didn't even go on the expedition, but still ends up paying the consequences of their dumb choice because she tried to help them and got caught in the collateral. Add feeling abandoned by Reed and I at least expected her to slap him when she saw him again. An okay character when she isn't trying to ruin music for people.

  I shouldn't have signed on for this movie.

Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. He's actually passable. Yeah, yeah, he's played by a black guy. I don't care. They changed the races of so many characters in the past that I just don't care anymore. Michael B. Jordan (that's a fortunate name) plays a good Johnny. I also like the fact that they display a mixed race family on screen and never draws any special attention to it. It's not acknowledged, nor does anyone go, “How can you be related?” The film carries on like it's a normal family, and that's one of the few things they actually got right!

They portray him as being super intelligent when it comes to cars and the likes, and he ends up coming across as less stupid than the others who go on the expedition since it makes sense to his character that he would be reckless. It makes no sense for the other characters to act that way, but I digress. Johnny is the first one in the group to believe they should use these powers to help people, so points there. He's a little too trustworthy of the people who are using him, but his heart is in the right place. Johnny Storm is the least of this movie's worries.

 Sigh.

You know, say what you will about the Thing in the last movies, at least he was there. This one is so obviously CGI it's takes you completely out of the moment. At least I could forget the raptors in Jurassic World were CGI. That isn't the case here.

The Thing's real name is Ben Grimm who is seen working at a junkyard as a kid and comes from an abusive home that we'll never see mentioned again, and becomes childhood friends with Reed Richards being witness to the earlier developments of Reed's transporter and assists him with his research into high school. Naturally, Reed wants him to come with them on the expedition and he gets hit by a bunch of rocks turning him into the Thing. Yeah, getting hit by rocks turn him into the Thing. Real creative, movie.

Also, his infamous “It's clobberin' time!” line is from his brother who beats on him. Why? Why would he use it? Wouldn't he resent the line and his brother and not want any memories of his past? It ruins the whole quote, and that's the Thing signature catchphrase. You ruined his best line, movie, I hope you're proud of yourself.

  This movie IS DOOMED!

Victor von Doom is credited with the original design of the transporter and is brought in to help finish it. He also doesn't like what human do to the planet. Yeah, one of those messages, again. His entire motivations boil down to “Eco-terrorism.” What the fuck? He wanted to CONQUER the world to save it from itself, NOT DESTROY IT!

To make matters worse (or better, depending on your view) while Victor gets plenty of screen time, Dr. Doom barely gets any. I think he's in the movie for fifteen minutes? Maybe less? They retrieve him from Planet Zero, he breaks free, and kills a bunch of characters you don't care about, and frankly may want to see dead so you're rooting for him. You know you're doing something wrong when you're rooting for the BAD GUY in a SUPERHERO MOVIE!

They also make Dr. Doom fucking stupid. He has this ability to basically kill people instantly with the power of his mind, but does he ever think to use any of that against the Fantastic Four? Nope! Can't use it on the Fantastic Four, they have plot armor. I have a migraine. This movie is giving me A FUCKING MIGRAINE!

  We're just in time for the light show. Think you can put some pants on, big guy?

The special effects aren't bad, when they actually get to the action scenes for you to see them. I like the way they do Mr. Fantastic's stretching, Invisible Woman's invisibility and barriers, and Human Torch's fire. That final big battle against Doom might have been enjoyable if not for the fact it should have been over in a second! I can already see the “How it should have ended” version of this movie playing out. Doom kills them all and destroys the planet.

So they defeat Doom, get the government to agree to leave them alone, and form the Fantastic Four. The End! What more can you say about this movie? Usually when everyone is shitting on something I'm led to believe it isn't THAT bad, but in this case the movie deserved every piece of bad press it's received since release, and the fact that news is coming out that the director was a dick who created a hostile work environment only further proves that this project was doomed to fail from the beginning. Do yourself a favor, and see Ant-Man instead.

Skip it

Special thanks to my friends Elliot, Jason, Ralph, and Zira for letting me use their likeness in this review.