Starring: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Keller, and Reg E. Cathey
Directed by: Josh Trank
Release date: August 7, 2015
Well once again Hollywood has dropped the ball on The Fantastic Four franchise. It’s an extreme disappointment when Hollywood and the people at Marvel made such hits as Ant Man, Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men only to lower themselves to produce something of such low entertainment value. The movie, which was supposed to be a summer blockbuster, failed at the box office miserably. It cost $175,000,000 to make and in the month since its release its only been able to muster a dismal $133,463,098 worldwide.
The movie begins with a young Reed Richards (Owen Judge) explaining in class how he has made a machine that can teleport objects to different dimensions. His teacher, Mr. Kenny (Dan Castellaneta), dismisses his claims and asks him to sit down. To prove that his machine can work, Reed breaks into a junk yard later on that night to steal a piece of machinery that he needs to make his teleporter work. There he meets Ben Grimm (Evan Hannemann) who helps him build the machine. The two become instant friends.
The movie then jumps into the future when Reed (now played by Miles Teller) and Ben Grimm (now played by Jamie Bell) are contestants in a science fair. While there they meet Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and Susan Storm (Kate Mara). Dr. Storm offers Reed a scholarship at his institute to come help him finish building the teleporter that can travel to other dimensions. Reed graciously accepts his offer and moves into the Baxter Building and immediately begins working on the semantics of the machine. While Reed is busy working on the machine Dr. Storm recruits another genius to help him named Victor Von Doom (Toby Kobbell). Also introduced in the movie at this time is Dr. Storm’s son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan). Johnny is a free spirit, who cares about nothing but having fun until one faithful night he has a car crash and breaks his arm and Dr. Storm tells him that if he wants the car back that he crashed he has to come work for him to get it back.
Now that all of the pieces are in order the motley crew begin working together and forging an unbreakable bond. After Dr. Storm and his crew finish the project they send a monkey as a test subject to the dimensional planet. The experience goes off without a hitch and the project is a success. Once the individuals who funded the project find out that it was a success they want NASA and the military to get involved to use it as a plateau for world domination. Victor, Johnny, Reed and Ben after hearing this decide that they’re going to be the first ones on the new planet and make history. So the four make an unauthorized launch to the dimensional planet that didn’t go very well.
Once there the four go on an experimental journey on the strange new world but unbeknownst to them the planet is unstable and full of raw energy and once disturbed begins to explode. While the planet explodes the four attempt to leave but Victor gets caught in a volcanic eruption and is presumed dead. The other three are bombarded with cosmic energy as the shuttle escapes sudden death just in time. Waiting on Earth is Susan who is also bombarded with cosmic rays as the shuttle returns.
The entire crew is knocked unconscious but what’s waiting for them is unparalleled. Reed has developed the ability to stretch his entire body, Johnny has developed the ability to turn his body into a human torch, Sue can turn invisible and move objects with her mind and Ben has become a rock like ‘Thing’. Once the government finds out about their amazing powers they want to utilize them for their own benefit. After finding this out Reed escapes and stays under the radar for over a year but the other three are used for covert government missions.
Once Reed is found the government brings him back to the facility to help them build another teleporter to go back to the dimensional planet. Once built the government sends several operatives to the planet to retrieve samples from the strange planet but while there the operatives discover that Victor was not dead. They bring him back to Earth only to discover that Victor wants to destroy the Earth and claim the dimensional planet as his own.
Victor uses the new transporter to get back to the dimensional world but as he does it he sabotages it to make a worm hole aimed at Earth that will eventually destroy it. Sue, Johnny, Reed, and Ben realize that they’re the only ones that can stop Victor and combine their powers to do just that. The fight scene here is the most epic part of the film but it happened at the end which was disappointing.
To say this movie was terrible is an understatement. The expectations were so high and to get the hard dose of reality was a hard pill to swallow. There was no character development and the plot was subpar at best. If you’re a comic book fan you know that The Fantastic Four have more enemies than Dr. Doom. Why is it that in every Fantastic Four movie that Hollywood has attempted to make, he’s the only villain that they’ve fought. This film goes right up there with The Hulk and Howard the Duck as the worst superhero movies ever made. The Fantastic Four gets 2 stars out of 10 stars and that’s very generous.