Fantastic Four (2015)

FANTASTIC FOUR

** SPOILERS **

Fantastic Four is a Negative Zone, dropping dead on arrival on movie screens. Directed by Josh Trank, who has since become estranged from 20th Century FOX and disavowed the theatrical cut, Fantastic Four is a dour monster movie about supposedly smart teenagers doing something really stupid and causing havoc to themselves and to others. The ostensible hero of Fantastic Four is the brilliant Reed Richards (Miles Teller), whom we meet as a ten year old boy genius misunderstood by his parents and outwardly despised by his teacher (Dan Castellanetta, who, like Mr. Feeney on Boy Meets World, is somehow still Richards' teacher 7 years later). Richards' greatest invention is an inter-dimensional teleporation device. Reed created a functioning one in his parents' garage when he was 10. Seven years later, he's still perfecting that exact same device and somehow believes the proper showcase for such a potentially world-altering invention is a high school science fair. 

At that very science fair, Richards is recruited by the cast of House of Cards - Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg. E. Cathey) and his adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara) - to join the Baxter Foundation, some sort of think tank in New York City that has a virtually identical device as Reed created, but lacking the ability to bring organic matter back from the other dimension (creatively dubbed "Planet Zero"). Franklin Storm has a bunch of crazy ideas about Planet Zero possessing the answers to the mysteries of the universe and questions about the origins of our own world, as if current science already hasn't sussed much of that out. Planet Zero is a gruesome, post-apocalyptic wasteland of craggy cliffs, nightmarish lightning skies, and yeah, let's go there, that place looks awesome. Franklin Storm pairs Richards and Sue (whose special science talent is pattern recognition) with the guy who created Baxter's teleportion machine, Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), a moody, angry, pouty genius whose speeches about the world deserving to die raised red flags that got him kicked out of Baxter, but Dr. Storm brings him back anyway. Completing this fantastic foursome of science is Franklin Storm's biological son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), a fast and furious street racer who wiped out his whip and is doing his dad and sister's science-y stuff to get his ride back. 

The fantastic foursome of science get the inter-dimensional teleporter up and running, successfully sending a brave chimpanzee to Planet Zero and back. (Sue pointedly tells Reed at one point that one of her jobs is to design the environmental suits to be worn by the people going to Planet Zero to protect them, but they send the poor chimp over sans any protective wear.) When Tim Blake Nelson, one of Baxter's big wigs, witnesses the successful demonstration and decides to contact NASA so they can send qualified astronauts, Reed, Johnny, and Victor get drunk off a tiny flask of booze and decide they need to be the Neil Armstrongs of this brave new World Zero. Reed then recruits his loyal-to-a-fault best friend since childhood, Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), to join them on this fantastic voyage, and Grimm goes along unquestioningly. The sexist jerks left Sue at home, but she's naturally alerted to the teleporter machine suddenly going online, and when the inevitable disaster on Planet Zero occurs, Victor is seemingly killed and cascades of unexplained energy come through the dimensional rift, striking Reed, Johnny, Ben, and Sue and transforming them in different, ghastly ways.

We know how this turns out: Reed can stretch, Sue can turn invisible and project force fields, Johnny can burst into flame and fly, and Ben is bombarded by alien rocks and turned into a giant orange rock monster. Now under the supervision of the US Government, Reed runs away from the secret facility they're held in, while the other three find themselves in service to the military. Ben in particular becomes a valuable operative in the field, and Johnny is next up to join him, finding their abilities weaponized. A year later, Sue locates Reed living on the run in South America, trying to scrounge the materials to build yet another teleportation device. Super genius Reed Richards only knows how to invent one thing. Reed is reacquired to join his fantastic friends, just in time to watch a military team teleport to Planet Zero and meet... Dr. Doom, who somehow survived, encased in his containment suit, sporting vaguely defined psychokinetic powers, and has become completely insane. Hey Victor, how was Planet Zero? What'd you do for that year? Oh, it doesn't matter. Victor's plan is to open a wormhole that will suck Earth into Planet Zero and destroy it. Then Victor will be the only one left, and yeah. That sounds pretty great. So the Fantastic Four combine their fantastic powers and stop him and that's that. Bizarrely, Fantastic Four ends almost identically to Avengers: Age of Ultron, with the newly minted team looking over their new headquarters and the screen cutting to black before Reed can say their new team name out loud.

Fantastic Four is a drab, lurching bore. Taking place mostly in laboratories, cramped hallways, somber, dimly-lit rooms, with the occasional field trip to a horrible alternate world of death, Fantastic Four lacks any of the joie-de-vivre of Marvel's superhero movies or even the sly wit and self-awareness of  studio-mate FOX's X-Men franchise. As Reed Richards, our leading man, Teller has all the charisma of inert Flubber. Chemistry between Teller, Mara, Jordan, and Bell is sorely lacking, be it in their interpersonal relationships (Mara and Teller, destined to be married in comic book lore, ignite as many sparks as a mouth full of Pop Rocks) or as a collective unit. As brother and sister, Mara and Jordan barely even look at each other, much less project any familial bond. Also, Mara's Sue Storm was born in Kosovo, for reasons the movie has no idea what to do with. The storied rivalry between Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom is practically nonexistent; just a quick scene of jealousy over Reed flirting with Sue and a quickie exchange over who's "smarter." The pathos of Ben Grimm, transformed into the monstrous Thing, is reduced to him moping in a dark cell in between going on black ops where he gets to smash enemy tanks. More than half the movie expires before the Fantastic Four actually gain their powers, but as per usual with this franchise, Fantastic Four drops the ball once again in imagination, rushing into the final confrontation with Dr. Doom and resolving it with uninspired action and minimal drama. As for hoping Fantastic Four ignites a reinvigorated franchise for FOX, pffft. This reboot of Fantastic Four is one and done. Back to the old drawing board. 

Hey @20thcenturyfox, just sell the #FantasticFour rights back to @Marvel. Let THEM make it. Stop embarrassing yourselves, for God's sake.

— John Orquiola (@BackoftheHead) August 7, 2015

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (**)

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is not worse than the original Fantastic Four movie. The bar was set so low that it would have been a supervillainous feat for Rise of the Silver Surfer to have sucked more than its predecessor, which incidentally I'm watching on Starz HD as I write this. To Rise's credit, it lacks the truly profound stupidity that Fantastic Four had, which I wrote about in detail in my review. But to be definitively clear: Rise may not be quite the stinky turd the original is but it still really blows. 

Rise does have a better story than the original, which ain't hard since the original had no story. The Silver Surfer has come to Earth to prepare it for consumption by Galactus. Reed Richards and Sue Storm plan to marry and the sudden global threat inconveniently disrupts their nuptials. Meanwhile, the Surfer's presence inadvertantly resurrects Dr. Doom. The Fantastic Four fail to capture or glean any answers about the Surfer and reluctantly team up with Doom, who has his own agenda. The Fantastic Four are able to capture the Surfer, who forms a friendship with Sue Storm. Doom betrays everyone and takes the Surfer's power source, his surfboard, for himself as Galactus arrives to destroy the planet. The Fantastic Four help the Surfer regain his surfboard so he can confront Galactus and save the Earth. That story sounds like it could be pretty good, but of course, they managed to louse it all up. 

Rise of the Silver Surfer is an 89 minute(!) a slapdash rushjob of a superhero movie. It's in a hurry for a reason; if the audience has questions it wants answered about anything they're seeing, the movie has no answers, it just wants to get you out of there as quickly as possible. (However, one very pertinent question actually is brought up by the Human Torch to the Thing: How do he and his blind girlfriend... you know... get fantastic? The Thing's answer: "None of your business!" Typical.)

The comic book pseudo-science is again laughable. Mr. Fantastic actually boasts that he is "one of the greatest minds of the 21st century" but he's again written like a dumbass. Concepts like "tachyon pulse", "rearranging molecules" and "converting matter into energy" are bandied about and not for one minute is it believable that any of the characters, much less the filmmakers, have any idea what they're talking about.

The movie is maddeningly unwilling to linger on even its most intriguing elements, like Galactus. The coming of Galactus had such potential. No, Galactus is not a fifty foot man wearing a big purple helmet. Frankly, I wish we saw that version of Galactus on the big screen. Sure, it would be kind of stupid but these movies are already stupid so what would they have had to lose? Instead Galactus is presented as a cosmic tornado, the kind of space menace the Starship Enterprise has tackled more than once. Galactus turned out to be nice visual, but that's all.

The concept for the movie's Galactus is basically brainless. Galactus has no personality, there is no reason stated for its existence. Nothing is ever explained: Why does Galactus want to consume Earth? Why not a different planet? Galactus is shown blowing right by Saturn on its way to Earth; why didn't it eat Saturn? Neither Reed Richards, the "greatest mind of the 21st century", nor Dr. Doom, scientists both, exhibit any curiosity about such a creature.

The entire plot hinges on the Silver Surfer deciding to turn on Galactus and save Earth from destruction. The Surfer comes to this fateful decision because Sue Storm was really nice to him, compared to all the other humans who shot missiles at him, drugged him up, and stole his surfboard. How the Surfer decides to fight Galactus was incredibly lame. The Surfer somehow not only beating but completely destroying Galactus in seconds was shitty. And that's it, everything's cool again. Earth is fine, all smiles, no worries.

The superhero action is substantially stepped up from the first movie but still fails to impress, especially when compared to the action bar being raised by Spider-Man 3 last month. The vaunted chase sequence between the Surfer and the Human Torch is the best action the movie has to offer but even that ends up rushed and dumbed down. For example, the Surfer defeats the Torch, takes him into orbit and throws him back towards Earth. How the Torch managed to breathe or even survive once he left the atmosphere is never dealt with. When the Torch falls, instead of showing us an epic plummet, which would have made the audience feel for the Torch possibly dying, the movie jump cuts to him suddenly flaming on and then bouncing onto the ground, fine and dandy. His survival is played for a joke.

Late in the movie, the Torch absorbs all of his teammates' powers to take on Dr. Doom, who stole the Surfer's board. What could have been an epic fight is over in a few moments. Two immensely powerful creatures are unleashing staggering amounts of power at each other and none of it has any impact on them or the audience. It doesn't mean anything. Doom is defeated and plummets into the sea. The FF and the movie totally forget about him.

One virtue of Rise of the Silver Surfer is that the scope of the story is truly global, with the Fantastic Four chasing the Silver Surfer and later Dr. Doom all around the world. But of course there is a lot of retarded shit in there as well, like how the U.S. Army seems to have jurisdiction in every country on Earth. When the Surfer attacks England, the U.S. Army and the Fantastic Four are on the scene but apparently, they couldn't be bothered to check in with the British government or military.

Late in the movie, the Fantastic Four free the Silver Surfer from captivity in a secret U.S. base in Siberia of all places. Doom had already stolen the Surfer's board and disappeared, so Mr. Fantastic summons the Fantasticar.** The Fantasticar is shown taking off from the Baxter Building in New York. Minutes later, the Fantasticar arrives in Siberia. How fucking fast is that thing to have traveled from New York to Siberia so quickly? Then the FF hops in the Fantasticar and zooms off after Doom high in the sky. Reed Richards is some genius to invent an open air supersonic flying vehicle that has no roof. How were Thing, Reed Richards and Sue Storm even breathing up in the rarified air? Hell, what good is the Fantasticar if it rains?

One of the most deplorable aspects of these Fantastic Four movies are that the filmmakers are under the misguided idea that these movies are comedies. Not good comedies either, but bottom feeding sitcoms. The opening scenes with the FF involve them hanging around an airport and being forced to fly coach on a commercial airliner. What a goldmine for "comedy": The Thing can't fit into a coach seat, Mr. Fantastic stretches to put his suitcase away in the overhead bin before another passenger can. Why were the FF flying commercial anyway? Where were they coming from? The movie doesn't know.

Later, exposure to the Surfer gives the Human Torch the ability to switch powers with his teammates. This becomes the jumping off point for a lot of really shitty comedy: Sue Storm accidentally flames on and burns all her clothes off, since it's now a runner of the Fantastic Four movies that the audience has to be teased with a naked Jessica Alba, which they will not deliver, especially since Rise is rated PG. The Torch and the Thing switch powers so Johnny Storm becomes an orange rock man and bitches about it. The Torch decides to throw Mr. Fantastic a bachelor party, and Mr. Fantastic uses his stretching powers hilariously to dance with some bimbos. (Just what we need in another Marvel movie - more dancing.) And wouldn't you know it, he gets busted by Sue. It's hilarious, I tells ya. The rest of the comedy comes from the endless bickering between the Fantastic Four, which grates on the nerves as the movie careens forward. The old Batman TV show in the 60's was famous for sound effects like "POW!" and "ZAP!" but for Rise of the Silver Surfer, all we hear is "THUD!", which is the sound all the "comedy" lands with.

Character development is again simplistic. The Fantastic Four were annoyingly incompetent superheroes throughout the entire movie. Reed Richards still doesn't come off as either the leader of the team or the "greatest mind of the 21st century." The high point of his team leadership is when he yells at the Torch and the Thing to shut up.

Johnny Storm is still an arrogant dolt but this time he's more aware of his screwups. His girlfriend is Vanessa Minillo in one scene and she's never mentioned again. He spends the rest of the movie hitting on sexy army lieutenant Beau Garrett, who shuts him down each time. Then in the very last scene of the movie, she's suddenly his girlfriend. Still, the Human Torch was given a whole lot to do compared to the Thing, who's really just a background player with no character arc to speak of.

Sue Storm starts off the movie wanting to marry Reed and live a normal life but she learns to embrace their lives as superhero world saviors. Something unexpected actually happens to her at the end that was a bit of a bold move, but the movie quickly reverses the outcome so that it ended up not mattering.

Meanwhile, Dr. Doom is back, and he still wants power, but once he has it, he has no new ideas or ambitions. He's as dumb as ever. The movie Dr. Doom is no mastermind. He's never one step ahead, just two steps to the side.

The Silver Surfer turns out to be a monosyllabic disappointment. The Surfer has minimal screen time, plodding bits of dialogue and doesn't make much of an impact. The Surfer did not come off as interesting enough to deserve his own spinoff movie. It was a truly difficult challenge to create a computer generated character that has to undergo a complex philosophical, empathic change and the effects team wasn't up to it. What really sucks is that the Fantastic Four end up on the sidelines as the Surfer takes on Galactus, reduced to gaping up at the sky wondering what the hell was going on. Some heroes the FF are. They rely entirely on the guest star to save the world for them. That's good writing, geniuses.

Despite all the crapocity, I actually have two favorite moments in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The runner up is when the Fantastic Four are traveling in an Army helicopter to London to try to stop the Surfer. The Four bicker endlessly like a bunch of six year olds until the general played by Andre Braugher finally has enough and yells at them to shut up! Thank you, general.

My favorite moment comes when Andre Braugher, who's sick of the Fantastic Four's incompetence, brings in a ringer, the resurrected Victor Von Doom. As the Fantastic Four gawk at the enemy they assumed was dead who they now have to work with once more, Doom stared them all down and said:

Dr. Doom: "Let's get one thing straight. I hate you. All of you."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

** Sean writes: "Stupid question: If the Fantastic Four have a supersonic jet of their own, why would they be flying anywhere coach?  Was the Fantasticar useless that day because it was raining?"

At the beginning of the movie, they didn't have the Fantasticar.  It was because of their frustrating experience with the airline that Reed decides they need a flying vehicle of their own.  The very next scene , the Fantasticar is nearly complete even though only hours or at most a day had passed since the airline scene.  Conceivably, the Fantasticar had been under construction prior to that, but it's purposely kept under wraps until the pivotal moment of its reveal, which was to bail the FF out of a jam in Siberia. I should point out that Sue, Ben and Johnny had never seen the Fantasticar as Reed kept it as a surprise from them.  But when the Fantasticar is split into separate components, Ben and Sue magically know not only how to pilot them, but to pilot them in battle against Dr. Doom. (Johnny was flamed on and flying on his own.) They're the quickest studies when it comes to wonderful toys since Alicia Silverstone's Batgirl.

There are no stupid questions, just stupid movies.

Fantastic Four (*1/2)

FANTASTIC FOUR

Fantastic Four is like a bunch of six year olds trying to cook themselves breakfast. They have the basic idea of what they want to do, their hearts are in the right place, but they don’t have the skills to do it right, they make a big fucking mess, and the breakfast ends up looking and tasting like shit. Fortunately they manage not to start a fire and burn the whole house down.

Sometime during the interminable middle act of Fantastic Four, Susan Storm/The Invisible Girl/Woman/Jessica Alba scolds her hotheaded younger brother Johnny Storm/The Human Torch/Chris Evans.

Sue Storm: What's wrong with you? Why don’t you think?!

Great take. Cut and print that. Now, Jessica, do me a favor: why don’t you turn around and with the same tone of disappointment, say that exact line to your director Tim Story, your writers, your producers and whoever else makes the decisions around here.

Scene after scene until the movie grinds to a halt there is constant, illogical bone headedness. Take the first major action set piece in the movie… Wait, before I can get to that, I have to mention this: All right, so Ben Grimm/Michael Chiklis is transformed into The Thing and escapes the quarantine the Fantastic Four and Victor Von Doom/(Dr.) Doom/Julian McMahon were placed in after their whatever-they-were-doing in space went wrong ---

Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic/Ioan Gruffudd: We were trying to help mankind’s DNA by studying a magnetic cloud in space that accelerated, bombarded us with cosmic rays and fundamentally altered our DNA.

I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about and neither do you. And I’m not the one who claims to be a genetic scientist so what’s Reed’s excuse? Jesus, where was I? Right, the Thing.

The Thing escaped the quarantine lab in the middle of the night and ran through the woods of wherever the lab is. He’s heading home to Yancy Street in New York City to see his wife. Whereever the lab surrounded by forest is, it’s easy enough distance for the Thing to make it into Manhattan without anyone noticing him; he makes it home before his wife has gone to bed. The Thing calls her from a payphone after some goofy comedy about how his orange rock fingers are too big to press the buttons on the payphone. He tells her to come outside.

Despite the fact that her husband was in outer space, was in an accident, has been quarantined for days and this is the first she’s heard from him, the fact that he happens to suddenly be outside, his voice is gravely, and he wants her to mysteriously go outside in the middle of the night when he could just come through the door of his own apartment doesn’t concern her in the least. Instead, she says she has “a surprise” for him and then runs out the door of their apartment in the middle of the night, onto a New York City street, in her negligee. What kind of idiot does that? Then she sees that her husband has turned into an orange rock man, screams and runs off.

The next day, the Thing is sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge feeling sorry for himself. At that exact spot, in that exact moment, someone shows up next to him planning on committing suicide. He freaks out when he sees the Thing, falls into traffic and the Thing heroically rams a semi-truck to stop it from colliding into the man. A neat little comic book moment.

Okay, but then, coincidentally, at that exact moment, the rest of the Fantastic Four happen to be on the Brooklyn Bridge looking for the Thing. By the time they get out of their car (not the Fantasticar), a traffic jam has piled up on the Bridge and there are dozens of gawkers separating the FF from the Thing. Reed Richards, who is supposed to be a genius, tells Susan Storm that she’s the only one who can get them to the Thing. Huh? Howzat? Reed can stretch and the Human Torch can fly so they could reach the Thing a lot easier than the Invisible Girl/Woman can. But okay, at this point the FF don’t want to attract attention (even though that’s exactly what they’ll get anyway once they reach the Thing. If we’re thinking.)

Reed, the genius’s plan: “Sue get naked and turn invisible, then get us past all these people.” Okay, naked Jessica Alba jostling past people, invisible or not, is a pretty hot idea. Despite the fact that there are people all around the FF, behind and beside them as well as in front, Sue Storm complies, turns invisible and strips off all her clothes right there in front of everyone. So much for not attracting attention.. But she can’t control her powers yet, turns visible again and then yells at Reed. Then she tries it again and somehow gets past some of the people blocking the way, but by the time she reaches the Thing, the cops have agitated him and the Thing goes berserk, knocking a fire truck halfway over the bridge. The Fantastic Four make their move and get in the middle of the action, so all that stuff about Sue needing to get naked and invisible didn’t need to happen since the crowd parted for the FF anyway. The only reason to even do any of that is to tease Jessica Alba getting naked, which they can’t deliver and have no intention of delivering.

The Thing pulls the fire truck back onto the bridge, Mr. Fantastic stretches and saves a falling fireman. More nice comic book moments. The crowd applauds them and hails them as heroes for saving the fire fighters. Apparently no one stopped to think that none of this would have happened if the Thing didn’t ram a semi-truck, then go berserk and almost send a fire truck flying off the bridge.

The clincher is the Thing’s wife suddenly appears through the same crowd the Fantastic Four couldn’t get through five minutes ago. She sees the Thing in broad daylight, takes off her wedding ring, leaves it on the ground and runs off. The Thing’s enormous fingers can’t pick the ring up (a runner they beat to death – he can’t pick up tiny objects or hold a glass without smashing it) and it’s supposed to be sad. The wife is never seen or mentioned again. That’s it? The wife leaves the ring on the ground and then it’s over? No divorce papers to sign, no lawyers. Who keeps the apartment? The money in the joint back account? And happened to the guy who tried to commit suicide, the catalyst for the entire sequence to even happen? Is he grateful? Frightened? Angry? Under arrest? I dunno. He just disappeared.

The entire movie is like this, ideas set up and not followed through, half-assed characters, no logic, no story. That last thing didn’t really hit me until about half way through the movie – there is nothing going on. This movie has no spine. Ostensibly, Reed is building a machine in his lab atop the Baxter Building to recreate the accident in space so he can return everyone to normal out of guilt for what happened to Ben. For this, cue the music from South Park – we need a montage! A genetic research montage!

Meanwhile Victor Von Doom is discovering he’s slowly turning metallic and can absorb and conduct electricity. He is completely oblivious to the fact that for a billionaire who runs a multi-national conglomerate, he doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t go to meetings, make telephone calls, host a reality show or anything famous high-powered billionaire businessmen do. He just sits around frowning and gets more metallic.

Unfortunately for Von Doom, his board of directors noticed he doesn’t do anything and they take his company away from him. They apparently never watched Spider-Man, but Von Doom has so he does what Green Goblin did and kills his board members, only Doom does it in a parking lot and not in the middle of Times Square while Macy Gray is performing. After that, Doom decides he wants to kill the Fantastic Four. How does killing them help him? It doesn’t really, but it couldn’t hurt.

Doom decides the best way to go about this is to somehow off screen plant cameras all around the FF’s headquarters so he can watch them on TV. (He doesn’t seem to put a camera in the only place I would: Sue Storm’s bedroom and shower. Who gives a shit what the Thing is doing?) Doom then sits around his headquarters and watches his hated arch-enemies on his TV screens, which takes on the same basic tone as when The Simpsons had satellite TV installed and Homer could watch Bart and Lisa at Springfield Elementary.

Homer: (gasps) Bart and Lisa in the same grade?! (changes channel – gasps) An old army buddy is visiting Mannix?!

It’s just non-stop, how retarded this stuff is. Early in the movie, Johnny Storm breaks quarantine and gets his hot nurse Maria Menounos to go skiing with him. (This quarantine lab is located next to mountains and forests and is within running distance from Manhattan.) While skiing, Johnny bursts into flame, flies for a moment and crashes into the snow, his heat burning off his clothes and melting the ice around him so that he’s sitting naked in a wading pool, bewildered at what just happened. Maria Menounos shows up. He’s horny and invites her into the pool.

It’s suggested she consented and had sex with him because he shows up at the lab later completely naked with only her ski jacket wrapped around his crotch. What kind of a woman, a medical nurse no less, watches her patient suddenly burst into flame and then immediately consents to have sex with him? She’s not at all alarmed or frightened that he might burst into flame again, God forbid while they’re fucking, and he’ll burn her to death? Apparently not. And maybe the Human Torch did kill her and buried her body in the snow – he has her jacket and she’s never, ever seen or mentioned again. Fucking stupid.

Now, it’s not all bad. I liked the swaggering Johnny Storm character and his desire to use his powers to impress women and make money. The Thing came off effectively on screen and they competently touched on his pathos at being turned into a monster. The display of the Fantastic Four’s powers were done pretty well, especially Mr. Fantastic’s fighting style when he stretches, fully utilizing the variables of his powers. I liked when the Thing went berserk (for the 14th time) and Mr. Fantastic stretched around him to subdue him, placing the Thing in the Masterlock. (The Thing failed the Masterlock Challenge.) There were fleeting moments that worked, mostly involving the practical jokes the Human Torch played on the Thing, the physical confrontations between the two, and Sue mediating them.

There is a point in the third act when the Fantastic Four come together to face off against Dr. Doom and my pulse quickened somewhat in anticipation of the big showdown we sat through this entire movie to see. But instead of a knockdown, drag-out fight with the fate of the world at stake, it’s over in a couple of minutes with not a scratch on any of the heroes, and the fight wasn't really about anything.

Those are the good parts, the stuff I liked. Then there’s all the other the bad stuff:

The lack of chemistry between Jessica Alba and Ioan Gruffudd. They’re not believable together as lovers, or even as acquaintances who chat when they run into each other at the bus stop.

The lack of genuine tension in the rivalry turned hatred between Reed Richards and Dr. Doom.

The blind black girl who sometimes forgets to act blind that gets crammed into the story as the Thing’s love interest, which begs all sorts of explanations that are never given.

The fact that three out of the five characters (Reed, Sue, and Doom) are introduced in the first scene as brilliant genetic scientists and not one of them acts like it, speaks like it, or is convincing in any way shape or form. What is it about Marvel when they make their movies that they refuse to hire technical consultants? The Fantastic Four writers know as much about genetic science (even fake comic book genetic science) as Daredevil writer-director Mark Steven Johnson knows about how a trial works.

All of the terrible sitcom dialogue and situations slapped together instead of real character moments that could deepen who these people are and what they feel about what’s happened to them beyond what’s superficial.

The wildly inconsistent tone of the movie, which is also reflected by the wildly inconsistent soundtrack, veering from lousy pop rock to a lousy score to soul music(!) with no rhyme or reason. 

Stan Lee, who makes his most obnoxious cameo in a Marvel movie yet.

This material has potential and Fantastic Four should have been a lot better than it turned out. The movie isn’t as terrible as the worst of its critics are suggesting. Fantastic Four is not worthless, but it’s not good, either. At its best, it’s pleasant. Every now and then it hits a funny or exciting note, but not nearly often enough. Most of all, it’s just really dumb and a waste of the material. You can see a better movie in the corners of this one, and it wouldn’t have been so hard to make it with just a few minor changes: Rewrite it, reshoot it, and hire a better director.

The first time Reed stretches his video game quality CGI arm under a doorway, a very dumb girl two seats from me who talked through the entire movie complained, “Ew, that’s nasty.” Seconds later, Johnny Storm delivers the punchline to Reed’s feat: “That’s gross.” Big laugh, especially from the dumb girl who was proud of herself because she broke the joke first. Congratulations, Tim Story, you’ve directed the movie to the remedial level of audience comprehension. Care to try for the next level up or even higher, for those of us watching who aren’t complete morons? No, you didn’t. What a fucking shame.

To bring all this to full circle, the scene I referenced at the start where Sue scolds Johnny comes about because he has disobeyed the team’s instructions to remain out of the public eye. Instead he has turned himself into a teen idol, soaking up the fame and the adoration of hot women. Sue tells him that he’s just a fad to them, but he scoffs, “These people love me!”

In a better movie, or even a sitcom like The Brady Bunch or Growing Pains, Johnny would then learn that he is just an amusing sideshow to the masses and the people that truly care about him are his invisible sister, the elastic guy who’s in love with his sister, and that orange rock man, no relation. Fantastic Four failed to even follow up on that subplot. It gets dropped entirely. If the filmmakers are expecting to pick that story thread up in a sequel, they just might be the most deluded of true believers.