Once Upon a Twilight!: Movie Review: 20th Century Fox's Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four

Release: August 7, 2015
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Josh Trank
Screenplay: Jeremy Slater and Simon Kinberg & Josh Trank, based on the Marvel Comic Book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Producers: Simon Kinberg, Matthew Vaughn, Hutch Parker, Robert Kulzer, Gregory Goodman
Cast: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson

Genres: Action-adventure

FANTASTIC FOUR, a contemporary re-imagining of Marvel’s original and longest-running superhero team, centers on four young outsiders who teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe, which alters their physical form in shocking ways. Their lives irrevocably upended, the team must learn to harness their daunting new abilities and work together to save Earth from a former friend turned enemy.

20th Century Fox has re-imagined the Fantastic Four Marvel characters in a new film. I am a fan of the 2005 version and its sequel, so I went in believing this would be the case again. I will say I didn't hate it, since hate is such a strong word but did I get blown away, no. Honestly I think that the whole premise just didn't connect with its characters and with us the audience. The movie felt like it was pieced together and the timing was very slow for the majority of the film.

In this Fantastic Four, the famous comic book characters are teenagers/young adults that are recruited to work together and complete a teleport machine. Which they are able to and then discover the machine actually traveled to a planet of unknown origins. The whole beginning and part of the middle of the film revolves around that mainly. This is one of my issues, I feel they focused to long on the pre-teleport building/back story and then the rest was rushed and choppy. So moving on after testing a chimp, they are told NASA will take over the machine and that's when Reed Richards, Johnny Storm and Victor Von Doom decided they are not letting anyone else take the credit over what they build. So they call Reed's old friend Ben Grimm, to join them in using the machine while everyone is asleep, they claim it will only be a few minutes and no one will find out.

This is when the movie begins to finally pick up some pace and elements of what I loved from the 2005 film show themselves. They arrive at this planet and instead of heading back right away, the scientists they are they decided to explore and that's when things go very wrong. The matter from that planet is interrupted that flows on the ground and Victor falls into this green substance and is left behind as the rest of the guys jump back in the machine and Sue Storm helps bring them back but not before they are all affected by this planet in some way, even Sue when the machine arrives back at the lab.

Now begins the next chapter of this movie, time passes and the military have been using Sue, Johnny and Ben as weapons and they need to find Reed, that escaped and has been hiding so they can travel back to the planet they are now calling Zero. Reed wants to find a cure for what happen to them but the military wants to harness the power that planet has. So finally Reed finishes the new machine and they travel back to planet Zero and guess who they run into a year later, Victor. They are shocked that he has survived and then realize Victor is not the same Victor anymore. Victor is now Doom and attacks the base when they bring him back, killing many including Sue and Johnny's dad. They now follow Doom back to planet Zero where he begins to suck our plant into planet Zero's atmosphere, with the plan to kill our planet. And well the Fantastic Four battle Doom until they can defeat him and that's pretty much how it ended, no fanfare, no whistles just 'The End'. It was a very weak ending, which I think they left possibly like that to create more movies.

I want to say go out and see this film this weekend, but I just can't mislead anyone. So my recommendations are wait for it to hit Redbox. I really wanted to be blown away but this film just didn't cut it. I think this is the first Marvel characters movie that I did not enjoy like the rest. We are huge Marvel character fans in my household and my boys were bored by this film also. It's funny to think that we thought Antman was the movie that would fall short and it didn't, we actually enjoyed it very much and this film that I had positive hopes for was the one that actually did not entertain us.