Fantastic Four (12A.)
Directed by Josh Trank.
Starring Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell and Tim Nelson Blake. 100 mins.
For most Hollywood film studios the immediate future is likely to be a giant Mickey Mouse foot stamping down on their windpipe, trying to choke the life out of them. With the acquisition of an annual supply of Star Wars movie to join Pixar and their own animations, and all the Marvel Cinematic Universe pictures, Disney is like a giant amorphous mass that is consuming everything in its path and is threatening to consume the whole movie making universe. Comic books, and comic book movies, have always taught us that such a giant force can only be stopped by a team of superheroes.
So Fox have unleashed one of the Marvel properties that they own to try and thwart Disney's relentless march. They've come up with a fresh and innovative new take on the classic superhero ensemble, The Fantastic Four. But they have neglected to make a movie to accompany the new concept. If Fantastic Four is a shipwreck of a movie, then it is the wreck of ghost ship because when you sift through the debris afterwards there is no sign of any crew or cargo. For the most part there is just an empty space where a film should be.
Two words that now strike fear into the blockbuster movie audience is Origins Tale. How people get their superpowers is rarely the strongest part of the narrative, and your heart sinks when you see Peter Parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider again or Krypton exploding. (Part of the reason the X-Men series is so popular is that they are all born that way.) Fantastic Four is all origins – it's like sitting through six hours of build up to the Cup Final and turning the telly off just as they’ve kicked off.
To be fair for half an hour or so, the film is intriguing. When Josh Trank was hired on the strength of his Blair Witch superhero film Chronicle* his ideas to give the team a completely new dark and realistic reinvention, and make them much younger, were greeted with absolute dismay and hatred by fans. But initially it is quite fun to see these established figures turned into kids and placed into a new environment; for a while there are definitely hopes that maybe this will ascend to the level of interesting misfire. But this pleasure only exists as long as there is an expectation that something is going to happen. By the time you are halfway into the film's brief running time and Absolutely Nothing has happened then your feelings begin to turn.
Instead of going up in a rocket and being mutated by cosmic rays, the team invent a dimensional portal and are mutated by their journey through to another dimension; a strange and terrible world where CGIs are at least 20 years behind this dimension and everything looks like an early Star Trek movie. They come back horribly mutated, apart from bad seed Victor Von Doom (Kebbell) who is left behind. When he does eventually reappear as Doctor Doom he looks like Damien Hirst has made one of his diamond encrusted skulls in the likeness of Vladimir Putin. The wretchedness of the special effects is a constant throughout the film – at times the cast look like they are acting in front of big paintings of an alien planet. Fox tend not to use the 20th Century part of their name, but that's when most of the effects seem to date from.
Towards the end the film seems to turn in on itself with masochistic glee. The actors are given evermore awful lines of dialogue to speak. The casting of a black actor (Jordan) in a white role isn't a problem but having him say, “Now that's what I'm talking about,” which is a top three idiot cliché lines given to Token Black Actor in Hollywood films, most definitely is.
So there you have it, a fun, big budget, superhero blockbuster that is downbeat, cheap looking and doesn't have any superheroes in it.
*By a strange irony another film Fox had no faith in. Just like FF, in the UK it got a single press screening a day or two before it was released and for weeks after I was overhearing other reviewers talking about how surprisingly good it was.
Fantastic Four (12A.)
Directed by Josh Trank.
Starring Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell and Tim Nelson Blake. 100 mins.
For most Hollywood film studios the immediate future is likely to be a giant Mickey Mouse foot stamping down on their windpipe, trying to choke the life out of them. With the acquisition of an annual supply of Star Wars movie to join Pixar and their own animations, and all the Marvel Cinematic Universe pictures, Disney is like a giant amorphous mass that is consuming everything in its path and is threatening to consume the whole movie making universe. Comic books, and comic book movies, have always taught us that such a giant force can only be stopped by a team of superheroes.
So Fox have unleashed one of the Marvel properties that they own to try and thwart Disney's relentless march. They've come up with a fresh and innovative new take on the classic superhero ensemble, The Fantastic Four. But they have neglected to make a movie to accompany the new concept. If Fantastic Four is a shipwreck of a movie, then it is the wreck of ghost ship because when you sift through the debris afterwards there is no sign of any crew or cargo. For the most part there is just an empty space where a film should be.
Two words that now strike fear into the blockbuster movie audience is Origins Tale. How people get their superpowers is rarely the strongest part of the narrative, and your heart sinks when you see Peter Parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider again or Krypton exploding. (Part of the reason the X-Men series is so popular is that they are all born that way.) Fantastic Four is all origins – it's like sitting through six hours of build up to the Cup Final and turning the telly off just as they’ve kicked off.
To be fair for half an hour or so, the film is intriguing. When Josh Trank was hired on the strength of his Blair Witch superhero film Chronicle* his ideas to give the team a completely new dark and realistic reinvention, and make them much younger, were greeted with absolute dismay and hatred by fans. But initially it is quite fun to see these established figures turned into kids and placed into a new environment; for a while there are definitely hopes that maybe this will ascend to the level of interesting misfire. But this pleasure only exists as long as there is an expectation that something is going to happen. By the time you are halfway into the film's brief running time and Absolutely Nothing has happened then your feelings begin to turn.
Instead of going up in a rocket and being mutated by cosmic rays, the team invent a dimensional portal and are mutated by their journey through to another dimension; a strange and terrible world where CGIs are at least 20 years behind this dimension and everything looks like an early Star Trek movie. They come back horribly mutated, apart from bad seed Victor Von Doom (Kebbell) who is left behind. When he does eventually reappear as Doctor Doom he looks like Damien Hirst has made one of his diamond encrusted skulls in the likeness of Vladimir Putin. The wretchedness of the special effects is a constant throughout the film – at times the cast look like they are acting in front of big paintings of an alien planet. Fox tend not to use the 20th Century part of their name, but that's when most of the effects seem to date from.
Towards the end the film seems to turn in on itself with masochistic glee. The actors are given evermore awful lines of dialogue to speak. The casting of a black actor (Jordan) in a white role isn't a problem but having him say, “Now that's what I'm talking about,” which is a top three idiot cliché lines given to Token Black Actor in Hollywood films, most definitely is.
So there you have it, a fun, big budget, superhero blockbuster that is downbeat, cheap looking and doesn't have any superheroes in it.
*By a strange irony another film Fox had no faith in. Just like FF, in the UK it got a single press screening a day or two before it was released and for weeks after I was overhearing other reviewers talking about how surprisingly good it was.
