This feeling of everything being a first draft is carried over into how the storys told, with a pacing so fragmented that events race by without you even realising or caring; montages and time jumps are the film's bread-and-butter. It quickly gets to the point where if a scene runs uninterrupted for more than a minute you know its a really important moment by nature of not being cut down for an ADHD audience. On a simple level, this barely feels like a feature film - the third act complication pops up out of nowhere before quickly being resolved, leaving us with a plot so slight it would have been lacking in the time of Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. And then (the film really is a technical clusterfu*k) the post-production only makes it worse, lacking even the vague semblance of polish you'd expect of a production that cost $122 million (I spat my post-viewing recovery whiskey over my computer when I discovered this muddle cost that much). The sound mixing is awful (and you know when a review picks up on that that something is seriously wrong) - white noise dips in and out during what should be steadied dialogue scenes, making it sound like the Four live by a periodic waterfall. Although at least its more consistent than the CGI, with basic human models looking rubbery and anything attempting "epic" instead coming across as pathetic. Im gonna go out on a limb here and guess Fox told Weta and co. to rein it in when they realised those script problems had already crippled Fant4stic and that any more money poured into the film would be immediately lost. Not to get into behind-the-scenes rumours, but the picture thats being painted by many involved is that Josh Trank wasn't up to directing a blockbuster. It's a shame to think the Chronicle director could go from so good to so bad in one movie, and there's no doubt some studio meddling involved, but it does seem the case that his inability to refine a vision to fit the money-men's mandate is the reason for the movie's key issues; the scattershot structure and, just as damningly, the inability to settle on a single conceptual idea. There have been claims from the producers that this is "hard sci-fi", but it only ever really goes as far as sub-Nolan soliloquies forced in at the end of scenes. In reality, a darker, "realistic" tone has only been attempted as a shorthand explanation for why there's such distance from the comic books (the obligatory "It's clobbering time" feels like it was thrown in at the last minute). Blind faithfulness to the source is never a must for any film, but if you're going to diverge there needs to be something else to fill the void. Casting a black actor to mix things up isn't that (obviously), and neither is whatever the f*ck they've done to Doom (seriously, he's laughable). Oh, and before I wrap up, there's no post-credits scene, so if you are going to check this out just leave the moment the laugh-inducing final scene is over. This is probably for the best - theres no hope of Fant4stic getting a sequel (I know one character is a pre-transformation Mole Man, but let's be realistic), so any forced foreshadowing would be a waste of precious projector bulb energy. Maybe its time to just accept that these characters will simply never work on film. Theyre not as exciting as Spider-Man, and even before Marvel pulled the plug on the comic book it had never sold that well. Fantastic Four are the definition of a legacy property - something that remains in the popular spectrum because of when they were created (they introduced Marvel to the superhero game), rather than what they've actually done since. At the very least, I dont want another Fantastic Four movie. One dud for each main character is enough, thanks very much. 2015 has been a poor year for superhero movies. We got an overblown Avengers sequel, an Ant-Man that was a pale imitation of what Edgar Wright envisioned, and now this mess. I guess it still holds that Marvel at least produce the best of the genre, but do we really want a world where better than tat becomes the new good? After all, Fant4stic, the unequivocal best in the franchise, sucks. Like this review? Are you looking forward to Fant4stic? Share your thoughts down in the comments.
