Fantastic Four Review: 7 Stupid Blunders That Totally Ruin The Film

4. The CGI Is Terrible

A somewhat nit-picky observation that focuses on a single visual element, to complain about CGI can often seem a bit churlish. But with Fant4stic it's bad to the point where it has a majorly detrimental effect on the rest of the film. Not only is the rendering of pretty much every effect unexpectedly poor, but there's very little attempt made to hide such shoddy work. Every time Sue uses her forcefield powers to fly it's quite clear there's a rubbery computer Kate Mara there instead of the real actress and the extended sets looks even faker than those seen in the Star Wars prequels. The only real explanation I can think for this is that, as it became clear the film would be a dud regardless of polish, Fox chose to not sink as much money into post-production because by that point investing any more was essentially burning money. That's a reason, not an excuse though. The one consolation is that The Thing actually looks OK, never as fake as the rest of the film. It is just rock, and thus something that could have been realistically achieved back with the previous 2005 version, but credit where it's due.