Fantastic Four the Critic's choice

The critics are HAMMERING Josh Trank's Fantastic Four.

As of right now it has a 10% Rotten score on the Rotten Tomatoes site.
Slightly up from it's 8% score from just a while ago.

www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fantastic_four_2015/

A friend of mine has seen it and he said this when I asked him about Invisible Woman:
"It isn't so much that she had a small part it's just that she doesn't register as a character, so much so that the other characters forget her midway through the film."

Wow

Fats,

What was your impression of the Invisible Woman character?

Didn't Josh Trank admit on Twitter that his version of the film is not the version that Fox released? Wouldn't be surprised if the film was micromanaged to death by the suits at Fox.

This isn't the worst movie ever. Seriously. It's better than the Roger Corman Fantastic Four for example. I also didn't want to walk out in the middle like I contemplated doing during Man of Steel (which is pretty unique as I can't think of another movie where the thought even crossed my mind). MoS IS a much better movie though -- for one it's effects are loads better.

I enjoyed it, but I went in with low expectations. And I still won't say it's a great movie -- it's not. Just that I sat in the theatre and had a fun time, but if you need to see a movie go see Ant-Man, Mission Impossible (Rebecca Ferguseon is worth watching!!!), or even Mr. Holmes.

The movie couldn't figure out what it wanted to be, and shifted tone several times. It had plenty of time to focus on developing relationships with characters, but somehow (at best) gave characters one tiny scene to do that,and didn't do a good job of it. It never really developed Victor Von Doom (before or after Dr. Doom) and I really hated their Dr. Doom. He's just a rich villain to waste like that, and doing so left the movie without a spine. Doom isn't afraid to kill, but he doesn't go around just doing so willy-nilly either.

We get one Sue-Johnny interaction, we get one Read-Sue moment, we get a bit of Reed-Ben (it's the start of the movie), but for all the minutes they spend on that, they didn't do that good of a job at showing the two's relationship. We're left to fill that data in from what we are shown. There is literally ZERO Johnny-Ben until the last minute of the movie, and no reason for someone to LET Ben going on their first trip. This would have been easy to fix with some script tweaks. Seriously the FF is about FAMILY, and they didn't focus on building those relationships?

I generally do not like intermingling Dr. Doom's origin with the Fantastic Four -- they're a story of family, and to put their chief rival there is odd. OTH, in the latest FF stories, Valeria goes and lives and trains with him and he's Uncle Victor. So in that sense he's now part of the modern FF family story, so retelling it with him there isn't _too_ bad.

Reed comes across as a bit wishy-washy. He doesn't even show marginal spine until the end of the movie. Johnny comes across well. The Thing is just angry (which to be fair, he can be a bit grumpy).

And I don't fully agree with Fat's assessment of Sue. If you go by the Ultimates Fantastic Four, she's reasonably close (she's still into science, and into biology like Ultimates Sue, they added this "pattern matching savant' trait though). She does ... fade into the background a bit. Mostly as she's not playing ball with the government. She does show a bit of power (I still say she's the most powerful of them in the movie), and is a good player in the fight at the end vs. Doom.

She has the same power set: invisibility, turn other things invisible, and force fields. (We never get to see if she can turn the invisible visible.) The only change is that her fields seem to air tight and she has to hold her breath (since she does do this to others in the comic, this is probably true there too -- it's just never held when she's shielding herself.)

But they can't figure out which Sue they want. The original Sue who felt invisible, or the kick-ass Science-Smart Sue from the Ultimates, or the modern Sue Richards from the comics. It'd be nice to have had her show a bit more personality and gumption. They even cut her out of the origin and shoe-horned in Doom! That's probably the worst sin of the movie.

They mis-use Sue, but they mis-use just about everyone in the movie. And they waste screen time for idiotic stuff -- Reed runs away and they run the clock for a year and waste 15 minutes of a movie that could be better spent. Like building the characters, their relationships, and explaining Victor better.

The biggest change is they seem to need their suits to control their powers. (I am not terribly fond of this conceit.) Well and Doom is just totally something new.

I think all the actors did the jobs they were asked to do. I don't think the script was very good, and the director didn't now what movie he was filming, and the editor couldn't really find a movie in what was handed to him.

This move demonstrates why you shouldn't always do an origin story. The FF does pretty well in the fight at the end, and in the final scenes of the movie (the showdown with the government). If they started THERE, they'd have good characters, some chemistry, and a good place to make a movie from. This entire movie seemed like it should have been the 5-10 minute recap at the beginning of a REAL Fantastic Four story. A lot of screen time is wasted muddling around to get to the FF as the FF. Why not start there? And get better script writers who can demonstrate character personality/relationships better/faster/less screen time.

So yeah, the movie isn't really that good. But I still had a fun time.

andyf wrote: Didn't Josh Trank admit on Twitter that his version of the film is not the version that Fox released? Wouldn't be surprised if the film was micromanaged to death by the suits at Fox.

The blame game starts as the creator distances himself from his project

www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/fa...?utm_source=facebook

The movie is a 90 minute build up for a payoff that never really happens.

Wow, what a disaster.

Sounds like Tank should have just walked away like Wright did from Ant Man.

I wonder how much of this that made it to the screen does Trank say is his. Of the stuff that didn't make it was it shot? Was it at least storyboarded? If most of what he wanted didn't make it then maybe he should have left the project. If he thinks a few changes, rearrangements, and such would have represented his vision, then I'm doubtful since all I'm hearing is that the entire thing is a slog.

I was worried that overseas markets and contractual obligations would have meant another FF movie whether we wanted it or not. I'm glad that's not the case!