Fantastic Four

Finally got around to seeing last year's Fantastic Four.  Definitely not impressed.  The fact that Stan Lee declined his customary cameo speaks volumes.  The story opens in 2007 with a 5th grade Reed Richards proposing to build a teleportation device and already having a prototype in his garage.  Classmate Ben Grimm is intrigued and assists.  The pair managed to swap a toy car for some beige stones.  Also, they knock out the power for all of New York City.  Seven years later, the two are still working on the teleporter and showing it at a school science fair.  Most of the judges see it as a goofy magic trick but Franklin Storm recognizes brilliance.  He offers Reed a scholarship to the Baxter Foundation.  Of course, we meet Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Victor von Doom there.  It turns out that the teleportation device was actually a gate to another dimension.

 

Though the last couple of Fantastic Four movies were mediocre, this one was disappointing.  Though shown to be truly brilliant, Reed becomes abysmally stupid if the plot requires it.  In his first real conversation with Sue Storm, he mentions his love of Captain Nemo.  Then, while trying to hide from the government, he chose Captain Nemo as his username online.  Really?  Worse, we are told that Sue is brilliant at pattern recognition.  Seeing 'Captain Nemo' and linking that to Reed is pretty weak.  Johnny was all right.  He was a reckless youth who gloried in his newfound powers.  Thing was cool.  I far preferred this version of Thing to the previous one, at least in the look.  Thing as a CGI character looks great.  As far as the story arc, meh.  The youth of the characters - college freshmen - is wrong.  Reed is a fatherly, level-headed fellow, not the wide-eyed reckless boy we meet here.  Ben is a skilled pilot, not a junkyard worker.  Victor should be the same age as Reed, not ten or more years his senior.  Of course, I base this on my reading of the comics in the 80s; things could be vastly different now.

 

As for Doctor Doom, it was a mistake to add him.  Yes, Doom is the most iconic villain in the Fantastic Four's rogues gallery but he is a complicated villain.  He practically requires an origin movie just for him.  At least they could throw a bone to his history.  In all three movies, he is merged with metal to become Doom.  That's not Doom!  Doom is a normal guy who happens to wear armor.  He is not a villain version of Colossus from the X-Men.  Victor von Doom is a gypsy witch physician scientist who took to wearing an armored mask because of horrible facial scaring from a lab accident.  Why can't we go with that?  Yes, the MCU (which this movie is not technically a part) doesn't cotton to magic - yet (wait for Doctor Strange!) and wanted to give him science-related powers.  Okay, I can accept that but gypsy physician scientist in armor is still pretty cool!  Way better than the demented metal man we keep getting.

 

The movie was a tremendous flop and it is highly unlikely that this will get a sequel.  No, in a few years we will see another reboot.  Based on the track record, I am not optimistic.  With luck, Marvel will get the rights back from Sony and we'll finally see a good Fantastic Four movie.