Fantastic Four

Review by Heckler King

A cosmic radiation storm gives four friends--and one megalomaniac--fantastic powers, and then spends an hour and a half focusing on their mundane private lives. I guess the "Mundane Four" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic (Iona Gruffudd)
Sue Storm aka The Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba)
Johnny Storm aka The Human Torch (Chris Evans)
Ben Grimm aka The Thing (Michael Chiklis)
Victor von Doom aka Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon)
Alicia Masters aka Alicia Masters (Kerry Washington)

Year: 2005
Censorship Rating: PG (for some violence and family dysfunction, but then there are some odd bits - who knew blowing a hole through someone's chest just requires parental guidance for kids to get by?)

We open on a worker putting the finishing touches on a statue of a commanding figure outside someone’s corporate headquarters. “Typical of Victor von Doom to build a thirty-foot statue of himself,” remarks a bald fellow who walks up to it. “Well, it’s obviously aimed at first-time visitors to create feelings of smallness… inadequacy,” remarks a smart-dressed fella next to him. Ten seconds into the movie and we’re getting bashed over the head with something already. Uh oh.

These two blokes prove to be Reed Richards (Iona Gruffudd) and best friend Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), here to beg mega-millionaire Doom (Julian McMahon) to fund a space expedition to prove a theory of Reed’s that cosmic energy was what kick started the process of evolution. Assuming the movie follows the comics, Reed is a “big brain” while Ben is a jock from the streets who bonded with him in college. A cosmic phenomenon similar to the one in Reed’s projection is approaching Earth, and he wants to use Vic’s space station to observe the effects. Hearing Reed’s theory, Doom remarks, “same old Reed, always stretching (HK: Irony alert), reaching for the stars with the weight of the world on his back (HK: Huh?). But dreams don’t pay the bills, do they?” He throws out a magazine with the legend “Reed Richards: BANKRUPT” on the cover.

From this we ascertain that Reed and Vic are old colleagues, but Vic being the cutthroat, take-no-prisoners one and Reed being the idealistic one who’s more interested in the Betterment of Mankind than cheques with ten zeros, Vic has hit it big while Reed has had the bottom drop out of his wallet. Reed tries to play up their old relationship to get Vic’s help, allowing for the introduction of another figure from their mutual pasts, Susan Storm (Jessica Alba), Vic’s director of genetic research. Sue greets Ben with a hug asks after Debbie, his significant other, and when she sees Reed acts uncomfortable and curt to hint that these two have a rocky past. In the end, Vic agrees to Reed’s proposal for a much bigger percentage of any income it generates than they’d wanted, but since Reed cares about the Betterment of Mankind first and foremost he doesn’t quibble. Vic remarks to a flunky that Reed is always right, “but he doesn’t always know what he’s got.”

Next we meet the daredevil pilot for the expedition (and Sue’s little brother), Johnny Storm (Chris Evans). Ben has some issues with taking orders from “the underwear model.” Apparently Johnny washed out of NASA because of an incident involving a pair of playgirls, a flight simulator and a wall. This is to create tension within the quartet, but we’ll soon see that Johnny is the exactly the irresponsible hothead Ben makes him out to be, so I’m wondering what he did to convince someone with a Ph.D. in Evil Capitalism that he should be put behind the wheel of their expensive aircraft. In the first clash between Johnny and Ben we also are introduced to bodysuits are made of “self-regulating unstable molecules” so they adapt to the wearer’s body like “a second skin”. I’m sure that won’t be played up later. In case we didn’t get it before, Sue is warm towards Ben and cold towards Reed.

The foursome and Vic arrive at Vic’s space station, and there’s more blunt characterization that I’m charitable enough to believe you’ve gotten by now. We all know what’s going to happen so I’ll cut this part short: the cosmic storm shows up way ahead of schedule, the shielding on Vic’s station doesn’t stand up to projections [UnSub's aside - what? Despite Victor saying several times that it will hold? I'm shocked and / or bored!] and the five of them are comsically parboiled. During the bombardment we see what kinds of effects it’s having on the station’s occupants; Reed’s face starts to distort, Johnny emits flames from his body, and Sue turns transparent. The fab four wake up to find themselves in quarantine at an Aspen (or somewhere) hospital Vic owns. Reed shows what a take-charge kind of guy he is by telling the doctors what kind of observation protocols to use.

At Doomcorp, Vic’s stockholders are lambasting him because his price has plummeted to penny candy status [UnSub's aside - how did that happen? I know that Wall Street can be flighty, but a space station accident somehow devalues the entire company overnight is a bit of a stretch - pardon that pun in reference to "Fantastic Four". Can you say "plot convenience"?], and give him a week to fix things or they pull out. Why is Vic not in quarantine with everyone else if he was caught in the same radiation incident?

Back to the hospital, Johnny is caught sneaking out of quarantine by a nurse because he wants to go snowboarding instead of sitting around and waiting for test results. Blown away by his boyish charm or something, she doesn’t lift a finger to enforce quarantine and stop him from leaving, although she does look a bit perplexed to realize he has a temperature of 209. Gee, I hope that cosmic energy didn’t have any strange effects on our fab foursome [UnSub - not that the nurse worries that Johnny should be dead by now; it's more of a "well, if that isn't a bit odd" kind of reaction]. Elsewhere, Reed and Ben are talking and Reed pretends he’s happy Sue and Vic got together after whatever happened between the two of them.

Johnny and the nurse have met for a ski date, and as they go down Johnny suddenly starts to give off flames, komically misunderstanding the nurse that he’s “on fire.” Johnny realizes she was being literal and panics, going off a cliff. On the way down he erupts completely into flames, flies for a little bit and crashes back into the slope. The nurse comes down and finds him naked in his own natural hot tub. Not missing a beat, he asks her to join him.

Ben arranges an “accidental” dinner meeting with Reed and Sue, and they’re soon laughing and joking like old times. Complaining about indigestion, Ben takes his leave. We get some more stuff about Reed and Sue’s relationship--he’s all science, he’s got no romance in his heart--that’s interrupted when Sue suddenly turns invisible. She knocks a wine bottle off the table in panic and when Reed catches it, his arm stretches. At this point, twenty-five minutes into the movie, I was starting to get annoyed. I highly doubt even those viewers not intimately familiar with the comic book didn’t know they were watching a superhero movie. Do we have to spend quite this long setting it up? It’s not like this rendition of the Fantastic Four’s personal lives is that novel or engaging. At Casa Del Doom, Vic finds that his hair is falling out and the lights flicker when he looks in the mirror.

Sue is convinced that the cosmic energy messed up their DNA and that’s what’s causing all the combustion and invisibility and such, but Reed demands “a massive amount of evidence” before he can accept a supposition like that. I understand he’s a bigshot scientist and I’m not, but come on! Wasn’t it his theory that these rays triggered development in life on Earth in the first place? Fortunately, Reed immediately realizes how dumb he’s being and accepts that cosmic energy has given them super powers. They hear yelling coming from Ben’s room, and after they get inside (courtesy of some fantastic arm-stretching), they find a hole in the wall and no Ben. Victor shows up and Sue tells him they’re showing “symptoms” to stellar phenomenon exposure. Reed finds a picture of Ben with his wife.

Ben calls his wife and has her meet him outside (in her short little nightie), where he reveals that he’s become an orange rock creature. One might almost say… a thing. She flees in terror [UnSub - gee, thanks for being so understanding honey]. Soon, our Ben is sitting on a bridge moping when a guy comes over and makes to jump off, until he realizes he’s not alone. The fellow backs away and falls into traffic, and Ben causes a massive pile-up on the bridge trying to save him. Fortunately, the other Fantastic Three happen to be taking that exact bridge into town at that exact time. Reed moans they’ll never get through the crowd between them and Ben, but tells Sue she could. Um, how does turning invisible help you get through crowds of panicked people? Sue does eventually turn invisible [UnSub - having taken all her clothes off and falsely raising hopes there will be nudity in this film] and sneak through (saying, “Excuse me” or “Coming through” every step of the way), but so do Johnny and Reed without getting all super. It’s almost as if Reed’s plan was nothing but a cheap excuse to show Jessica Alba in her underwear.

Anyway, things get worse so the four can prove their hero chops; some propane tanks explode, so Johnny shields a little girl with his body, Sue generates a ripply force field that smothers the blast, Ben pulls a fire engine back on the bridge with his muscles of stone, and Reed gets stretchy to save a firefighter who fell off. So we can tell Ben still doesn’t feel like a winner even with the drivers cheering for him, his wife appears in the crowd and drops her ring on the pavement as she leaves [UnSub - firstly, way to rub that in wifey, and secondly this must be the most popular bridge in New York], and he can’t even pick it up because of his huge rock fingers. Reed vows to make him Ben again. Soon afterward they learn that the media has dubbed them the Fantastic Four. That only took us forty minutes.

Vic’s woes continue as his backers pull out. The FF arrive at the Baxter Building, their home base, and are thronged with adoring fans (except for Ben, of course. We get it). A mailman delivers a wad of bills to Reed, fulfilling the legally mandated Stan Lee cameo (HK: He plays Willy Lumpkin, who evidently was a long-running minor character in the FF comics) [UnSub - Lee actually gets some dialogue, which makes a change. Not a good change, just a change]. Reed starts making plans to fix the four of them. That night, Sue finds Reed’s scrapbook when Victor barges in on her, offering his help in getting back to normal. However, his temper flares and he leaves with a threat to Reed to fix everyone. On the elevator ride down the skin scrapes off his knuckles and shows metal underneath.

Cue a montage of Reed exploring everyone’s powers; from this we learn that at his hottest Johnny could equal the temperature of the sun, but by doing so ignite the atmosphere and kill all life on Earth (just go with it), and Sue and Reed have issues about their past, which has only been touched on approximately 700,000 times.

Does anyone else think this is moving ungodly slow for a superhero movie? [UnSub - not if you nap through the talking parts. But then you get left with 20 minutes worth of moive...]

More small things happen. Victor finds out his whole body is turning to metal. Johnny’s sick of sitting tight, being the only one who’s excited to have powers. Reed has plans for a chamber that--he thinks--can turn them back to normal by duplicating the cosmic storm on an opposite wavelength. He also explains that their suits with the unstable molecules mimic whatever happens to their wearers, meaning they turn invisible, burst into flame and stretch without taking damage. Told you they wouldn’t bring it up again. There’s a montage of the daily life of people with super powers. Vic finds out that he can control electricity, and blows a hole in the guy who led the withdrawl from his company with this new trick, possibly for suggesting he go back to Latveria.

Reed has a bunch of other sciency-types in his roost helping him put together the Brundlefly contraption he thinks can cure everyone. If he’s “worth less than a postage stamp,” where is Reed getting all this exotic machinery and the people to put it together? Johnny sees some kind of motocross meet on TV and decides if they can do that, so can he. While in mid-air, he jumps off his bike and tries to fly, but finds his powers aren’t quite there yet. Grilled by a hot reporter afterward, Johnny makes light of the whole “we’ve got super powers” thing and disses his teammates, giving them corny superhero nicknames. The reporter clumsily asks, “What do you call that thing?” in regards to Ben, and Johnny picks that as his friend’s new name. Ben heads out to wipe that smirk off his Calvin Klein model face. Ben and Johnny have a spat, and we learn once again that Johnny likes his powers, and Ben resents his. Victor breaks into a warehouse and steals some heavy artillery.

Ben goes to a bar to drown his sorrows. He moans that “if there’s a God, He hates me.” I can just see Bibleman springing in and giving Ben an earful. A charming African-American lady tells Ben “She” isn’t into hating. Alicia proves to be blind, and reads Ben’s aura or something, from which she determines that he’s “sad,” and advises him “being different isn’t always a bad thing.” For the first time since he got his rocks, Ben smiles.

Vic is continuing to plan his revenge on Reed. He plots to get rid of Reed’s “bodyguard” before he strikes. If I was going to undermine the Fantastic Four, I’d probably undermine the Thing first too. Vic meets Ben in a diner, and implies that Reed’s taking so long to find a cure to have time with Sue again (HK: Which goes back to where Reed’s finding his overhead again).

Reed has reached the point in his research where things can’t go on unless he tests the procedure on a real person. Sue insists he takes a break and finally tells Reed that she and Vic were never a couple. She’s carried a torch for Reed all this time [UnSub - as all ex-girlfriends do in films. No-one ever breaks up and stays broken up]. When they come back to the lab obviously having a good time, Ben’s doubts are confirmed and he storms out. Reed is so shamefaced he tries the machine on himself, but it only makes his condition worse and he falls into an elastic heap. If he had more power, though… Victor hears this over a hacked security camera and has a flunky bring Ben back to the Baxter Building (HK: I thought Vic was broke too, yet he can still afford to have the scientific whatsamajiggahoozies that let him hack his rival’s security and have flunkies find people for him. Whatever).

Victor sneaks into the Baxter Building and tells Ben that he can make the machine work, and Ben steps inside. Although power starts to fail again, Victor uses his electrical powers on the machine and juices it back up. Lights flicker all over the city, and the Fantastic Three realize something must be up (HK: I wish they’d be a little clearer about how Vic’s power works. Before it seemed like it came from himself, now it seems like he might be channeling it from the city’s power grid. I guess it’s another one of those powers that works however is most convenient for the script). When Ben comes out, he’s his fleshy self again. Vic knocks Ben out and starts blasting at Reed, who’s come in to see what was up with the lights. Victor knocks him out and drags Reed back to his abode. To signify his new direction in life, or maybe just cover up those ugly metal spots on his face, Vic dons an ugly metal mask and a green cape and cowl, finally looking something like Dr. Doom (HK: The mask was a gift from the people of his home country in recognition of his humanitarian work. Seriously, huh? A robot mask is a gift for all he’s done for his people? I can’t help but wonder if he might not be turning out quite this way if he was from some place that gave you a plaque or something instead of a spooky mask).

At his penthouse, Vic tortures Reed by hooking him up to some liquid nitrogen canisters, and fires a heat-seeking missile from a bazooka-like thing at the top of the Baxter Building where the others have found Ben (HK: I’ll say this about Doom; he’s a power-mad, vengeful psychopath, but his boys pulled out all the stops when building weapons. His blaster thingy even tells you the name of the guy you’re about to shoot with it. I know I complained about the unlikelihood of that kind of thing once or twice in “Bibleman,” but while dull, “Fantastic Four” at least doesn’t start straining my credulity before the theme music’s even over). For once Johnny’s impulsiveness comes in handy, and he jumps off the top of the building, flames on, finally gets the hang of that “flying” thing and lures the missile away from the building (HK: By the way, it’s an hour and twenty-five minutes into the movie and we’re finally, FINALLY gearing up for superhero action). Sue leaves to help the others, and Ben wonders what he can do without powers. Then he eyes the machine… Johnny loses the missile by setting a garbage scow on fire and diving into the ocean. Victor, like any good evil mastermind, assumes that’s the last he’ll see of the Human Torch.

Sue wanders into Vic’s office and finds Reed. How’d she get in there? She offers to use the machine on Vic, but Johnny’s not the only one who plans to take advantage of the gifts fate has given him. She tries shooting some of her ripply force fields at him, but Vic is too tough and grabs her around the neck. Ben, the Thing once again, suddenly bursts onto the scene and declares it to be clobberin’ time before he punches Vic into the wall. Vic recovers and tackles Ben out the window, they fall into a rooftop swimming pool, smash through the floor, go out another window and land in a garbage truck (HK: I don’t know, I think the two of them could probably survive a fall like that pretty much unhurt). They tussle until Vic gets the upper hand, but before he can finish Ben off, an all-better Reed stops him with an “I can’t let you do that.” Vic, showing intelligence, keeps trying to kill Ben before he gets around to killing Reed, but Sue is there too and protects Ben with a force field. And there’s Johnny, who’s also not dead. I’m not sure how he got there since he has to be on fire to fly and was in the ocean last we saw, but the movie’s almost over.

Although the FF couldn’t walk down the hall without finding something to argue about before, they find their team spirit to take Vic down. Johnny goes supernova to keep him busy, Sue whips up a force field to keep it from ending all life on Earth (HK: She could barely keep back one of Vic’s bolts, but she can contain a firestorm hot enough to ignite the atmosphere. Okay…), and Ben kicks open a fire hydrant and sprays it on the white-hot Vic, fusing him into a statue. Oh, and Reed works himself into some kind of gutter system to deliver the water just so he can say he contributed too.

The bad guy’s beat, it’s time for the wrap-up. The FF are on a cruise ship, living it up. Johnny’s surrounded by girls, Ben is ready to accept being the Thing with help from Alicia, and Reed invites Sue to the aft deck, where he pops the question, and gets a big fat yes. Johnny takes off and sky-writes a big 4 in the sky. What a goofball, right?

What of Victor? Our erstwhile antagonist has been shuffled into a crate, bound for… Latveria. But the electrical equipment around him flickers...

Corny sequel ahoy!

Most b-moviephiles have probably heard of the original "Fantastic Four" movie. Marvel had made a deal with Roger Corman’s studio that they would have the rights to make a movie about the Fantastic Four if they did something with those rights within a certain time frame. Simply to hang onto the rights to the characters, they made a movie. An abominably cheap and cheesy flick that was never meant to see the light of day. I’ve never seen that movie, but I feel confident saying this one doesn’t do much to erase its memory. [UnSub - having seen both, I think you can make an argument that Corman's movie is better than this one... but either way, both are iffy films.]

While it’s fine for a movie to spend time exploring its characters’ personalities, it’s generally best not to drag out developments we see coming in the first five minutes, and that’s certainly the case with “Fantastic Four.” We also reasonably expect to see some amount of action in a superhero movie interspersed with everything else; I paid to see “Fantastic Four,” not “Akeelah and the Bee” after all. We know Victor’s going to make some kind of villainous power play, we know the FF are going to stop him, why do we have to wait through an hour and a half of soap opera fluff for anything approaching that expectation to happen? Frankly, no superhero’s personal life is interesting enough for me to sit through it that long uninterrupted.

Ultimately the movie fails not because it weighs itself down with too much “message” and not enough story, or because there are enough holes in the script to equal the daily output of Dunkin Donuts, but because it devotes too much time toward personal conflict for a bunch of people who are, let’s be fair, pretty light on personality. Even the train wreck of moralism that is the "Bibleman" series knows better than to go too long without an action sequence.

It’s a shame too, because on the whole I didn’t think the actors were too bad, they just needed a better script. Sadly, Hollywood doesn’t turn those out the way it used to.

Although thinly-etched to say the least, the FF are fairly true to their comic book personas. Victor, though, is a very stock mastermind. He doesn’t display the supreme arrogance and indomitable will that allowed him to humble the Beyonder in the comics.

[UnSub - The FF are famous as being Marvel's First Family. unfortunately they spend their entire time complaining to each other and being generally dense... which I'm sure some families go through, but it doesnt' make them endearing to the audience or readers of the comic.]

Not horrible, not good, certainly not Fantastic.

Not too bad. Sadly, the movie’s more dull than it is cheesy, and I generally prefer weirdness to fluff.

Date of review: 08 November 2006