Childhood friends Reed Richards (Miles Teller)
and Ben Grimm
(Jaime Bell) have been working on a teleportation device for years and it draws
the attention of Professor Franklin Storm.
Reed goes to work at the Baxter
Building where there is a similar
project to Reed’s that allows access to another universe. He works
with Franklin’s
adopted daughter Sue Storm (Kate Mara), reckless son Johnny Storm (Michael B
Jordon), and the jealous protégé Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) who started the
Quantum Gate project in the first place.
A reckless journey to the alternate universe has resulted in giving them
powers which they struggle to control and Reed wants to find a way to cure
them, but the military has other plans for them.
The reboot of the FANTASTIC FOUR movie
franchise holds
promise where the first hour is a great origin story where the last 30 or so
minutes is just a rushed mess as it shifts gears into a different type of movie
all of a sudden. Josh Trank tweeted he
had a fantastic version of the movie a year ago and he quickly deleted the
tweet. The reboot has gone through some
rewriting and reshoots. One does wonder
if there are too many cooks in the kitchen as you have a studio (20th
Century Fox) feeling the pressure to create a franchise that is as strong as
the X-MEN series. Lots of wonderful
set-up and character development is shown off in the first two-thirds of the
new FANTASTIC FOUR. This new movie may
not be as fun as the Tim Story movies, but it makes up for it with the drama
before it all gets ditched for some misbegotten feeling we need to fit in
superhero action pieces and hope it all comes out fine. Then you have the Victor,
Reed/ Sue love
triangle that goes nowhere. I would be
interested to see what could be done in the sequel which we hopefully get to
see (but box office performance has propelled rumors Fox may opt for a Deadpool
sequel in the Fantastic Four 2 release date instead). The movie has fantastic
production design and
the new Fantastic Four costumes are great as this movie is a mix of the
original FANTASTIC FOUR and ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR. I don’t get the flack
over making Johnny
Storm black since Michael B Jordon does get the brashness of the character
right. He is about the only character
besides maybe Ben Grimm that you can change the race of the character since I
always think Reed and Sue as white. I
just wish the last third of the movie was as great as the set up in the first
hour, but instead we end up with a sometimes frustrating reboot which is
basically a set-up for hopefully a better sequel if 20th Century Fox
opts to make another movie with these actors.
This
review is ©8-10-2015
David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission. Send all comments
to feedback@enterline-media.com
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