The new Fantastic Four movie is deeply meh. I have tried reading FF comics, and I find them boring as heck, but I am forced to ask - are they trying to make their relationship airless and chilly?
The action scenes are all borrowed from better movies, and the plot is janky and predictable. I am forced to call this movie bottom-tier MCU.
It's revealing that the four of them are so insulated from the outside world, that the rare scenes that have any kind of pulse are when they are talking to someone else. The Silver Surfer's story was more interesting than Sue Storm, Natasha Lyonne is a breath of fresh air as a neighborhood school teacher, and Paul Walter Hauser is hilarious stealing his two scenes playing - let's admit it - The Underminer from The Incredibles. (Marvel did it in the comics first, but Pixar put him in a movie first!)
The CGI is mostly fine - The Thing looks great, even though his clanking rock sound effects are inconsistent. There are several moments where it looks like the baby has been enhanced / manipulated with computer effects? What's so complicated about a baby? It's so distracting!
The MCU hates calling comic book heroes by their comic book names in the movies - Hawkeye, Black Widow - But this may be the first time none of the heroes EVER get called by their comic book names in the movie?
Maybe too many of my gripes (see below) are dinging this as a poor science fiction movie. There's room for more "comic book-y" movies - Wonder Woman 1984 (another Pedro Pascal movie) goes heavy into magical non sci-fi. First Steps is set in a Manhattan that's both 1960s retro but also Jetsons-style futuristic. I would think this would be a fine forum for a campy movie that sets aside science fiction tropes in favor of comic-book-style impossible magic, but no, this is too grounded to pull that off, and also the FF ends up in the Avengers universe for the Doomsday movie, so they need to tonally blend together. If you're going to go for pulp-y, scientifically impossible fantasy action, it needs to be less grounded, and more like that Flash Gordon movie.
Would it surprise you to learn that the director has never made a movie before? That he's been directing television shows for the last 20+ years? Me neither.
Spoilers From Here On Out
- Early in the movie, when Reed is receiving messages from deep space, why is he only receiving messages about Galactus destroying alien planets?
- I thought Johnny Storm was a hotshot pilot, so how is he capable of translating a score of alien languages armed only with one phrase from one language? How would anyone?
- Let's put aside that the black hole looked exactly like Interstellar, and the slingshot-around-the-moon stunt was more exciting in Star Trek IV. I think it's swell that they have faster-than-light travel in this universe, but I found it hard to believe that Ben Grimm can calculate a faster-than-light flightpath home around a black hole in the few seconds granted by the action, during a space battle, on a ship that's falling apart. Han Solo needs more time to "calculate the jump to lightspeed" in his universe, and that's not a world where they just invented the tech yesterday!
- When Reed needs to develop a plan for defeating Galactus, I thought "why not use your new teleporter to send him to the far end of the galaxy?" Then Reed plots to send the Earth to the far end of the galaxy- a plan much more logistically complicated and potentially fatal to the whole human race. Only after that fails because they didn't anticipate The Silver Surfer, do they revert to My Plan A. The movie is 114 minutes long, but it could have been 109 if they'd skipped Reed's dumb plan.
- It's deeply lame to build all the teleport thingys in cities next to postcard landmarks.
- During the final battle, I can't help but think "they hope we've forgotten about the Silver Surfer, but she's going to show up in a minute". I leaned over to my 10 year old son "the Silver Surfer is going to come back" and he replied "I know". Then, when Johnny Storm is about to sacrifice his life to banish Galactus, I was all "assuming we are worried that Johnny is going to die right now is an insult to our intelligence."
- Sue dies at the end. The prolonged death scene, attempted resuscitation, and teary farewell is an insult to everyone in the theater who hasn't forgotten that Jack-Jack - sorry, "Franklin" - has yet to reveal his superpowers. Of course he's going to magically resurrect his mom! If this were a parody of a Marvel movie, they'd be doing their teary farewells, they'd place Baby Franklin in Sue's arms ...and he'd transform into metal like Colossus, or accidentally cremate her remains like Cyclops.