554 - Beaten with a Fant4stick

Where. Do I even. Begin?

How difficult must it be to make a movie about the Fantastic Four? I mean in attempt #4 no less? Plus I feel like we’ve been here before guys, haven’t we been here before?

A movie about a somewhat popular comic book franchise, gets rebooted after putting out a clunker and tries it’s best to compete with the overblown juggernaut called the MCU, yet decides to ignore the source martial, recasts everyone as younger versions of themselves and tries copying Chris Nolan’s shitty Batman Trilogy while setting up potential sequels in the movie they‘re currently making?

Well, the bright side is, Spider-Man now has some travelling buddies on his way back to Disney.

GODAMMIT FOX, YOU HAD ONE JOB!!!! HOW IN THE NAME OF JANET STREET POTTER’S ROTTING CLITEROIS DO YOU OUTDO SONY IN A SHITTY REBOOT… IN ONE FILM NO LESS!!??

When your reboot is more reviled than Dragonball Evolution…. I don’t actually have a witty joke about that cus the statement speaks for itself.

Let me state up front that I expected the ABSOLUTE worst. My warning flags fired up when I read something about Doctor Doom being “a l33t haxor!” that I called it by saying “this is going to suck!” and they tried, so God help me they tried to make this work!!!

Which brings me to my loan positive about this movie. I really liked the casting, daresay I felt it was better than the original…. In places.

I loved Kate Mara more than Jessica Alba and the melons stuffed in her push up bra, Jamie Bell kinda looked like he wondered onto the set by accident and basically phoned it in but STILL put in a better performance than Michael Chikilis,  Miles Teller seemed more like a nerd over Ioan Gruffudd (but Gruffudd looked like Reed tbh) and I’m looking forward to seeing  Michael B. Jordan play Captain America in the future.

Or Miles Morales… I’m not picky.

I don’t blame these kids for the movie and how it turned out. Hell they didn’t even see it after it was made and was just doing their best with the material giving to them, so Marvel can go fuck themselves for that spiteful act of killing these kids in an issue of the Punisher…. Now if it was Josh Trank and 20th Century Fox I’d understand.

Lastly, I really liked Reg E. Cathey. Which kinda made me sad that talented people such as himself and the others are in this movie trying their best but with no payoff. Infact, I can sum up this whole mess perfectly. Cathey’s character is being interrogated about an accident in the lab and he’s trying his best to explain his mistake.

That scene IS this entire movie in a nutshell, and I know that’s the unsurprisingly popular opinion about this movie, but even my contrarian ass admits the angry mob is right for once.

Speaking of that, let’s deal with negatives now. Oh and by negatives I mean legit complaints. Not pissing and moaning that a black guy was playing Johnny Storm. Because you hypocrites didn’t bat an eyelid over Alicia Masters, Nick Fury or Heimdall! Or the fact a Australian is playing a Norse thunder God or an untalented American whore is playing a Russian super spy but I digress.

I’m not going to pretend for a second that I’m an FF fan here, but I do know enough about them to be royally pissed. I brought up the Spider-Man example earlier because Fox is making the same mistake Sony made with Amazing Spider-Man 2. They were badly setting up a universe so they can cash in on it with spin offs and sequels. Yet just like ASM2, it fails because it isn’t setting up this movie for its audience to give a shit about potential sequels. Fuck, an appearance from Wolverine or the X-Men could have saved this, or have Deadpool provide running commentary and it at least could be salvageable.
Nothing about this movie works for its taken a super hero family, known for exploration and family drama, sucked all the life out if it and had Chris Nolan wank all over it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this script got sexually abused by Bill Cosby!!

Now that I think about it some more (no not Bill Cosby) the movie has elements from The Avengers wedged inside it for some reason.

The Avengers is a story about a team of extraordinary people who have to work together, can’t stand each other all that much at first, but come together when a guy who is important to the characters with the most screen time is killed by an egomaniacal asshole with a messiah complex (who wears green and is in love with the sound of his own voice) as he plots to do something evil to Earth with a machine that creates space portals in the sky.

Fan4stic is a story about a team of extraordinary people who have to work together, can’t stand each other all that much at first, but come together when a guy who is important to the characters with the most screen time is killed by an egomaniacal asshole with a messiah complex (who wears green and is in love with the sound of his own voice) as he plots to do something evil to Earth with a machine that creates space portals in the sky.

Fuck it… it IS the same movie. Except with bad pacing, phoned in performances, rushed out the door delivery and computer graphics than belong on the Playstation 2. Oh and the guy who voices Homer Simpson is in this… Desperate much Fox?

Elements of this film feel badly placed or plot points were instantly forgotten. So Ben hates on Reed for abandoning him near the half way point. He even grills him for it but it’s instantly forgotten when Doom appears. It’s like “Yeah I know I hated you but we gotta team up for our Power Ranger fight in a quarry!”

Another tiresome aspect about this whole mess, is this is another comic book movie that makes the ill advised decision to emulate the now incredibly dated Dark Knight trilogy. To the Chris Nolan fans in the audience, please relax I’m sure he’s a nice man but I find his film making and films about as pretentious as one of Lady Gaga’s albums… Or Lady Gaga herself.

“Nolaning” as I’ve come to call it, is when you try to make something fantastical or surreal either scientifically correct or as realistic as possible. Yet this mainly works for Batman or perhaps Punisher, for they’re just grumpy bastards in black body armour. No pesky super powers to explain and ruin your gritty/angsty realism, yet I felt that hinders the villains for they need to be larger than life for the hero to overcome.

Taking the FF and have them “Nolanised” is a laughable concept when you consider one of your characters looks like a rock formations nutsack! The very nature of how they got their powers was forced and contrived, also it didn’t make a lot of sense. So Doom stuck his hand into the “Mountain Dew” and started a chain reaction, so his contamination kinda made sense but the others didn’t “Do the Dew” so to speak and were back inside the teleport machine (I know it has an official name but I could care less) so it makes even less sense. Not to mention when they went to the “Planet Zero” (laziest name ever) Sue didn’t even go with them. So I began to ask myself “I’m dying to see them pull any excuse out of their ass on this one!” yet she got her powers becauuse.... I’m not sure how she got her powers to be honest. Did the energy wave follow them home? If so are there MORE people with super powers now? Again, setting up sequels for movies nobody is going to be invested to watch (considering Fox has cancelled plans for Fant4stic 2)

The justification of their powers felt as forced as the reasons they’re all together. Ben only goes to Planet Mega Man Zero cus Reed “wanted him there” while Johnny becomes friends with Reed “just cause” and Sue slowly shows affection for Reed “just cause!” and Doom despises Reed..... You know "just cause!"

They expect you know everything about the FF to just go along with it… SO WHY ARE YOU DOING YET ANOTHER ORIGIN STORY IF YOU KNOW THAT WE KNOW THIS SHIT ALREADY!??

"The more you know!"

The director has given the cast NO DIRECTION to speak of and the actors feed their lines with no emotion and as lifeless as possible. I think Kate Mara would make a great GPS in all honesty. Sticking with Sue for a second, her backstory on why her brother is black is a simple “oh I was adopted” in the most throwaway remark you can make. Even the winks and nods to FF fans were about as forced and painful as the ones seen in the shitty Robocop reboot.

Speaking of which, the tiresome military industrial complex reared its ugly head again. Why does everything need to be “WE CAN SURE WEAPONISE DIS SHEET TO FIGHT DEM TURRISTS!” with you America? Ben Grimm has no business fighting (and even killing) ISIS as I do shagging Anita Sarkiseen (if she offered I wouldn’t say no)

The only characters that makes sense for that scenario is both Iron Man and Captain America. I thought we were out of this creepy phase? This creepy phase of wanking off Uncle Sam by having super heroes as government lackeys to fight terrorism. Clearly Fox didn’t get that memo, which kinda makes it insulting since they didn’t pull that shit with the X-Men franchise.

A more convincing plot would have been the FF fighting the Skrulls or exploring deep space, instead of another half assed reboot story that nobody truly asked for! Surely you can more than just r*ping Doctor Doom’s corpse again…


Which brings us to the main event.

Doctor Doom.

Holy shitballs, how do you manage to fuck up the greatest Marvel Villain of all time (get fucked Magneto!) by turning him into a corpse that bleeds Mountain Dew and has a cape made out of pants?

And what is this obsession with making Doom a guy with metal skin and lightning powers? Is it really difficult to just have a guy in a pimped out armour suit with gadgets and sorcery? Everything about Doom in this movie is a walking contradiction to his comic book counterpart.

Doom isn’t interested in government secrets, he wishes to keep Latvaria save from the governments of the world.

By extension, Doom doesn’t want to destroy the world either, he wishes to save us all… In his own fucked up kinda way.

Doom isn’t a hacker, he is a Monarch.

Doom didn’t go to college to build space bridges, he was asked to join but was secretly trying to save his mother trapped in Hell because of Mephisto.

Doom doesn’t have Super Powers, he learned sorcery to honour his mother and science to honor his father.

In fact, the only aspect they got right with this character is his European background and the name… Just so they could crack an unfunny (and incredibly dated) Borat reference.

I can hear people say “BUT DOOM IS LIKE, A BADASS IN THIS MOVIE!!!” being a badass doesn’t mean shit if you can’t get your source material correct. Sometimes you can BE a badass by doing very little or not throwing down all the time. A fact George Lucas should have remembered about Yoda in those Star Wars prequels.

Honestly, this is a step down from the 2005 version. So from Niptuck to “dumb fuck” in the span of seven years. That is kinda pathetic Fox, it really is.

By the final battle, I literally felt like walking out 3 times. I’ve never wanted to walk out on a Marvel movie ever… Not even X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

As someone who found enjoyment in TMNT2, Lost World: Jurassic Park, Bayformers, Space Jam, Amazing Spider-Man 1 and even Batman & Robin…. This is easily the worst movie of 2015. I haven’t even seen Pixels and even that looks more pleasing than this 2008 Nolan styled bullshit which is REALLY showing it’s age now!

Fox and the pinheads are all playing the blame game on this turd, but who is really at fault? Is it Trank’s fault for walking onto the set drunk? Is it the casts fault for not taking the initiative and improvised? Is it Chris Nolan’s fault for his continued existence? Is it Fox's fault for not respecting the comics and just phoned it in with a "we made this so we can keep the rights!" movie? Is it Marvel’s fault for rolling it’s sleeves up and showed these Tommy Knockers how to actually do these kind of films?

…. I’ll blame me, for talking myself into watching it.

PLEASE don’t watch this, go and watch the 2005 movie again. That had a semi naked Jessica Alba in it… if you’re into that kinda thing (I like better looking women tbh)


So, I can see the headlines now.

“FOX INVITES MARVEL INTO THE FANTASTIC WORLD OF THE FANTASTIC FOUR.”

Or more realitically "FANTASTIC 4 REBOOT #3.... BECAUSE FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHY!!"