Fantastic Four Review

Story: Four young outsiders teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe that alters their physical forms in shocking ways. The four must then team up in order to defend earth from an former friend turned enemy. 

Fantastic Four is a complicated franchise as in the balance between a serious take and a more kid friendly take is hard to balance it seems. 20th Century Fox has had great success in the past with X-men (Days of Future Past took in an estimated 400 mil) but with Fantastic four they have only had mild success but now complete failure. 

I consider their new take on the franchise not a failure but a rough beginning. Their first two attempts were, not bad. Fantastic Four was too kid friendly for its own good so when the sequel with the Silver surfer came, a darker element was implied. But now fan backlash on Galactus made the studio reconsider how to work with the franchise (Galactus was critisized by fans for being nothing more than a space cloud,  sadly the director Tim story did not like putting robots in his films). But enough about past endeavours, how does the new team match up. 

 A realistic placing of the characters the studio's new take on the Fantastic 4 is not as fantastic just average. We get to see Sue use her powers to better effect (she is more of a stronger version than Jessica), Ben Grimm also gets to do some more clobbering this time out and he and Reed (Played brilliantly by Miles Teller) their backstories are fleshed out to give their bond more strength than in the previous two films. 

The main issue, sadly, with the film is its lack of fun and its pacing. The film ends to soon, there is no real build up to the climax and it just needed to really feel more like a superhero film. The fun and humour I found came from the cast, especially Miles Teller and Michael Jordon, those two are very light hearted guys. 

While I am not a huge Fantastic four fan and I am not praising this new adaptation by any means but one thing has to be said, it was an entertaining movie, for me at least. 

Fantastic Four of the new millennium has set up a talented cast with an origins story that does drop the ball here and there, but can easily be fixed by a more fleshed out sequel with more of a focus on the family dynamics. Solid visuals and some solid set pieces don't make Fantastic 4 fantastic but makes it good. 

What they have been getting right though is with Sue Storm making her less invisible and more of a stronger female presence and while Dr. Doom had a horrible costume (weak one in fact) his overall presence was darkly perfect. 

Rating: B-