Warning: Mild (as in, Johnson’s Baby Shampoo-level mild) spoilers ahead.
The best way to describe Fantastic Four is that it’s like reading 2/3 of a good book then going to Wikipedia to see how the last 1/3 ends. The movie spends a lot of time building up their characters in the first two acts, giving us snippets of what could have been great portrayals and a good origin story, but sadly there just isn’t that much of a pay-off during the movie’s last act. It didn’t just undershoot its landing, it rushed and landed a whole city away from the airport (possibly somewhere in Cavite or Bulacan).
This is not to say that Fantastic Four is necessarily a bad movie; it’s just a really really “okay” one which squandered its potential for greatness. To elaborate, the movie started off pretty strong showing the Amblin-esque relationship of a young Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Miles Teller) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Jamie Bell) akin to that of Stand by Me or, more recently, Super 8. This then leads to a first act which embraces the whole “new frontier” science aspect of the movie. It actually starts feeling like a space movie where we get introduced to a medley of characters who will “boldly go where no man has gone before.” We get to feel the excitement of exploration; we get a sense of who these characters as individuals. But just like any classic sci-fi tale, there are lines that get crossed – which then leads us to the movie’s second act, which i’d like to call the “Act 2: Body Horror” (cue creepy organ music).
The second act takes cues from sci-fi horror movies, such as The Fly, focusing on the characters, in the aftermath of the accident, as they come to grips with their unwanted transformations. The whole set-up during this part feels very claustrophobic and sterilized, giving mad science/experimentation vibes everywhere . There are multiple cues to the body horror genre showing tropes such as agonized screams as one’s strapped to a cold metal bed, agonized screams coming from the room next door, and more agonized screams from crawling through a tight vent. There’s one particular scene where Miles Teller gives us a good shock as he wakes up to his body freakishly elongated – not a particularly inspiring scenario that screams superhero ( I don’t see any children saying they’d want to be Mr Fantastic any time soon). There’s also The Thing who ends up as Quasimodo/ Frankenstein’s Monster stand-in who loathes his very existence. This is something he was dragged into and one that he particularly blames Reed for. You can feel the amount of disappointment from the subtleties of Jamie Bell’s minimal dialogue. The loss of trust is even more heightened by an action that Reed pulls by the end of the second act.
Up to this point, the whole movie is paced very well. It is really easy to immerse yourself in the story as it unfolds. You actually begin to convince yourself that this may be not just a good movie but actually great one. “The critics may be wrong after all” – the little voice inside your head whispers. But then, as if the director, Josh Trank (Chronicle), looked at his watch and said “Boy, look at the time, I have to get home and catch Pangako Sa Yo,” the movie’s final act kicks everything into sixth gear and accelerates faster than Wile E. Coyete on ACME rocket skates and, just like the cartoon, it all ends disastrously.
The final act of the movie abandons all the build-up it worked had to set during its first hour. The inner turmoil the heroes were experiencing were relegated to the background and instead they were shown already slightly settled in to their new abilities. No more “we are freaks,” “I can’t control my body AHHHHH.” It’s now more of “booyeah, i’m flying AHHHHH.” All that drama for nothing. Enter Doctor Doom (Toby Kebbell) who (without going into the details) has now been demoted into a more disgruntled version of E.T. suffering from a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome. Which is such a shame given how Toby Kebbell interpreted his version of Victor von Doom early into the movie. He portrayed the Fantastic Four arch-nemesis as a loner, brilliant but greatly insecure, who wanted nothing more but to push himself towards greatness way beyond his reach – an idea greatly relatable to anyone who’s dreamed of achieving something but born simply without the privilege to do so. His Doom could have been great only if they would have let his characterization naturally progress and not transform him into an “I will destroy” dialogue spewing cliché.
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Speaking of dialogue, the lines have also taken a huge downward spiral during the last act of Fantastic Four. During the first hour of the movie, there were already tidbits of clichéd scripting but nonetheless they were still forgivable. As the movie approached its end though, it was as if they were intentionally wanting you to cringe. There was an over-use of literary gems such as “He’s stronger than any of us, he’s not stronger than all of us” and shoehorning supposedly crowd-pleasing catchphrases like “It’s clobbering time!” and “Flame on!” The biggest script abomination though comes from how Josh Trank decided to end his whole movie. You’d might want to wait for that to see how Trank just basically threw a “Cartman” at his audience – “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”
The special effects, overall, didn’t help either. Seeing the Human Torch’s (Michael B. Jordan) facial actions not too dissimilar to the rotoscoped animation of A Scanner Darkly and Mister Fantastic awkwardly bouncing around and flailing his punches downgrade the action. Instead of enhancing the big set pieces, these special effects glare the audience. Looking at the characters transform into video game-level CGI versions of themselves make the already short final battle seem even shorter.
With all this said, I actually believe that Fantastic Four could have been a good movie and I am one of the believers of it deserving a sequel. The cast is great, why not utilize them? Hell, an additional 30 minutes could have helped the movie be at least good. Granted the script does have some less than stellar dialogue and some clichéd characterizations even during first two acts of the movie, its tone of discovery blended with its shift into body horror could have outweighed its early minor flaws. It’s just that instead of escalating the storytelling and solidifying the kinks already presented, the last parts of the movie just dropped everything as if it just lost its will to live.
Everyone loves a good underdog story, seeing one overcome all the odds (for this movie, its production woes) and achieve even a glimmer of greatness. Sadly, Fantastic Four is just like one of those characters you see in those “searching for ‘The One'” movie montages where at one point everyone starts to believe that this is just maybe what they’re looking for, but then turns out to be just as big as a disappointment like the rest. Time for somebody to shout “NEEEEXT!”
