[Geek Movie Review] Fantastic Four

After the success of Chronicle showed that Josh Trank could handle decent super-heroics on an modest budget, he seemed like an inspired choice to direct the inevitable Fantastic Four reboot over at Fox studios (Fox needs to churn out one of these movies every couple of years or the rights revert back to Marvel Studios and Disney).

Then news broke that one of Chronicle‘s break out stars, Michael B. Jordan, a black actor, was cast as Jonny Storm, The Human Torch; a character traditionally portrayed as white and internet opinion split on whether this was a good or bad thing. The casting of Kate Mara, a white actress as Sue Storm,  Jonny’s sister from the comics, only compounded matters. Add to this rumours that classic villain Viktor Von Doom was to be portrayed as some kind of blogger and that Trank had supposedly left his follow up project, one of the many Star Wars spin-off movies in pre-production, due to his “erratic” behaviour on the F4 set and we would seem to have a perfect recipe for disaster.

So has Trank “ruined this classic comic for everyone?”

Far from it. In fact, despite initially looking like another textbook entry from the school of dark, gritty reboots, the key words that apply to this reboot are “scientific adventure”, “realism”, and even a little old school “body horror”.

The reboot wisely begins with the relationship between Reed Richards and Ben Grim, introducing “Mr. Fantastic” and “The Thing” as schoolchildren when Reed already has some “out there” scientific ideas despite the lack of support of pretty much everyone around him. With Ben’s help, Reed builds what he believes to be a working prototype matter transporter, able to transport small objects anywhere on Earth, and in the process a friendship is formed, Ben’s down-to-earth practicality balancing out Reed’s more tendency to lose himself in his work.

Years later, Reed and Ben meet scientist Franklyn Storm(Reg E. Cathey) and his adopted daughter Sue, who are very interested in his project. The Storm’s have been working on a very similar project, only they’ve figured out that they aren’t transporting objects to somewhere else on Earth but rather to an entirely planet in another dimension, and it looks like Reed has cracked the problem of how to retrieve objects once they’ve been sent.

Before long Reed, Sue and Franklin are working in the Baxter Building on a large sale version of the project, one initially started by a surly Viktor Von Doom (not a blogger), who had to be coaxed back into joining the team,  as did Sue’s wild brother Jonny Storm, who’d rather be building street racing cars than inter-dimensional travel shuttles, even if he is pretty good at it.

Needless to say, Ben is swept back into the group, things go awry and all five young adults are left a little… stranger than they were originally, but Trank has mixed up the origin considerably to keep things interesting.

Changing the details of the accident that created them keeps the audience guessing on when the super-powered Fantastic Four will turn up, and they don’t turn up for quite a while. Trank wisely builds up the characters first before they become superheroes, and even then he keeps the proceedings fresh by introducing a slight tone of body horror (albeit one that elicited laughs instead of fear from some of the audience), a greater role for the government and military, which is to be expected in this day and age. After their transformation some of the main cast are isolated from the others and the plot skips forward a year, nicely building tension between them all, and it all works!

This reboot is engaging, although it could do with slightly snappier dialogue and maybe one or two moments more of levity. The young cast all acquit themselves well, Miles Teller following on his breakout in Whiplash as a Reed who can be dorky, driven and haunted when required. Michael B. Jordan is as charming as he was in Chronicle but with a darker side to him. Kate Mara gets to play a more rounded Sue Storm, one who’s just as competent as her team mates and doesn’t suffer from the annoyingly unreliable power outs of Jessica Alba’s version. As “The Thing” hasn’t been shown much in pre-release featurettes it’s unknown how much of Jamie Bell’s performance is under all that rock, but the combination of voice and effects creates a believable Thing and a version that really gets the tragedy of the character across. You can even hear the “gravel” in his voice.

Toby Kebbell’s Doom comes across a lot more sympathetic than Julian McMahon’s version ever did, and there’s some nice moments between him and Reed where Teller ‘s character is gleefully oblivious to the hostility emanating from Viktor.

Reg E. Cathey and Tim Blake Nelson also provide solid work as the only main adults in the cast.

When they kick in, the special effects are mostly excellent, with only Reed’s stretching powers coming off looking a little ….rubbery.

While Fantastic Four may not, at first, appear to be the comic adaptation that fans were looking for, the previous movies tried that with mixed results. This version is most definitely an origin for our times that reintroduces amazing science adventures to our screens and set things up in a way that could lead to more colourful adventures eventually.

It may not be fantastic but it’s pretty darn good.

Odd thing to note: despite cameoing in other Fox Studio’s Marvel films, I didn’t spot Stan Lee in this, and there’s no now -traditional mid- or post-credits teaser either.

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