Fantastic Four
(2015)
(SPOILERS) The hatchets seemed to be out for the Fantastic Four reboot from the get-go,
with antagonistic mumblings about the liberties director Josh Trank was taking
with the source material, then the welter of rumours over a troubled production
leading to widespread prophecies of (doctor) doom and a salivation over the
property’s potential return to the Marvel fold if the box office went tits-up.
So the post mortem on why this is a disaster was pretty much written even
before its release. Which is a shame, as it isn’t really that bad and even has
quite a bit going for it.
Even for being an (not
again) origins tale and a dour and
po-faced one at that (see also X-Men),
Fantastic Four feels tonally quite
fresh. Trank has taken a different tack to the bright and breezy Marvel
tradition (of which Fantastic Four is
generally seen as the exemplar, reflected in the previous big screen iteration,
although the recent Ant-Man is the
absolute definition of a lightweight superhero movie) and I can see that if
you’re a dedicated follower of the foursome you may well take serious issue
with the seriousness of his picture. Trank’s coming from a different place to
the self-important grimness of the DC movies; he doesn’t really even have the
conviction to honour the Fantastic Four as superheroes per se (which is why the
ending, where these traits are enforced, is a really awkward gear change).
His tack (the screenplay is courtesy of Trank, Jeremy Slater
and Simon Kinberg) derives from the same “What would the effects be of such powers?”
two-edged sword starting point he previously explored in his really very good Chronicle, infusing the picture with
foreboding at not just their potential for misuse but aslo the side effects of
the powers themselves. And he wasn’t kidding with his invocation of Cronenberg.
The opening sequence (taking place all the way back in
2007!) could be Dante’s Explorers
played straight (one thing Trank doesn’t exhibit, perhaps surprisingly for
someone allegedly partial to Mary Jane, is a capacity for a good giggle) as
young Reed Richards develops a teleportation device. Flashing forward, he’s transformed
into Miles Teller and is talent spotted by Reg E Cathy’s Dr Franklin Storm, who
sets him to work with his daughter Sue (Kate Mara), son Johnny (Michael B
Richards) and wayward prodigy Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell). When their
experiment is a success, transporting life to and from a parallel dimension
(the imaginatively named Planet Zero) and it looks as if it will be taken out
of their hands and sold to NASA (goddam NASA!), Reed, Johnny, Victor and Reed’s
childhood friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) take a jaunt to the planet and, of
course, physiognomy-changing events ensue.
I rather liked that the picture takes its time to establish its
scenario and characters, although it seems many have found this rather boring.
Trank is intent on establishing a certain rigour and verisimilitude to his
storytelling, however at odds that may be with the source material. That’s not
to say there aren’t some serious problems; the dialogue is frequently clumsy
and obvious, and the character beats can be crude or clichéd (Johnny’s a
hot-headed Fast & Furious fan,
Victor has dropped out and lives in a garage, unable to locate a razor amidst
his technological wizardry).
But there’s an admirable sense of aiming for something
tonally different. Sure, we follow their preparations through customary
montage, and there’s never any real finesse, but the trappings of science
fiction/exploration do give the picture something of an Altered States meets The
Andromeda Strain by way of Spielberg vibe. And the actual trip is good
stuff, in an early ‘80s alien-planet-on-an-obvious-sound-stage kind of way.
The strongest aspect comes when they return and all hell
breaks loose in their upset bodies. This
kind of 12A body horror may not be in keeping with the upbeat bent of the
comics, but it handles such themes much more astutely than, say, the recent Robocop remake (which boxed itself into
an existential corner it then couldn’t get out of). Sure, it drops the ball in
having Ben (apparently) sweepingly come to terms with his craggy form by the
end credits, but there’s a palpable sense of loss and mutilation perpetrating his
unwieldy form, one that welds itself to other objects and even himself. We
never do find out if the Thing has a rock winky (one assumes not or he’d wear
briefs, so that’s another thing for Ben to be down about). Reed’s distended
limbs could easily have looked ridiculous and goofy, but his first realisation
in particular takes on the kind of queasy terror of coming to realise one has
been in a terrible accident and life will never be the same again.
It’s a nice touch too that Reed, the nominal leader, turns
tail and flees (one expects him to have come up with some plan to save his
friends, but it seems he’s merely mired himself in guilt and self-loathing during
the subsequent the year gap). Ben’s dalliance with the military carries an
agreeably cynical vibe (and an Ang Lee’s Hulk
moment with a tank), while Johnny’s fierce defence of the value of his skills
provides an effective counterpoint. Sue’s rather one note in all this (she
doesn’t even get to go to Planet Zero); she barely uses her invisibility and mostly
just flies about in an energised hamster ball.
Bell and Jordan are fine (there
were concerns about the former’s vocal performance as the Thing, but as a
non-purist I had no issue with it), Mara rather forgettable (which is better
than being annoying, my usual response to her performances). It’s only Teller
who really makes a strong impression, particularly in embracing across Reed’s more
Aspergic literalness.
As for Victor, Kebell is always good value, but he’s unable
to extract much nuance from Victor’s student activist rants (I did like his
line about their experimenting be used for waterboarding in the fourth
dimension). He goes from someone protesting the debasement and destruction of
the world to one who wants to destroy it, presumably for the sake of a de
rigueur CGI whirlwind finale.
The Thing’s design is pretty good, but the same can’t be
said of mutated Doom. The concept is suitably icky (his survival suit has fused
to his body), but he more accurately resembles someone in a Marilyn Manson
Halloween mask. His return, head-splattery rampage and subsequent portal
gubbins attempt to suck the Earth dry translates as the desperate manoeuvring
of a studio distrusting what they had and attempting to sexy (or pixelate) it
up. It’s rushed, messy, semi-incoherent, and what is coherent is cheesy in the extreme. Reed gives his guys a pep
talk along the well-worn lines of, Victor’s “stronger than any of us. He’s not stronger than all of us”.
The ending is also rather abrupt in establishing the team in
their new base with a clumsily brandished announcement of their super-brand. It
made me conscious that such clenched-teeth cheerfulness is probably a Fantastic Four movie I don’t want to
see. I lay most of the blame for the pervasive mediocrity of the previous Fox Fantastic Fours at the door of Tim Story
(Chris Evans was far more appropriately cast there than as Captain Bland), but
there’s also something rather banal about their primary coloured family values
(particularly so when you have a character trapped inside a grotesque shell but
in entirely the wrong group and tonal environment to really express his pain).
Tim Blake Nelson is very watchable as lizard-eyed Dr Allen;
any chance he’ll reprise his role as Samuel Sterns from The Incredible Hulk some day? I also liked the Marco
Beltrami/Philip Glass score (I’m thinking that’s more the Glass side of the
equation than the Beltrami), which lends the proceedings a suitably
tantalising, disturbing new-horizons quality.
I’m not sure Josh Trank really needed to follow Chronicle with something that charted a
similar course of the dark side of being superheroically endowed, particularly
when the result offer diminished returns (not to mention the unfortunate fall-out
with regard to his Star Wars duties).
But his directorial chops are still much in evidence. This is visually a much
more interestingly composed superhero movie than… well, most of them aren’t all that (I
guess Man of Steel, even if it kind
of overdoes its handheld look). Hopefully he won’t be consigned to permanent director
jail as a result, as the biggest failings of Fantastic Four are the eschewing of its more grounded and interior
canvas for the CGI blur of the final 20 minutes (likely studio mandated; Trank
tweeted the possibly optimistic self-appraisal, “A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received
great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though”).
If we’re to assume Fantastic
Four doesn’t make the readies to warrant a sequel, it will be interesting
to see how Fox attempts to integrate them into the X-franchise (one well overdue a makeover; First Class was a first class false dawn but alas we’re back to Bryan
Singer’s late-‘90s leather fetish); it would be more desirable for Trank’s
aesthetic to seep into the X-Men than
vice versa.
