Fantastic Four

After hearing all of the bad press on this one, I finally decided to go see it. And, ya know? It wasn’t THAT bad. It was certainly no Daredevil. When Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) gets a plan to collect radiation from…um…outer space? Actually, I have no clue what the hell he was trying to do. And I’m not so sure the writers did, either, so they just made some shit up. I think I’ll do that, too.

When Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) gets a plan to collect nude pictures of starlets around the world from the vantages of outer space, he goes to his old school “chum” Victor von Doom (Julian McMahon). Vic is an egotistical asshole who happens to have lots and lots of money and a space station at his disposal. So Richard takes his best friend, Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), up with him to be his brawn. Vic makes them take Sue and Johnny Storm (Jessica Alba and Chris Evans, who look nothing like brother and sister). Sue is a pretty brilliant scientist and Johnny is a hotshot pilot who thinks he’s God’s gift to everything.

And, of course, Reed and Sue have a past.

When evil gamma rays hit the station out of the blue, everybody gets special powers. Reed becomes Mr. Fantastic and can squeeze and twist himself into any shape or under any door. Sue becomes the Invisible Girl and can do exactly what her name says. And she can form really strong force fields. Johnny becomes the Human Torch and can light himself or anything else on fire and he’s working on the flying thing. But Ben gets the worst of it. He becomes The Thing. He turns into a big hunk of rock with super strength. His wife leaves him and he becomes the most forlorn of the bunch.

What does Vic get? He gets to turn into a new kind of metal that can take away and create electricity and all kinds of energy. And he becomes the Fantastic Four’s big bad guy.

That’s pretty much the plot of the movie. Dr. Doom isn’t trying to take over the world just yet. He’s just trying to destroy the Fantastic Four because he feels that, because of the foul-up in space, his company became the black hole of money that it now is. He’s also about as in love with Sue as a man like Victor can be.

This book has been a problem for Marvel for years. It was pretty much their first big franchise and is kind of where they started trying to find their footing. It’s extremely popular, but it’s also their only comedy book with lots of elements of a soap opera. There are years of conflict built up between Doom and the Four and even between our heroes themselves.

How do you put all of that into a movie without it seeming a little bit cheesy? Well, apparently you don’t. They sort of tried back in 1994 (although that version, produced by Roger Corman, was never supposed to be released. They made it so that they wouldn’t lose the rights while they figured out how to make a REAL movie of it) and that turned out like ass. (They showed a little bit of that before this one. It was pretty fuckin’ awful.)

This new version has elements of a good movie (pretty good casting, effective special effects), but it fails overall because of the writing. We don’t really get to know the characters before they become their alter egos. I didn’t really care too much about any of them. And there were a lot of cheesy lines that almost work, but not quite.

Director Tim Story (Barbershop and Taxi…the crappy Jimmy Fallon movie, not the awesome tv show), keeps the pace up and doesn’t do a bad job with the material. But I kind of wish they had found someone with more of a visual flair. It was kind of boring in that department. (Although, the building that the Four live in is really cool looking.)

It’s a fun movie. Don’t get me wrong there. It’s worth checking out because everybody seems to be having a pretty good time with it (especially Chris and Jessica) and it’s pretty funny. And it’s cool to watch four people trying to figure out what the fuck to do with their new powers and how to control them. This has to be one of the only super hero stories where the heroes don’t have secret identities. Everyone knows who they are and how they got their powers, and that’s pretty cool.

I just wish that I had gotten to know the characters a little bit better. Or at all.

Fittingly, this is my 400th review. CELEBRATE!