Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A BIT OF HISTORY: Decades ago, Marvel Comics was in the brink of bankruptcy. In order to acquire some quick cash to get themselves back up they sold the film rights to their properties to several movie studios. Many of those sales resulted in films of average quality at best, while some were never actually used. A particular example in-between was the Fantastic Four license. Producer Roger Corman owned the rights, and they were about to expire because the studio had never made the film. Instead of letting the rights expire and revert to Marvel, the studio decide to quickly make a film based on the franchise. Due to the way the laws work, they only had to MAKE the film, not release it, and that's precisely what they did. With a budget of (even back then) the low figure of $1 million they set to work on the film. Shady as they were, they didn't even tell the cast the film was never to be released (though some people claim the intention of release existed at some point), and the film was made in a period of a bit over three weeks in 1992. And the public never got to see it, until several years later some bootleg copies started to surface. This film was the very definition of an "ashcan copy", which is a film that's made exclusively to keep the rights, without care for the quality of the product. And now, a bit more than two decades later, history repeats itself. While Fox has owned the film rights to the franchise for a while, and they made a couple of films based on it before, this is the first time where you can see for yourself that care for the product is something that never even entered the mind of the studio. For better or worse, in the previous two films made by Fox, you can see that they at least tried to cast actors who resembled the characters and at least paid attention to the tone of the source material. Those films failed in the eyes of the public for being poorly written, not for lack of trying. This one, though, shows that keeping the rights was not just the studio's priority, it was the only thing they cared about. THE FILM: The, ahem, "plot" of the film goes like this: a young brilliant student called Reed Richards discovers the means to interdimensional teleportation. Joined by a group of scientists and his best friend, he travels to a faraway land called Planet Zero, where an accident seems to kill one of the team's members (Victor Von Doom) and propels their machine back with a wave that gives the rest of the members strange powers. Richards' body can stretch like rubber, Johnny Storm can set his body ablaze and fly, his sister Susan can turn invisible and project forcefields, and Richards' friend Ben Grimm's body has turned into living rock, making him super strong and virtually invincible. After this accident, Richards escapes while the rest of the team is taken by the government, where they're trained as soldiers, using their abilities in covert missions. Richards is found and recruited back into the team to rebuild their machine, which is used carefully by a new group, where they find the still living Doom. He is then brought back to Earth, where he escapes custody and uses his own newfound powers in an attempt to destroy the planet to sustain his own new world, Planet Zero. ANALYSIS: Now, I know I'm making this sound far more interesting, action-packed and fun than it actually is, so let me elaborate to make sure you understand why it's not. There's no characterization in this film. Characters do things without motives (or with stupid ones), and if you ask anyone to define one of the character's personality without looking at the source material, they'll be dumbfounded. The film is strictly plot driven (that is, things happen because the plot demands them, wheter they make sense or not), and since the plot is almost nonexistent, things go wrong really fast. Maybe you think there's a reason for all four members of the team to be there at the moment of the accident other than "Oh, crap we forgot there were supposed to be four of them!". Perhaps you believe Doom has a valid reason to turn evil and try to destroy everything other than "Eh, let's say he feels like it". You might believe there's a reason for Richards to go away and return to the lab in the middle of the film other than "This film needs to be longer than half an hour, darnit!". You'd be wrong in all accounts, then. Remember, this film only had to be made. They didn't have to try to make it good. Another problem is the change in tone. The Fantastic Four stories were always lighthearted, full of fun and exploration, and there's none of that here. They purposely made the tone "dark and gritty" because it's the current fad, but this is one of the franchises where it absolutely doesn't fit. Granted, the writing is terrible, so it wouldn't work even if it wasn't a Fantastic Four film, but still. You get the feeling that the film is embarrased of the source material, yet at some points it's far sillier and less realistic. Yet another problem is the acting. There are genuinely talented people here, and they all behave like wood planks. It's obvious they have no interest, no one's having any fun. Special Effects are OK for the most part, but character and costume design is generic at best and absolutely aneurysm-inducingly hideous at worst. The major problems, though, are the pacing and running time. A comic book film needs good pacing, and this film drags A LOT. Hell, you only have one, read it, ONE major action scene. And when I say "major" I mean, "longer than a minute". Most of the film is people talking in cliches interspersed with more people talking in even more cliches. Once in a while there's a few seconds of action here and there, and it's not until, no joke, the last ten minutes or so that the villain is introduced and the conflict starts. There are a bunch of scenes shown in the trailers that are not present in the film, and in the one *snort* big action scene only three of the heroes do something to defeat the villain. Taking into account all that, the film would have beneffited from a longer running time. It would have helped the characterization a bit (Susan and Ben don't even talk to each other in the entire film). On the other hand, it probably would have turned out even worse. Remember the film is full of padding because clearly they had no idea what to fill it with. BEHIND THE SCENES: There have been a lot (and I mean A LOT) of production problems with this film, even before the director was chosen. Once Josh Trank took the job, many other problems started. The behind-the-scenes drama of this film would make a fine documentary and it would undoubtedly be much more interesting, fun and full of action than the actual movie. Who's at fault here? Trank? Fox? Clearly both. The studio wanted to make a cheap film quick, so they cast a director based on his apparent ability to do that. Trank, on the other hand, seemed that he bit much more than he could chew. There was a lot of controversy over the casting of Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, as he is a black actor and Storm is a blond white kid. People who complained were (mostly) unfairly accused of racism (it's like the press never heard about fans complaining about casting), but the truth is that a) Jordan was cast because he was friends with Trank, b) the studio agreed with the decision because if anyone complained about anything related to the film they could accuse them of racism (which, sadly, worked) and c) the film could have had the blondest, whitest kid in the world and it'd still be absolute garbage, so all the controversy is pointless. Granted, once in a while you'll find someone claiming this particular bit of casting is what sank the film. Do your best to ignore those people. There were many signs that this film's quality wasn't going to be up to par (or up to anything but someone's hole, for that matter), but those were all ignored because every time someone said anything bad about the film they were labeled as racist. There was a point, though, where they couldn't be ignored anymore. The reviews of the film were put on embargo until release day, which is a bad sign 100% of the time. The reports about problems behind the scenes were so bad that Josh Trank lost his job as director of the Star Wars spinoff film. The very day of release pretty much everyone involved with the film did their best to disown it, even though up until that very moment they were praising it. The director and writer of the film claimed their version was very different from what was released. This is clearly true, since we can see the trailer had a bunch of scenes that aren't even hinted at in the movie. Yet... curious how up until release day they didn't mention it. Well, it's not curious, they obviously wanted to keep their jobs, but generally it takes a few years for cast and crew to disown a film (it took several years for Harrison Ford to say anything bad about The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, for instance), but the fact that these people did it inmediately is telling. CLOSING THOUGHTS: Please, PLEASE don't watch this film. Don't pay for it, that's obvious, there are much better things to spend your money here. Amazon has a fantastic (tee hee) selection of films you can watch instead. Chances are picking any one at random you'll find one with more quality. But don't pirate it either. If you do, they'll just blame piracy for the lack of revenue instead of lack of quality. If you MUST see it, wait until home video release and then search the garbage bin of a clueless buyer, where you're most likely to find the disc, where not even raccoons will want anything to do with it. If what you want to see is a good Fantastic Four film, I recommend Pixar's "The Incredibles". The Fantastic Four is a very, very fun, entertaining and imaginative comic book, and it pains me to see people believing it can't be successfully adapted into film only because it just so happened that every attempt to do it has been poor. In the right hands, this could be a wonderful film franchise. Obviously, Fox's hands are the wrong ones, so don't give them any money, and make sure they know it's their fault. One day, hopefully, the franchise will reach the hands of someone who cares, and we finally get the film we and the Fantastic Four themselves deserve.