Fantastic Four The Fourth Try!
Once upon a time a very excitable young Freddy was told about a new movie called Chronicle. Upon viewing it, he loved the interactions and relationships between the characters which made what would otherwise be another generic superhero rip off into a beautiful character driven piece of adolescence given power beyond their imaginations. Freddy's first thought was, "Wow this Josh Trank guy could do an amazing Fantastic Four movie! Dane Dehaan's character was basically Victor Von Doom!" Tread carefully my son and be careful what you wish for...
Cut to 2015! It is a time of many great heroes rising from both DC and Marvel, yet there are some properties still held by the maniacal Fox Studios! We were spoon fed brightly colored sometimes fun, but mostly angering Fantastic Four flicks three times at this point. One film made simply to maintain the rights and never to be released to the public and two that were made with careful craftsmanship that really shouldn't have been released to the public. I'll let you in on a secret, the better one was done by Roger Corman, master of cheap and the other two had Jessica Alba and a planet eating cloud. Young Freddy's wish had come true and indeed there was to be a Josh Trank Fantastic Four film! However from day one there were production problems. Trank apparently was a horror to work with often never speaking to the actors and acting quite solitary to the point where the producers had to step in and finish the film themselves! Then came the visuals released to the public of who was playing who and what the film would look like. Chiefest complaints being that actors were too young and the racial swapping of the Human Torch was wrong. Whilst I agree they are too young, the racial swap did not affect me as much, as long as Michael B Jordan portrayed Johnny Storm. In the end, that's all I wanted. All the actors to properly represent these characters that have been around so long and are truly Marvel's first family. 
Source material aside. This isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be, but this film also doesn't deserve too much praise. The first half of the film is executed pretty decently. We discover a young Reed Richards as he attempts to build a teleporter in grade school along with his newfound friend at the junk yard, Ben Grimm. This opening was one of my two favorite parts of the movie. The build up of the two kids and their attitudes towards their situations in life are done quite well and it is a fun way to introduce the biggest component of the movie which is the teleporter. Also for me it was like watching a sequel to Joe Dante's Explorers! Young Reed Richards is like a combo of River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke in this flick trying to build some amazing piece of technology far beyond any normal child's comprehension and young Ben Grimm is the little badass junkyard kid exactly like in the Explorers! Then we're in high school and Reed and his assistant Ben are entered in the science fair with their teleporter and just as the teachers deny them Franklin and Sue Richards who work for the government stroll in and put Reed in charge of their teleportation project. Come to find out Victor Von Doom (Glad he wasn't some stupid cyber terrorist like the original reports) built the teleporter and Reed perfected it. Victor is not pleased. Then out of nowhere, we get Johnny Storm drag racing as he wrecks his car and Franklin his father tells him that if he wants his car back he has to help build the teleporter. We get a bunch of montages of Sue, Reed, Johnny and Victor as BFFs building the machine and then Victor hates Reed after seeing him laugh with Sue and the teleporter is built. Yeah that all happens really quickly like that. They test it with a monkey and the machine works, of course big brother government says they're going to send astronauts through the teleporter instead of them so our heroes decide to get drunk and try it out themselves before the government can take it from them. Ben gets brought back into the picture because Reed drunkenly says he needs him there because they're best friends. They go through the teleporter, they touch something, everything goes to hell and they all get their powers in horrific ways as Victor is left in the other dimension being burned alive by Green flame. This all really happens hodgepodge-style.
The transformation is my second favorite part of the movie. It is horrifying. Ben is pelted and buried by space rocks! Johnny is engulfed in flames screaming! Reed and Sue don't really get much unfortunately. Sue gets a backlash from the teleporter and all of a sudden starts turning invisible. Reed's power didn't really get a reason either, but he starts crawling out from under a piece of wreckage only to realize his body never left the wreckage as he keeps stretching and looking back in horror. These scenes reminded me of what Marvel was built upon. The horrors of technology when man messes with things he shouldn't. Very appropriate for Marvel's first heroes seeing as before them Marvel produced monster comics.
While I make fun of how quick all this transpires and how random it is, I still did not think this film merited that much hate. On it's own it shakily works as a movie and was somewhat enjoyable to this point. The powers come in and the movie kind of falls apart. As I said the discovery of the powers and what they've become was one of my favorite parts, but then the movie just gets really boring. The government becomes the main antagonist as Reed goes into hiding and the other three become whiny, pouty tools for the government. This is where possibly the age of the actors hinders the movie because the characters in turn are really young and come off like whiny teenagers. Johnny Storm is no longer a smart ass, but a jackass with Daddy issues and insecurities about himself. Ben Grimm becomes a killing machine for covert government operations brooding constantly. Reed is nowhere to be found and when he is found he is doing something that goes nowhere in the film. Sue is the best part, only because she seems smarter than everybody else and focuses on controlling her powers. She might be my favorite in the film as the visuals for her powers are amazing and look as if they are done practically with wire work as she flies around in her force fields. She is also the most mature and least angering out of the bunch. Kate Mara I salute thee! 
After all the pouting and whining the four are reunited to try and find a cure. Obviously let's send a bunch of other people through the teleporter! This time they bring back Victor who looks just terrible. His design is so bizarre. All of a sudden he has the powers of Magneto and goes crazy trying to kill everything. It was like the writers read the original Secret Wars where he gets the Beyonder's powers and said, "Oh! What if we did that, but he is an untrusting little brat who reads too many existentialist books!?" Then we get the lamest fight sequence ever. My play by play? Dr. Doom falls down a whole and the lamest use of the phrase, "It's Clobberin time!" We also get the lamest way to name a superhero team ever. As they repeat over and over again, "There's four of us." and Reed makes Ben repeat the word fantastic. Get it guys? They're the Fantastic Four.
First half is decently solid. The problem is the actors are definitely not the characters in any way shape or form. I don't believe it's the actors fault. There are some scenes where the chemistry and characters are there. Then there are other scenes where those characters go away and become someone else. That the blame on Trank. You can tell some scenes were directed by different people and that's a big component to why this film fails as a narrative. Some of it's done miraculously well, but a lot if it seems phoned in and generic which leaves much of the movie to be very boring. Victor Von Doom is one of the greatest villains of all time with an amazing origin story. Why do they keep insisting on giving him super powers? He's a mad scientist in a badass suit of armor who speaks in the third person and screams, "Richards!" a lot. This Doom had no rhyme or reason and was Magneto cranked up to eleven. Kids let me tell you that in this movie there is no ever lovin' blue eyed Thing, but there is a orange rock dude with no pants. All I can say is one of two things needs to happen. For the sequel get a good director who will see the whole thing through or be sensible and give the thing to Marvel. Fox you did it for Daredevil and look how awesome that was! For making me remember my love for the Explorers, giving me a cool horrific Marvel moment and for Kate Mara not sucking like her cast mates, this gets a Fantastic 2.5.
