Fantastic Four (2015)

I didn't write about this film when it came out, because there was so much hate for it at the time that I thought I must have seen a different film from everyone else.

I liked it.

I've seen it 4 or 5 times on Blu-ray since; and I still like it.

There are some reasons why I think many people hated it. Any one of these reasons might put some people off... all of them together hit a critical mass (pun intended).

1) It is very dark

All of the main characters start off pretty unhappy. Reed's family don't understand him - so much so that he wishes he were adopted to explain why he doesn't love them. Ben's family is abusive. Sue's family were presumably massacred in Kosovo. Johnny has a bad relationship with his father - and his mother is never mentioned.

If that wasn't enough, Victor is just one big heap of no fun. Clearly he has a thing for Sue, but we don't know any details of their history, if any, just that he is jealous of Reed when he perceives a relationship developing. And it's not surprising that given the power and the means, he decides to destroy the whole of Earth and live by himself on Planet Zero. You can't get much darker than that.

2) The humour is very dry

A dark film needs some humour to give points of respite. There is plenty of humour in Fantastic Four, but it is very dry and plenty of people, or even entire cultures, might well miss it.

I once tried to explain an English joke to someone from Finland. Unsuccessfully. So I am not going to try and analyse the humour of this film here. You are just going to have to accept that at least one person (me) thought that there were funny parts in this film...

3) Another origin story

At the time this movie came out there was a general antipathy for origin stories. Particularly re-booted origin stories. Marvel Studios had moved on to the next level, as had Fox with the X-men, and even Sony had realised that their next Spiderman film couldn't start again with the origin story.

The origin of the Fantastic Four is so well known that you don't need to tell it again. Even with a different slant. Something happened to give them their powers. What happens next is the interesting part. Sadly we will never find out where this arc goes, as the movie sank so badly that sequels are impossible.

4) A smart woman

Now we are getting to the controversial issues. Unlike the 2005 version, Sue Storm is a strong, smart, independent woman. Remember how she had to take off her clothes to escape the bridge; or how she fretted about her wedding arrangements in the sequel? That Sue was a simple, do as you are told, American gal.

The 2015 version is more equal to Reed than any other man (bar Victor). She plays a key part in the story by finding Reed when everyone else has failed for a year. She isn't just a love interest for Reed - in fact they don't even progress beyond friendship in this movie. And she isn't American...

Some people find smart women threatening.

5) A black man

Perhaps the biggest controversy around this movie was the casting of a black man as Johnny Storm. It was a brave move. If the rest of the movie had been exactly what the masses wanted, then you might, just might, have pulled it off.

But anything out of place gives someone who is consciously, or unconsciously, racist a chance to say "It was bad because of XYZ" when they mean "How can Johnny be black?"

Many people are racists.

6) A mean Ben Grimm

It is quite striking how awesome The Thing is in this film. And how angry he is with Reed, not just for the accident, but for the abandonment afterwards. That seemed very realistic to me.

Compare that with the 2005 version where they tried to convey the same thing, but failed by depicting The Thing as a comedy figure for cheap laughs. Even worse, they turned him back into Ben Grimm so that he could nobly choose to turn back into The Thing to save the day - what rubbish.

7) Josh Trank's tweet

A day before the release, director Josh Trank tweeted "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."

We will probably never know if the studio interference messed up the movie, or if some sanity was restored to a flawed project. Either way, dissing your own movie the day before it is released seems petulant at best.


So there you have it. Fantastic Four is a good bit of entertainment, I thought, and an interesting treatment of the well known characters. Unfortunately there are too many reasons for people to not like it.

I remember the time when all superhero films were terrible, because CGI did not exist and disbelief can only be suspended so far. Maybe that makes me much more tolerant of the flaws in today's movies.