FANTASTIC FOUR 2015

Rebooting a franchise that has never been popular and successful is a mixed challenge. One, you have to shed the negative baggage that has been generated by the past, but on the other hand, you do not have to handle the burden of huge expectations you would have to face when rebooting a Superman or a Spiderman. So here we have Fantastic Four, a superhero franchise that has never realized its potential, being rebooted.

The origin story remains mostly unaltered here. Only the specifics change. Here too we have a few genius youngsters attempting to push the frontiers of science. If it was space in the previous edition, here we are looking at alternate dimensions and limitless energy that is waiting to be harnessed. There is not much new that is added in here and therefore nothing much that is to be said or that can act as a spoiler.

Getting down to the bare fact of whether this new attempt at making Fantastic Four is successful or not; there is not even a brief passage in this new version that looks like it might be better than the previous one. It starts off on a serious and slow note and continues in the same vein almost its entire running length. The fact that you already know what is going to happen does not help matters at all. But, what one cannot understand about this Fantastic Four version is why it feels this compulsion to be grim and serious all the time. Is someone trying to be Nolan or is this an attempt to show that this is not child’s play? Whatever be the reason, the end result is that watching the film turns out to be a dreary experience as the story unfolda and movea towards the final confrontation.

It is the fine tuning of the characters and the moments and the interestingly set up confrontations that could have saved the movie. But sadly, none of that happens. The characters lack the depth that would have given them an identity, the emotional connects are almost absent, the cast looks more like a bunch of hopeful actors than promising performers and the final confrontation fails to evoke any excitement.

It doesn’t hel;p matters that the main antagonist makes his entry only well into the final 30 minutes of the movie. And within minutes of his arrival, we have the final confrontation. The antagonist isn’t given enough time to build his identity or explain his motives and reasons. Either due to the lack of a budget or imagination, the final showdown between the four and the transformed villain looks uninspiring and the pep talk given by the one of the Fantastic Four is as old as the hills and makes you yawn instead of giving you goosebumps. And, the art work that went into shaping the look of the ‘other dimension’ looks cheesy at best. The epilogue to the final set piece is perhaps the brightest part of the movie. This is the first and only time the movie looks bright and has any cheer at all. Perhaps that gives us some hope for the sequel, if that does happen at all.

Fantastic Four tries hard, perhaps too hard, and ends up missing out on one of the most important things a superhero movie must have – fun! The older version looks much better now.

Too grim, too slow, no fun

2/5