So I actually haven’t done one of these in a long while , but--I’ll be honest--I used up all my post planning time watching Fantastic Four,...

Movie Review: Fantastic Four

Alexa Mintah

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So I actually haven’t done one of these in a longwhile, but--I’ll be honest--I used up all my post planning time watching Fantastic Four, and I didn’t want the time to go to waste, so I figured, hey, why not just make it blogging research.

Description:

After transporting themselves to an alternate universe, four young people develop incredible powers and must learn to tame both their new abilities and themselves in order to defeat supervillain, Dr. Doom.

Review:

I’ve heard that this movie got a lot of bad ratings, but really, I don’t think it deserved them. I mean, I can kind of see why people didn’t like some parts (I’ll explain more about those later), but for the most part, I really liked this movie: it wasn't a masterpiece; but it was entertaining, it had some intense fight scenes, some cool science-y stuff, and just a touch of the Marvel humor that we all know and love (though it wasn't as funny as most MCU movies).

I think the problem came because, even though it is a good movie, it didn’t quite deliver what the people asked for: Fantastic Four is only an hour and a half, and the first hour or so is just setup: the Fantastic Four meeting, building their interdimension-y thingy, gaining their powers, learning to use their powers; but it’s only the last 20 minutes or so that have the Fantastic Four actually fighting with their fantastic powers. Because of that, the climax felt a little rushed. It wasn’t bad, but they could’ve done so much more to make it good--namely further develop the villain’s character, explain more about his powers, and deal with all the emotions that had to be running high in that honestly heartbreaking situation.

As I thought more about it, I realized I felt the same about the character of Ben “The Thing” Grimm. I attached to him immediately, dubbed him unarguably my favorite character, and proceeded to dream up all sorts of fanfictions where things went better for him (because seriously, he did get the short end of the stick). But as I was thinking about the movie later, I realized I didn’t even know why he was my favorite. I mean, there was nothing bad about him, but, because half the film was science-y setup to go to the alternate dimension, Ben actually wasn’t in the movie much. The others got to spend a lot of time onscreen together, so it was easy to get a feel for who they actually were and how they’d work as a team; but with Ben, he checked in in the beginning, popped back up around the middle, and kinda hung around until the end. I guess I glimpsed a couple of cute traits, and basically adopted him off of what I assumed him to be: identical to every other outsider-bad-background-best-friend I’d ever heard of. The kid who isn’t actually into what his brilliant bestie is into, but he’s hufflepunk loyal, so he hangs around and helps out whenever he can. 

Now if Ben was just the best friend, I don’t think that would’ve necessarily been a problem with the movie. But because he’s actually one of the title characters, they should’ve done a lot more with his character; I should’ve gained a better feel for who he was, what made him, the Fantastic Four’s Benjamin Grimm, unique and likeable--instead of having to group him with a bunch of “his type” of charries based on the few attributes I glimpsed.

All-in-all, though, I did enjoy the movie, and I’d give it about 3 1/2 stars out of 5. Whether or not I’d recommend it, though, would depend on your love for superheroes and your sensitivity to language, disturbing images, and violence, all of which make their faire share of appearances throughout the movie.

So have you watched this Fantastic Four? What about the old version, with Captain America as the Human Torch? What’s your favorite superhero movie or best friend side character (I have way too many so don’t even ask ;) ). Hope you enjoyed the post and can’t wait to see you in the comments!

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