I had to. It was like a force drawing me into the theater the unanswered question: how badly would they screw up a comic that I loved so dearly when I was a kid. The answer, unfortunately, is pretty badly.
This is, like most first movies adapted from comics, an origin story. How the Fantastic Four came to be, well, fantastic. The details really aren’t important (cosmic storm, faulty shields, genetic mutations that follow along the lines of expressed personality traits), what is important is that in their rush to bring this film to the screen, it’s shepards at Marvel managed to kill off the one thing that makes Fantastic Four different from all the other big-name comics: the portrait of a dysfunctional family.
Human and driven by their emotions, Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), and Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) are, despite their powers, the epitome of messy human behavior. They argue; they play each other’s weaknesses just for the fun of it. The problem is that in this adaptation, it’s all proforma. The entire film exists to kick off a franchise, which it may not be able to do considering the flaws.
Let’s start with the miscasting of Jessica Alba as Susan Storm (Dina Meyer, please call your agent). It’s not that she’s not easy on the eyes, more, it’s that she’s just not substantial enough to carry the role. Sue Storm and Reed Richards are supposed to be peers both in age and intellect and Jessica Alba just doesn’t have enough miles on her to make that believable.
The other major problem with this film is the gross mistreatment of one of the most compelling characters in comic-dom. I won’t spoil the ending but save to say that what screenwriters Michael France and Mark Frost do to Ben Grimm cuts out the essence of his moral conflict.
For so many reasons, not to mention the betrayal of my childhood memories, I have to give this movie a one and a half out of five.
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