User Reviews

Following a failed experiment in space, a group of astronauts gain super powers following exposure to radioactive energy. This exposure gives the astronauts different super powers and doctor Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) is attempting to find a way to reverse the effects of the radiation on his team. However, Doctor Von Doom (who has also been exposed to the radiation) has his own agenda and is intent on using his super powers to try to take down the Fantastic Four.

Given its rather modest 5.7 average user rating I wasn't expecting much here and was actually fearing the worst. However, whilst watching this film I was surprised by how enjoyable I actually found it. The story has quite a lot of depth to it and most of the focus is on how the team cope with the way that the radiation has caused life-changing alterations to their DNA. Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) relishes his new found gift and does everything he can to make sure he's in the limelight - this makes sense as he's painted as a rather arrogant individual right from the start. Evans puts in a good performance and despite the arrogance of his character he does still have some likability about him. On the other end of the spectrum, we've got Ben Grimm (Michael Chilkis) whose DNA has been permanently altered by the radiation due to the fact that he received the most exposure to it. There is a very tender scene with his character at the start of the film where he goes back to see his wife and she can't handle what has happened to him and basically has nothing further to do with him (it seems bizarre that she doesn't even ask what has happened to him and doesn't seem interested in standing by him or helping him out - what a b*tch). Chilkis is also excellent here and gives a nicely balance performance with a character that is ugly and gruff on the outside, but has a real heart of gold on the inside. Alba and Gruffudd make up the other two characters in The Fantastic Four (Sue Storm and Reed Richards respectively) and sadly their characters are not quite as interesting as Ben or Johnny and their performances for me weren't quite as strong. Despite this though, the film provides many funny moments (mostly between Ben and Johnny) and the wonderful camaderie and rather interesting story and exploration of their super powers made this a winner in my book.

The only weak link with this film lay with Von Doom (Julian McMahon) as the villain of the piece and his motivations; he seems to lose it and go berserk because he's jealous that something is going on between Sue and Reed. OK, that's fine, but why then decide to try and kill Ben and Johnny when his issue is with Richards and Storm. Despite a good turn from McMahon, I never really took to him as a villain as I felt that jealousy alone was a rather thin and flimsy reason to justify his barbaric behaviour.

Taking everything into account this is a good film. It's fun, there are some interesting characters here, the exploration of their super powers are interesting and of course the special effects are incredible. It's definitely worth a look.

Title: Fantastic Four

Condensed Storyline: Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, Ben Grimm and Victor Von Doom go up into space to measure comic rays when their ship is struck by them. This leads to them all developing their own individual superpowers. But this leads Reed to work to try and transform them back to normal, but he isn't able to and Dr Doom is able to turn Ben back to normal, but then starts taking them out one by one, mainly because they cost him his company. So the Fantastic Four have to stop him and save the day.

Notable Acting: Just putting this out there first, Chris Evans plays Captain America better than he plays Johnny Storm. Ioan Gruffudd plays Mr Fantastic, and feels like that nerd who has to do the science project for his group while trying to stop them from fighting all the time. Michael Chiklis plays a great Ben Grimm as you can get the feeling that his is trying to come to terms with the way he looks I loved Julian McMahon as Dr Doom, he has that suave sense of evil to him which makes him perfect for a villain, but still a believable villain at that. Jessica Alba as Sue Storm. I felt like she really captured the helplessness and general uselessness of Sue Storm perfectly, while acting as the mother type character stopping Johnny and Ben from fighting.

Noticeable Camera work: What the movie lacks in creative angles, it makes up in creative frame up jobs for the camera, that is always a good sign to see in a cinematographer and movie. We are given a nice birds eye shot once we are introduced to Johnny on his way to the rocket. When Victor shows Sue the Earth from space station we get what looks to be a panning, tilting 130º crane shot, which was beautifully pull off. We get a POV shot so we see things from the view of Ben, but this is a little trick to the audience as they would think that Ben has transformed, but this is a little joke played by Johnny. Establishing shot of the alps when Johnny goes skiing. The shot the follows to him throwing Reed out of a window has him see his reflection which is mutilated so just as he brakes the glass on the floor, the helmet's class case in his office breaks. That is a nice translation shot.

Graphics: The CGI for Johnny's fire was impressive and nicely done at the very least. His fire seemed constant and realistic. Sue's CGI was OK, not really all too impressive as most of that can be done easily with green screen and such. Reed's stretch-armstrong type limbs are decent at worst. Victor's lighting is interesting as it borders on being good and bad at the same time with me.

Costume: The costumes looked quite nice and worked better than other renditions of the suits I've seen, they remind me of the comics as they are that similar. Quite a lot of people have said they disliked how Ben looked as the Thing, most of those other people said it should have been done with CGI. The Hulk in the 2008 movie was done with CGI and people didn't like that, this movie was done in 2005. So chances are the CGI wouldn't have been that good for making Ben look like a pile of walking rocks, even for the budget they had for the movie.

Incorrect Science: Radiation doesn't give you superpowers. When Reed is testing Johnny's fire in a test chamber constructed of titanium, the temperature shown on screen reaches 4000 Kelvin. Titanium melts at 1941 Kelvin, and boils at 3560 Kelvin. This would incinerate the building where they are working. Along with the added fact of no human being able to set them self on fire and stay like that, mainly because the fire would need a fuel source to stay alight. The sun does this by fusion. A human body isn't hot enough for fusion and doesn't have a fuel source. Sue's invisibility is pointless, mainly because she is bending light around her. This would mean that no light is hitting her eyes so this makes her blind. Don't get me started on how Ben's skin turns to rocks or how Reed's limbs can stretch. If Victor used magic to get his powers in the movie I would not question it, but seeing how he didn't, the question is how is he able to harness electricity? And why is his skin slowly turning into metal? Victor's space station must have developed artificial gravity, because they are casually walking around and not floating, we are at least 10 years off physics wise of creating artificial gravity.

Overall Feel: As far as adaptions go, this movie isn't as bad a people are saying it is. Yes, Dr Doom isn't a business man. Yes he got his powers from his mother's witch stuff. Yes his face is suppose to be badly burnt and not metal. Yes Johnny is suppose to have blonde hair and Ben is suppose to have hair in general. Remember the 1994 version? You shouldn't because that was only created so the company could keep the rights to the franchise. That is an example of people not caring or not putting any effort into a movie. This movie is much better than that, sure it messes with the source material, but so did the 2002 movie of Spiderman. That had Mary Jane as the love interest and organic web shooters. But we still love that movie. This movie has its faults and quite a few of them at that, but it is still a great and enjoyable superhero movie which is nicely paced and well written.

It could've been fantastic but unfortunately this movie manages only to pass off as average...

As far as comic book licensed movies go, Fantastic Four did get a lot of things right. First of all they got most of the characters' personalities and relationships right. The Thing and Human Torch's exchanges were very faithful to the source material and did provide the most fun parts of the movie... The costumes were also spot-on as well as the Thing's make up. The special effects guys deserve special praise because the Thing didn't look fake at all. The Human Torch looked cool too...

But unfortunately, the good elements stop here. The movie has huge problems. Its biggest problem is its story. Its far too simple and devoid of any depth. The only thing that provides some substance in the story are the scenes exploring the Thng's situation since he's the one who was hit the worst by the mutation. The problem with the story is that for a Super-Hero based movie, there's pretty much nothing heroic going on. The only times that the F.F. get to act as heroes are when they help people get out of an accident on a bridge, and when they fight Dr. Doom. Other than that they just have fun with their powers or try to find a way to get rid of them... Dr. Doom, the villain, is one of the most under-developed villains of all time and he only appears as his evil masked persona for about 5 minutes towards the end of the movie... The ending too is really disappointing and anti-climactic to say the least. Another problem was the casting. The actors playing the Thing and the Human Torch were both excellent choices for their parts, unfortunately though pretty much everyone else is a bad choice. The guy playing Mr. Fantastic is way too young to play the part of the genius and the team's voice of reason. Mr. Fantastic in the comics is like in his early 50s and this man wasn't even in his early 30s... The same goes for Jessica Alba, although i can't complaint about seeing her for 120 minutes or so in a skin tight outfit but there's no chance in hell she'd pass for a genius in biology. She doesn't even look old enough to have finished college for Pete's Sake. Finally we have Dr. Doom. The problem with the guy playing him is that he doesn't look evil at all... He has to be the most unconvincing villain i have ever seen.

Now i can't say that i wasted two hours of my life watching Fantastic Four. It was quite faun, it was filled with funny scenes and it definitely did have its very good moments and one can't say that it was boring. But after all those excellent comic book movies out there like X-2, Spider-Man and Batman: Begins the bar has been raised high and Fantastic Four certainly didn't have what it takes to go over it. Just your average Super-Hero movie then and to paraphrase Blur's On Your Own: It's not that good but it's not that bad... 5/10

This movie was all over the place, the story was stupid, the character development was crap, the action scenes doesn't make sense, the editing of the movie is horrible.

The movie failed to make you feel sympathy with the characters, you can't identify with any of them, it felt as if you started watching from the middle of the movie.

The action scene on the bridge was amazingly stupid and pointless, the thing causes terrible car wreck on the bridge trying to save someone from killing himself and then the fantastic four all use their powers to save people, that action scene felt all wrong and ridiculous.

The scene with the motocross and the human torch was also pointless.

The movie suffers this tough criticism because it disappointed so many people so much.

Well, you weren't expecting greatness, were you? Regardless of what the wider public might be expecting from Fantastic Four, in internet circles it's been earmarked as the potential stinker amidst a promising summer since the first details leaked online. Unlike successful superhero franchises like X-Men and Spider-man, there's no respected director and no attempt to give the film a thematic depth or real world resonance. Where they had acting heavyweights, Fantastic Four has a couple of notable talents from successful TV series and a couple of almost-stars, with broad appeal but little charisma to bring to the mix. So the first question you might want answered is, "Is it awful?" Thankfully, no. Fantastic Four is simple, rather hollow, occasionally boring and then it's over. But it's hard to deny that, in places, it's also fairly entertaining.

The story, changed from the source, sees five ludicrously-named scientists venturing into space to investigate a large cloud of special effects that has something to do with DNA. The team manage to get all their character back-stories, exposition-based conversations and marriage proposals out of the way in good time, before turning their attention to some rather vital defence shields. Too late, guys. Now you've been hit by the marauding cloud and you're back on earth (there wasn't much budget, it seems, for showing the there-and-back trips... space is but a quick cut away).

The characters quickly discover their powers - team leader Reed Richards can stretch his limbs at will, Sue Storm can disappear and fire force fields, Johnny Storm can burn himself alive and whizz about the skies, and Ben Grimm turns to stone and breaks stuff. Cool? Nearly. There's an rather archaic nature to these superpowers - childhood dreams from a long gone era - but the film neatly modernises them by distracting us with some extreme sports. The kids might love it, but they're really only notable as the one place director Tim Story uses slow motion in the entire film. Rather proud, were we, of what looks like the only real stunt in the film not juiced up with CGI? And then there's the bad guy. Victor Von Doom was probably never born to do good, but now he's lost his money and his wife and turned into metal. So he's mightily annoyed, and while the world welcomes the Fantastic Four with open arms, he sets about doing some violence to people and eventually tries to take down the Four.

Pretty slim on plot there, and the only gaps are taken up by scenes of the guys coming to terms with their new powers. Strangely, their initial response to them makes you wonder if they've seen the trailer - there's no sense of surprise. They barely seem to care until they leave the lab and return to New York.

Johnny, with the flashiest abilities, is the only one to really embrace them, showing off and being rather endearing with it. The others are oh so desperate to get back to normal, which in the case of Reed and Sue seems rather stupid - they can do some cool stuff, but otherwise, pretty much live as normal Lucky them (although Reed, as the stretchy Mr Fantastic, could really do with the power to look convincingly attached to the rest of his body whenever he's stretching). The only character with real issues is Michael Chiklis' Grimm, clad in stone and called The Thing. Daily life becomes a problem for this rocky beast, but the film clamps him with a ludicrous subplot where his wife turns up at the scene of the gang's first act of heroism, and having seen her hubby save the lives of a fire engine full of FDNY guys, decides to hand back her wedding ring before even asking what's happened to the man she promised to love for ever. It's ludicrous, and makes The Thing's constant grump hard to connect with - sure, it might not be great to look like that, but met with her reaction, you'd expect him to develop a screw you attitude to the world and embrace his power for kicking holes in walls. A shame, really, because Chiklis' is the best performance in the movie by far, even as the film occasionally demeans the man who played Vic Mackey with bird crap jokes and suchlike.

The proceedings have a rather slapped together feel (characters appear in the right places by coincidence and fill in plot holes for themselves) until the action kicks in, and almost all of it is crammed into the closing ten minutes. Between the FDNY-saving bridge set-piece (in glorious daytime, showing the limitations of some rather dreadful FX work) and the nighttime city-streets showdown, there's little to get you particularly excited - just super-heroic shoe-gazing. That said, the finale is rather satisfying, with Johnny's flaming acrobatics delivering some of the highs of Spider-man's web-slinging antics across Manhattan. The team join forces to defeat the bad guy and it's home time.

Like X-Men, Fantastic Four feels rather like the setup for a sequel, now that the characters are in place. Sadly, where X-Men had a heart and a brain, Fantastic Four has some good-looking young actors showing plenty of flesh (although my highlight was Chiklis' wild forest of a bare chest, not Chris Evans' constantly-on-display gym-toned torso) and a bit of product placement where the emotional attachment should have been (Whopper, anyone?). At least X-Men's build up of characters made me want to know what happened to the mutants next. As for the Fantastic Four, pleasantly though they passed the time, I couldn't give care less about what the future holds for them.

FANTASTIC FOUR

Now honestly, I knew I couldn't expect much when I rented this movie, but all I wanted was stupid entertainment. But this movie was so terrible and simple that it was confusing.

This has to be one of the most god-awful screenplays that Hollywood has ever produced. Being completely honest... I could have written a better screenplay and directed a better film.

The Fantastic Four as a comic-book has enormous cinematic potential because it takes a group of super-heroes who are reluctantly thrust into their roles as super-humans... however, their stories are even stronger b/c of the honest and deep family dynamic they hold as a team.

Every piece of that is lost in this translation to film. In order to set up a good franchise, they should have taken the time to explore who these people are before and during their mission to space. Reed's mission isn't described to the audience as anything deeper than "if we head into space and get a testing from a space cloud, we can help people live longer". That's honestly the most detailed description of his mission.

And the dynamic between Reed and Sue Storm is never actually apparent between the actors... there are only random moments of dialogue that spoon feed the audience the most elementary tension between them.

Basicall the film is a giant waste of a source material that could have made a great film. It's filled with implausibilities and unexplained errors... for example: - Why could Reed's every-day, cotton shirts stretch to unbelievable lengths along with his body? However, in order for Jessica Alba to become invisible she must strip off her clothes... yeah, very subtle... hot chick gets naked...

• What was the point of The Thing (Michael Chiklis) saving the one suicidal man on the bridge? B/C in the process of doing so he destroys about 10 cars and probably kills numerous people on the highway.

• How did The Thing manage to change himself back into his deformed self without anyone to push the button? - What was with all the BLATANT, BLATANT, BLATANT product placements? Pathetic.

• If they were in quarantine, how did Chris Evans managed to take that awful actress from ACCESS Hollywood not only out of the building... but in a ****ing helicopter on a huge mountain? Aside from all of this, the performances are awful. The only actor who comes out slightly unscathed is Chris Evans as Johnny Storm/"Human Torch"... he obviously got to ad-lib some lines which gave him the best dialogue in the film. Jessica Alba is not only completely wrong for the role of Sue Storm (with a good screenplay this is the kind of role that should be played by Naomi Watts or Charlize Theron... she's supposed to be maternal and wise). Whoever played Mr. Fantastic should never work again. Micheal Chikless as The Thing offers one of the worst performances ever given while wearing such a ridiculous costume (The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were played better). And Julian McMahon as Dr. Doom wasn't scary for a single frame.

I can't tell if it's all to blame on Tim Story, the director *cough cough. I can tell you this is about one of the least talented young directors working today... TAXI and FANTASTIC FOUR, greeeeat resume buddy.

Honestly, I knew I couldn't expect much... but the universal awfulness of this movie was just ridiculous. Not once was it exciting, funny, or tense. It just wasted two hours of life. And it's extra disappointing b/c I can picture in my head how great of a film could have been made from the source material.

Awww well... Hollywood blew a good opportunity and everyone involved made a fool of themselves doing so. Too bad.

... F ...

Not a fantastic 4 fan so never read the books. But me and my GF caught a closed screening of it and I thought it was a solid movie. Better than I expected. Its a lot like the spiderman movies because of humor but serious at the same time. A lot of laughs and some sad parts also.

The movie begin with Reed, Sue, Johnny Storm, Ben and Doom going up into space to look for medical cures in a space cloud called the cosmic storm. The storm hits them and it gives them these strange powers. We seem them getting used to the new powers and using them to help regular people. They become celebrities in the public eye but there are many problems inside the team. Never seen superheroes fight like this but the Fantastic 4 bicker a lot. Ben and Johnny act like 5 yr olds and get into it bad at the x-games. Sue and Reed really love each other but reed is too distracted to pay her attention. And doctor doom turns them against each other and breaks the group up.

A lot of romance in this movie more than the hulk or x-men. Ben looks like a monster and the public doesn't identify to him as much as the other 4. But a beautiful blind woman named alicia does and she helps him cope because she knows what its like to be outcast too. The actors who played these two characters were very good because of the touching scenes showing how terrible he felt because he was now a hideous monster while the rest of the 4 still look human. I felt sorry for his rejection and pain like wolverine said when his claws come out every time. The big love story is about Reed and Sue. They cant get on the same page for most of the movie and Doom thinks he owns Sue. But she rejects him for Reed and I wont spoil it all but the end is a very beautiful scene that was almost better than when MJ came back for Peter at the end of Spider-man 2.

The actors all do a convincing job. My favourite was the wicked Julian Macmahon. Doom is one scary strange one who reminded me of the emperor in Sith but better looking. Some of his lines were weak but it did not come off cheesy because of the way he said them and acted. He's the villain but you admire him since he is suave and intimidating. Was also impressed with Alba. She has come a long way since dark angel. I liked her in Sin City but this movie showed she is more than a sex symbol. Some don't think shes a good actress but she did a very great job here. She and Iaon Gruffud are really good together.

I thought it was good. Story could have been a bit more complex but the actors, direction and effects make up for it, and the Human Torch is impressive to see on the big screen. 9/10.