Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four

This movie is based off of Marvel Comic’s team of four superheroes known as the Fantastic Four.  Reed Richards (Miles Teller) is Mr. Fantastic who has the ability to stretch his body in any way imaginable.  Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) is The Human Torch who can put himself on fire and shoot fireballs.  Susan Storm (Kate Mara) is The Invisible Woman who as you would guess can make herself invisible.  Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) is The Thing who has a stone body and super-human strength.  The four together are the Fantastic Four.

Reed has always been fascinated with science and inventions, particularly teleportation. He and his friend Ben have been working on teleporting since childhood.   Reed is recruited to attend the Baxter Foundation which is a research institution sponsored by the government.  There he meets up with Johnny and Susan who are brother and sister and whose father Franklin (Reg E. Cathey) is the director.  Franklin brings in Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell) who had previously worked with Susan. 

The four find success and secretly teleport themselves to another dimension.  But something goes wrong and Victor is left behind while the others gain their individual super powers.

The Fantastic Four didn’t make a whole lot of sense if you follow the comic books.  The movie spent too much time on how they came to be and not enough time on the superhero part.  The director (Josh Trank) took this movie the wrong way and I was completely disappointed as a fan of the comics.  I grew up reading Marvel Comics and I don’t understand why this movie flopped.  The original Fantastic Four was a terrific movie but this version was not.  The special effects were outstanding but that’s the only plus.  Stan Lee who was one of the writers of the comic book version usually makes an appearance, but he didn’t do so in this movie.  This only adds to the fact that this version of the Fantastic Four was not worth watching.  I gave this movie 2 out of 4 stars.