Tuesday, July 12, 2016

A Useless Review Of A Useless Movie

When I was doing that post about movies I saw parts of last week, I knew there was one other film I meant to mention, but I couldn't remember it. Then I did remember: the Fantastic Four movie from last year. I saw more of this than the other two, but the captions weren't on, and the Composite Boozy Moron in the next room was blasting music so loudly I could only hear the dialogue sporadically, so I missed a lot.

I felt the film kind of merged Dr. Doom with Annihilus. I heard Victor say something about all life being a threat to him, or something to that effect, and his face had these grill bars/horizontal lines across his face that seemed unlike Doom's normal look, but for some reason made me think of Annihilus. I'm probably thinking of the lines on either side of his face that represent the different parts of his jaws. I might have preferred a movie of the team exploring this other dimension they went to, and finding preexisting life which regards them as hostile invaders and tries to destroy them, and the world they come from.

It wasn't really what I think I was looking for in a Fantastic Four movie, at least not the part I saw. The last bit I got to see was Reed basically convincing them all to work together to stop Doom, but not the part where they actually do that. Ben being used as a weapon by the military, and killing dozens of people is definitely not my thing, but within the context of the movie, I guess it made sense*? These smart kids trying to do something for SCIENCE, but the gubmint butts in and tries to take it, the kids make rash decisions, everything goes to hell, which only strengths the Shady Government Guy's claims, and puts them even more under his thumb. I imagine there might be some sort of arc there, but I couldn't really hear enough of what was being said so maybe I'm misreading it. None of the performances really jumped out at me without dialogue, which is too bad. I liked Michael B. Jordan a lot in Chronicle, so I was hoping he'd be a good Johnny Storm, and maybe he was, I just couldn't tell.

* Look, it's not what I want, but I'm trying to meet the film on its terms, as best I can. Open mind, not be the angry, "it's my way or nothing" fan, that well, I usually am.

2 comments:

SallyP said...

Is this from the NEW Fantastic Four movie? I don't think the original one was all that terrible... well except for Doctor Doom, but that's mainly because I like Ioan Griffith.

CalvinPitt said...

Yeah, it's the one that came out last year. I liked the interactions between Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis in the two earlier ones, but that was about it.