Fantastic Four (2015)

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/fox-chooses-fantastic-four-reboot-681868

Cool and original casting.

Why is Mr fantastic a guy who looks like someone who hasn't gone through puberty?  I mean a smart young person normally comes across as a smug twat (ask Neo). Jamie Bell despite being great in Tintin has possibly the least menacing voice I could possibly imagine and he's the thing.  Why are the brother and sister black and white?  They are blood siblings, either make them both black or both white, it seems dumb for that kind of oversight.  I mean to rewrite that seems like a stupid change to accomodate to actors rather than teh story and I think thats a bad trend to start.

Jeff Goldblum should be Mr Fantastic, he played a great scientist in The Fly.

This movie's assness is magical. It's as if everything could have been salvageable (but still mostly meh) had they actually made a second act, but instead it just has this really long first part and a rushed, shitty, nonsensical last one. It's as if someone sucked out all the character development that was supposed to take place during the middle of the story and they just jammed in an awkward time skip to try and cover it.

Spoiler:

It's also worth noting that even the movie's length looks questionable. It goes for about an hour and forty minutes, just twenty minutes shy of the usual run time these sorts of films are given. I highly doubt a studio of today would even dare to make a superhero feature that isn't over two hours. Everything must be long and epic, otherwise the kiddies will be unsatisfied. I just find it more proof that cuts were definitely made to the story so they could get this turd loose.

In situations like this when studios realise too late they have a total bomb on their hands, why not just let it happen? Rather than spend more money on reshoots trying to salvage it and ending up with a boring piece crap, just let the director have his way and at least end up with a possibly interesting piece of crap.

Quote :

Before the film's release, several sources have reported that there were multiple disagreements between 20th Century Fox and director Josh Trank during production. After being unsatisfied with Trank's original cut of the film, Fox ordered their own changes to the film without Trank's supervision, changing and omitting certain major plot points from Trank's original cut. Many other sources claimed that there was "erratic behavior" from Trank on the set of the film, which resulted in Fox's negative treatment of Trank. Trank posted a message on Twitter one day prior to the film's release that criticized the finished film, expressing heavy dissatisfaction towards the final product, he stated, "A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would've received great reviews. You'll probably never see it. That's reality though." Trank deleted the message shortly after.

And he was never heard from again...

I decided to watch this, and I actually kind of liked it. The reshoots were obvious because of Susan's wig, and it seemed like no one was even trying to act in those scenes either. But all the original stuff was fine. It's not a Fantastic 4 movie, it's not an action movie. But it could have been a good sci-fi movie about some scientists who make a teleportation machine that fucks them up, and they have to find a cure.

The build up to it was nice. The whole movie up to the point where they first go to the other dimension was well done. Although Homer Simpson as the teacher was distracting. Possibly the worst teacher ever too. Reed shows up to the high school science fair with a fucking teleportation machine and they don't take any notice.

When they get to the other dimension and start acting like idiots, it falls apart. Although I suppose they were a bit drunk. But not drunk enough to think sticking your hand in alien goo is a good idea. And for some reason they bought climbing equipment.

The scene when they come back up to the point where Reed escapes the facility is good too. They made a stretchy man as gross looking as it should be. From that point until Doom returns is pretty bad, about 50% reshoots from what I could tell. When Doom returned... Well it wasn't Doctor Doom. But it was alright anyway. He looked pretty stupid but he was popping heads and it was kind of creepy. When he got back in the machine it seemed like it would be the end. Maybe it would have been, at some point. Reed would realise that going back to that world was too dangerous if Doom was there, and knowing he was the only one that could do it, he'd sabotage the machine and all four of them would go on the run for the rest of their lives.

But no. For the last 15 minutes it becomes a superhero movie. It goes from genuinely good to interestingly bad, and in those last few minutes it becomes laughably bad. There's the big blue laser shooting into the sky and they have to work as a team and Doom just throws rocks at everyone and in the end they win by punching Doom really hard. It's terrible.

It's so weird that Fox gave Trank the go ahead for his original idea. Usually it's the other way around as far as I know. Someone would write an original sci-fi script and a studio would buy it and turn it into a Fantastic 4 movie. But they set out to make a Fantastic 4 movie, and then greenlit an original sci-fi script. And then got cold feet and messed it up even more.

it's kind of funny reading all the bad things you had to say about it, and then re-reading the second half of your first sentence.

Eh, it's only bad because a few specific things. Knowing about the production makes it easier to like I think, because it's clearer why certain things are the way they are, and you can see how it was supposed to be.