Fantastic Four
Director: Josh Trank
Stars: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan
Duration: 100 mins
Class: 12

Created by comic book greats Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The Fantastic Four was one of the first superhero teams to appear in Marvel comics, having debuted in November 1961. Like many of their comrades-in-comics, their countless stories dominated not only comics in subsequent decades, with incarnations on TV (animated) and film, with two films The Fantastic Four and The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer released in 2005 and 2007 respectively.

However, neither of two big screen incarnations reached the commercial or critical success that Marvel would begin to enjoy a little while later, with The X-Men series or the various Avengers films (whether as an assemblage or individually), which would go on to dominate the international box office, as they still do.

So it is a brave venture indeed for Josh Trank, a writer / director whose only previous feature was the low-budget and critically-acclaimed Chronicle, to attempt once more to bring the four successfully to the big screen.

Chronicle was the perfect calling card for Trank. Not only is it one of the best offerings from the now redundant found-footage genre, but I’m sure its subject matter of three ordinary guys who are unexpectedly imbued with super-powers and learn to come to terms with them played a huge role in his getting the directing gig for this Fantastic Four reboot, which pretty much follows the same story.

It is also a risky venture for Trank and his cast and crew, having to present the origin story of a superhero team that already had the origin treatment a mere 10 years ago. And, it appears that Trank and his co-screenwriters Simon Kinberg and Jeremy Slater decided to play it completely safe by not straying too much from the original storyline.

And so we meet Reed Richards (Miles Teller) and his childhood friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), whose science fair experiment is noted by scientist Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey), who encourages Reed to join the Baxter Institute.

Here, a number of brilliant scientists and students, including Storm’s daughter Sue (Kate Mara), are working on a teleporter machine. Reed and Sue are joined by Sue’s brother Johnny (Michael B Jordan) and a former protégé of Storm’s, Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell).

Miles Teller in Fantastic Four.

The project is successful and whenthe team teleports to a dangerous alternate dimension (a forbidding place of eerie beauty) the physical effects they suffer are tremendous.

It never reaches the glorious heights we have come to anticipate from Marvel’s diverse universes

So nothing new in terms of storyline. The film does take its sweet time in getting to the nub of the plot, almost to a fault, and its outcome will be pretty well sign-posted – and not just to fans of the characters and their comics. While the action is solid and entertaining enough, it never reaches the glorious heights we have come to anticipate from Marvel’s diverse universes, and the film really only flexes its action muscles at the film’s climax. I felt that the genre’s customary banter and humour was missing, the proceedings taking themselves a tad too seriously.

That said, things perk up a little when the four’s respective powers come to the fore – Reed and his super-stretchy body, Sue and her powers of invisibility, Johnny and his firepower and Ben with his rock-hard exterior. One assumes that they will adopt their superhero monikers in the next instalment.

In Trank’s version, the four core protagonists are still of college age and unacquainted with each other at the story’s start, so as the audience we are getting to know them at the same time. The screenplay provides enough background information to establish the characters, including an entertaining sequence set a few years ago depicting Reed’s nerdy science experiments and the beginnings of his friendship with Ben. Yet, overall, they are rather thinly-sketched.

However they are brought to life by a decent ensemble that makes the most of the material, and they are suitably engaging in creating the ensemble, easily projecting the sense of young people slowly getting to know one another and forced by circumstances beyond their control into an alliance they are initially uncomfortable with.

Teller and Mara commit fully to their roles. Johnny’s role is a tad underwritten, but Jordan is charismatic enough to shine through while I’d have liked to see more of Ben’s alter-ego.

Whether the four will generate the fantastic results of their Marvel cousins remains to be seen. For, in a nutshell, this reboot is a little weak as a stand-alone movie, but displays enough promise – both story and characterwise – for any future films should this have the chance to flourish in a new franchise. Which it should, given that a sequel is already in the works and set for release in 2017.