A huge let down.

Rating: 3/10 (3 February 2006)

Now, let me say in advance that I'm a huge comic book fan, so I may be a tad biased. Fantastic Four was a huge let down. The Fantastic Four I grew up with are scientific explorers, chartering new and as of yet unexplored aspects of our universe, and often times fighting aliens and giant monsters in the process. The Fantastic Four comics are full of deep philosophical points and great characterization.
The movie, not so much.
One of the major problems is the liberties the movie takes with the material. Mainly with Dr. Doom. They completely changed the character. In the comics, he's the fascist dictator of the (very fictional) country of Latveria. He was an old college buddy of Reed Richards who he blames for the disfigurement that forces him to wear a mask all the time (even though it was his own fault). He's a scientific and tactical genius, and is pretty much one of the coolest villains Marvel comics ever created. In the movie, he's hardly even recognizable. He's a businessman who accompanies the four on their trip into space and gets super strength, electric powers, and metal skin. And his turn from just being a jerk to homicidal tendencies seems so random.
As for the rest of the movie, the pacing is very rushed. It seems like everything is just going by so fast without slowing down to properly tell the story.
The fact that they never even showed the group getting back to earth from the space voyage that gave them their powers and just showed them waking up in the hospital was just annoying. Also, when Johnny Storm (played by Chris Evans) first manifested his powers, he was skiing with some woman. He burst into flames and crashed into a pile of snow, causing it to turn into a mini hot tub. Instead of the natural reaction of screaming and asking what the hell is going on, the woman just dropped her skis, implying that she was going to get in.
During the movie, Ben Grimm (played by Micheal Chiklis) returned to his fiancé. Since he was a giant rock man, she was understandably freaked out. But after he helped save several firemen from falling to their deaths, she handed the engagement ring back to him. Now, if your fiancé, rock monster or not, saved the lives of several firemen, would you just hand the ring back? I doubt it.
The jokes in this film were incredibly cheesy. They had this little comedy montage in the middle of the film that was completely pointless and did nothing to further the plot. The only good parts were Johnny Storm, Ben Grimm, and their interactions. Those parts were very well done.
However, in regards to Johnny Storm, I hated how, when he went of to enjoy his powers, he went to do a motto cross event. I was thinking "wouldn't it be better if he went around the city playing superhero?" But alas, the higher ups decided that it would be better to have him doing extreme sports to help bring in the younger demographics.
During the movie, Ben Grimm met a blind girl who didn't really care that he looked the way he did, and was nice to him. At the end of the movie, they were hanging off of each other like they had been dating for weeks. Obviously, there had been an intention to have more scenes between them included, but they were cut out.
Also, at the end, Dr. Doom was just allowed to be put on a boat headed to Europe, even though very shortly before that he was blowing up chunks of Time's Square. Now, he had been petrified by this point, but don't you think the police would have kept him in their custody just in case? All in all, this was a rather disappointing movie with several rather obvious plot holes, bad pacing, and little respect for the characters. Some people have praised this movie for not taking itself too seriously. I personally think that's this movie's biggest fault.