Good - but not up to the New Standard

Rating: 6/10 (13 July 2005)

If FANTASTIC FOUR had come out a few years ago, my vote might be 7 stars instead of 6 - maybe even 8. It was fun and exciting in the way many summer movies can be. But it came out this summer, after SPIDER-MAN and SPIDER-MAN 2; and right after BATMAN BEGINS. Before these movies, I believed that no one had really done the kind of translation of a comic book to big screen that I believed was possible. Even SUPERMAN, while really great for it's time, had some real flaws. But with the 3 movies stated above, my expectations weren't just met, they were exceeded.
Because FANTASTIC FOUR has to follow a couple of benchmarks, and share the summer with the best BATMAN story ever filmed (who knew we needed another one?), it unfortunately doesn't look quite as good as it might have. On the other hand, knowing what preceded it should have better equipped the filmmakers.
For example, the first rule of my New Standard in filming comic book stories, is having a terrific script, with a strong ending...which I realize every movie should, but especially with this genre often does not. The second rule is getting the casting perfect. And the third might be balancing the origin plot (if that's what you're doing), which has to be exposition, with engaging storytelling that has enough action to feel like the genre.
The cast was good, (and when is Michael Chiklis less than great!), but needed to be just the right fit for these characters. I mean, SPIDER-MAN 2 cast the brilliant Alfred Molina as Doc Ock, and BATMAN BEGINS had so many heavy hitters in the cast I won't take the space to list them. Needless to say, when you follow a movie that has Michael Caine as Alfred (!), you better get your own casting perfect. With FOUR, it never felt quite right. I know Alba was the popular choice for Sue Storm, but I never believed she was Sue. And that's a problem. The same goes for Reed Richards. He was fine, but it didn't seem like the actor really embodied the character. Conversely, I didn't think Tobey Maguire could do Peter Parker before I saw SP1, but he completely owned that character.
The other issue for FOUR was the script. It felt incomplete. Sure, origin stories are very difficult, but Sam Raimi showed everyone how to do it right. Of course, he only had one hero, to be fair; here we have 4 times the origin plot.
*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD *** But the big problem for me was the type of ending we got on this one: It is completely internal in nature. By that I mean the threat does not extend beyond our heroes to the 'real' world. In fact, there's a scene in the middle of the picture that feels much more exciting because the threat extends to 'normal' people, the innocent bystanders, as it were. In this kind of story telling, this early in the character's movie development, the world (or city or loved ones) have to be at great risk for the heroes to really have a victory. After all, the super heroes will surely be OK (at least that's what we feel) so the threat needs to extend beyond them. It never really did, and the ending felt anti-climactic. In line with this, the revealing of the villain in his 'super' form took so long, that the movie was almost over by the time we finally got to see him in costume. That might be a pacing problem, or unfamiliarity by the filmmakers with the genre, I'm not sure. But it peaked in the middle and never got better. Even THE INCREDIBLES understood when to reveal the villain, and what had to be at stake for a proper hero ending.
*** END OF SPOILERS *** I could really knit pick and ask why Johnny Storm wasn't blonde (or Sue for that matter, although at least she had some sort of dye job going on). But I think the bigger issue was really choice of cast, and overall story developments (or lack thereof).
So did I have fun? Well, sure. If you don't know the Fantastic Four from the books, you'll probably have fun. But I feel we still haven't seen a definitive version of this classic comic story on screen. It just didn't quite seem like the Four I remember.