The Problem with this film is................

Rating: 5/10 (4 August 2005)

As Fantastic Four is the most "recent" film I want to discuss, I figured I'd start here; I only just saw the film a few days ago. I respect all opinions regarding this film, positive or negative, though I have to admit I found it to be perfectly dreadful; it struck me as a case study of how not to make a film of this nature. I am happy many people seem to love the film to the extent that they do, and I am certainly not about to rain on anyone's parade (hopefully!). For context, though, what did I personally get out of the film? Murky, impenetrable photography with no focal depth (at least three times important "movements" in the background were out-of-focus blobs); a generally incoherent plot, decipherable only in its broad strokes, with events following each other seemingly randomly; an almost total lack of character development and genuine interpersonal relationship; going along hand-in-hand with the worst kind of pop-psychologizing; migraine-inducing editing during "explosive" moments (honestly had to hurry to the pharmacy immediately after the show); an outrageously immoral sensibility (The Torch being condemned for "saving" a man who would otherwise have plunged to his death; curiously, when he "corrects" his mistake at the end of the film, the film suggests that all of the problems are resolved immediately, not gradually...thus equating The Torch's "righteous" immorality with the restoration of social stability); and just a general disinclination to allow me into the hearts of its characters...it seemed to me the film discouraged empathy and promoted instead smug superiority. Yikes...my apologies to the film's most ardent fans. Here's what I want to talk about.
In short, I feel this film presents to its audience little but insensitive nihilism, hopelessness, and despair (curiously, what the film claims to be fighting against!), and is somewhere in or around the top 100 films rated on this web site...an extremely popular film then. What are the three highest rated films released this year? It's not as if the concepts of these films are bad. I forget which Russian author wrote a powerful short shory...Was it Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, or Chekhov?...about a man who was locked away from the world for twenty years. Frank Miller has written powerful material before (though Sin City, the movie, wasn't nearly so dreadful as the other two, mostly because it seemed to be aiming for parody), and Tim Burton's deeply moving Batman Returns accomplished everything which I feel this film failed to.
So, questions I'm interested in. Why are these films successful? What does it say about us, about our contemporary society, that films such as these go over so well? By "films such as these" I mean, that encourage shallow feeling, pointless despair and worthlessness toward human life. There are ways of handling dark and disturbing material. The recent War of the Worlds certainly "plumbed the depths" of humanity, and I honestly felt the film to be more harrowing and horrifying than the three films above, but it also was simultaneously remarkably honest, "realistic", and above all, human.
I encourage everyone, no matter what their feelings on the subject, to please share and express them on this thread. Thank you.