Special Effects and One Hot Chick, a Movie Does Not Make.

Rating: 3/10 (18 June 2009)

In the early 2000s, comic books entered into a new Renaissance in film. Sony gave us 'Spiderman', 20th Century Fox made 'X-Men', and every studio in Hollywood immediately started grabbing up every single superhero story they could get their hands on. So it was only a matter of time before Fox decided to bring Marvel's first family to the big screen: The Fantastic Four.
So here's what the studio does: first of all, make sure that the budget can give them realistic-looking superpowers (actually, that's the one thing the movie does right). As far as the script goes well, they apparently only had enough money for the special effects. The humor is forced, the science is hokey, most of the dialog in the movie is delivered via bickering, and quite frankly, it seems like there are more plot holes than actual plot points!
The characters are lacking serious development, and it's obvious that this movie suffered from some serious poor choices in casting. I know that the studio obviously thought casting Jessica Alba would bring in more revenue (once they stopped drooling over her in the blue jumpsuit), but doing so brings the iconic character of Sue Storm down to nothing but eye candy.
In the comics, Johnny Storm was a fun-loving teenager, and frankly, the corny one-liners and immature whining that the script gives us may actually have made more sense had they actually cast someone a big younger than Chris Evans, who is not only way too old for the part but also looks older than Alba. Actually, scratch that: no actor could have pulled off the lousy writing they gave this character.
Julian McMahon isn't the worst choice to play a comic book villain, but there is no transition from scummy business tycoon to actual psychopath. When does he suddenly decide that he's capable of murder?
The pacing in the film is all over the place. It seems like the directors wanted to get to the action sequences as quickly as possible but the action is incredibly lacking. The final battle with Doom is over way too quickly. In fact, there's a few scenes where Johnny (sans fire) performs a number of stunts that actually seem more hyped up and better shot than the big finale!
On a side note, the Extended Cut gives us a little more dimension to the characters (especially Ben's relationship with Alicia), although the editors should be shot for throwing in their little tribute to Wolverine (I won't spoil it, but it's nauseating).
As we all know, Marvel started its own studio to get better control of the movies they release, which has proved more than effective with 'Iron Man' and 'The Incredible Hulk'. Let us all hope that after they finish with their current line-up, they decide to go back and fix this monstrosity. 'The Fantastic Four' was one of Marvel's greatest creations and the characters deserve better than this.