Fantastic Four (2015)

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Trank seems like an asshole. He admitted that he treated this movie like it was a sequel to Chronicle. And that none of his actors have come to his defense is pretty telling. He apparently had terrible on set behavior, and if this movie is any indicator of what he does with a licensed property i'm glad they fired him off his Star Wars movie.

[seanotron 2307]

Honestly, I have no idea why people rate Chronicle so highly. I thought it was really boring and cliched. Why Fox saw that movie and thought, 'Yeah, this guy should do Fantastic Four!' I have no idea. It all seemed a bit doomed (or should I say Domashev-ed?) from the start.

[seanotron 2307]

I mean, apparently in this movie, 'It's clobberin' time!' is something that Ben Grimm's abusive brother says while beating him.

[Lando 2019]

 

Well to be fair, it's not beyond Hollywood to do drastic recuts of a film before release, and it's not outside the realm of possibility that Fox did just that and Tranck had no knowledge of it while he was being interviewed. There's no way of knowing whether this happened of course, but I think it's unfair to peg a filmmaker as disingenuous in this context, simply because we don't know what happened in the studio.

 

Also, I feel terribly sorry for Tranck. He didn't seem to be trashing his film in that Twitter post, he just sounded defeated. Can you imagine yourself in his position? Just 31 years old, his first film was critically acclaimed and a box office hit, and on track to direct a Star Wars film. Now his newest movie is getting dismal reviews, he lost the Star Wars gig, and people are already writing him off as a failure. This is why the pattern of hiring indie directors to do studio films is awful. For every Colin Trevarrow and Gareth Edwards, there will be far more filmmakers who simply aren't ready to handle $150 million dollar budgeted films and will inevitably be manhandled by producers.

 

And yet somehow M. Night Shamalan keeps getting money to make movies

[Lando 2019]

Honestly, I have no idea why people rate Chronicle so highly. I thought it was really boring and cliched. Why Fox saw that movie and thought, 'Yeah, this guy should do Fantastic Four!' I have no idea. It all seemed a bit doomed (or should I say Domashev-ed?) from the start.

 

I liked Chronicle, but the further along the movie got, the more the self-filmed premise seemed clunkily shoehorned in. I mean they are fighting in the sky and still somehow feel the need to co-opt cameras to film what they're doing?

[OfficerMooney 13]

Trank seems like an asshole. He admitted that he treated this movie like it was a sequel to Chronicle. And that none of his actors have come to his defense is pretty telling. He apparently had terrible on set behavior, and if this movie is any indicator of what he does with a licensed property i'm glad they fired him off his Star Wars movie.

 

Why are we so eager to label this guy a dick? We're so willing to write off filmmakers as garbage after they made one fluke of a movie or hear rumors of mistakes on set (if he made I Heart Hukabees today, David O. Russell would've been fucked). Being a filmmaker means making mistakes along the way. Stanley Kubrick didn't start out of the gate with masterpieces. Neither did Scorsese, De Palma, Aronofsky, Kurosawa, etc.

 

What a sad ultimatum these indie turned studio directors face: you either try something different and risk failures, knowing that if you fail you'll probably get butfucked by both critics and social media OR you play it safe to the point of sterility, and make mindless unmemorable movies that guarantees profit (e.g. Jurassic World, Jurassic World, Jurassic World).

[RyanSz 3140]

I just saw this and it was a giant big pile of meh. I was surprised I liked the actors that they chose for the main roles, especially Toby Kebbell who I felt was really good as Doom, despite the horrible face design that they ended up with. I thought the CGI for Reed was terrible and very dated while The Thing looked and moved like the robot from Judge Dredd, and I found it odd that his voice changed multiple times over the course of the movie. Also can we point out that The Thing is basically a nude eunuch as he doesn't have his signature shorts and you can see his ass cheeks numerous times in the movie. I was also disappointed in that it was what I feared in that it ended up like Hulk where it was about 40 minutes before they got their powers and the movie leads up to a very ho-hum climax.

[phantomgaylord 4]

My roommate just dragged me to the theater to see this tonight because she wanted to look at Miles Tellers' boring potato face for an hour and forty-five minutes. I left the theater very angry and tired and angry.

 

The CGI choices for Doom were...questionable, same for The Thing (no shorts? Why no shorts??). Overall it was a typical copy/paste origin story, complete with dull dialogue, a standard "the government is Bad" side plot, etc. There was nothing there to make anyone have any attachment to the characters whatsoever; the movie seems to almost hope you're going into it with those warm fuzzy feelings. It takes about 45 minutes into the movie for everybody to get their powers, and then nothing really happens until the last 20 minutes. The ending scene with the four of them trying to figure out their Squad Name made me want to have a stroke: "What should we call ourselves?" "[a bunch of bad ideas]" "Well....we're pretty fantastic..." "[Reed smirks knowingly]" [FANTASTIC 4 LOGO]

 

Literally the only good part about this movie is a newspaper clipping about The Thing stating "BIGFOOT IS REAL, AND ANGRY".

[RyanSz 3140]

The one thing I did kinda enjoy was the brief glimpse of the future nutjob Reed would become from the opening scenes of him as a kid. I thought that actor did a great job showing the side of Reed that thinks he knows better than everyone and takes being called insane a compliment. That made it seem like they were taking the character in the right direction and then 90 minutes later it's just the same shit I've seen twice already. I think it is time for this franchise to die and never come back to the big screen.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

The worst thing about this movie being so terrible is that we're either getting a sequel for this joyless take on the F4 or we'll be getting yet another reboot in a few years as Fox desperately clings to the rights.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

 

Why are we so eager to label this guy a dick? We're so willing to write off filmmakers as garbage after they made one fluke of a movie or hear rumors of mistakes on set (if he made I Heart Hukabees today, David O. Russell would've been fucked). Being a filmmaker means making mistakes along the way. Stanley Kubrick didn't start out of the gate with masterpieces. Neither did Scorsese, De Palma, Aronofsky, Kurosawa, etc.

 

What a sad ultimatum these indie turned studio directors face: you either try something different and risk failures, knowing that if you fail you'll probably get butfucked by both critics and social media OR you play it safe to the point of sterility, and make mindless unmemorable movies that guarantees profit (e.g. Jurassic World, Jurassic World, Jurassic World).

 

I'm fine to label him as a dick, because most of what i've read about him gives me the rather firm impression that he's a dick. He trashed his rented house, he was apparently a dick to most of the actors on set. Frequently showed up high. Was enough of a fucking asshole to get himself fired off Star Wars. Theres a reason why none of the actors in the film have piped up to defend him.

 

And then he does this asshole move where he trashes his film right before release all while lamenting the masterpiece that will never be seen. I'm sure the vision he had of this movie was much better in his head, but thats his fault for his inability to translate that onto screen.

 

He's fucked himself pretty good on this shoot too. I cant imagine there are going to be too many studios who are going to give this guy a job after the shenanigans he had on this set.

 

Also this dude is not David Russell, who had contentious shoots as well. The big difference is he emerged with a great movie under his belt. Believe me i'd love it if Trank's F4 was anywhere near as good as Three Kings. It isnt though, it's terrible.

[WEdidITagain 458]

just saw it. A joyless mess.

 

Which sucks because the film has such promise at its start, but the minute it gets to the powers it is TERRIBLE.

 

Based on the Ultimate Fantastic Four comics, which are amazing and some of my all time favorite i have no idea how they missed the cue to this SO HARD.

 

I mean it takes a hard turn to shit town in seconds, it's quite astonishing honestly.

[tsdcs 15]

What a sad ultimatum these indie turned studio directors face: you either try something different and risk failures, knowing that if you fail you'll probably get butfucked by both critics and social media OR you play it safe to the point of sterility, and make mindless unmemorable movies that guarantees profit (e.g. Jurassic World, Jurassic World, Jurassic World).

 

Isn't it pretty clear that the studios hunt for these directors, though? They throw money at these indie directors because they want young guys who they can push around. They want to be able to tell them what to do (exception: Edgar Wright, etc), force storylines and characters, etc. Marc Webb went from 500 Days of Summer to the Spider-Man reboot (what), Josh Trank went from Chronicle to Fantastic 4, and I think like 90% of those Platinum Dunes horror reboots were directed by either former music video directors or Rob Zombie.

[sillstaw 414]

My roommate just dragged me to the theater to see this tonight because she wanted to look at Miles Tellers' boring potato face for an hour and forty-five minutes. I left the theater very angry and tired and angry.

 

You should've just watched "Whiplash." Not only is it a great movie, she'd get to look at Teller and you'd get to watch him being abused.

[phantomgaylord 4]

 

You should've just watched "Whiplash." Not only is it a great movie, she'd get to look at Teller and you'd get to watch him being abused.

 

'Whiplash' is incredible, though it's lost a bit of its luster for me as we've watched it at least fifteen times. Though I might need to watch it again to see JK Simmons slap him in the face; Teller fucking deserves it for 'Fantastic 4' (and that Esquire interview, but that's another thing entirely).

[ElieB 238]

Guys! I saw it! Forget about Trank, or Fox, or on-set behaviors, or who's at fault for what... This is a marvelous DISASTER.

 

I desperately want to hear an episode about this. Even if it's just a half-hour Mini-ep of WigTalk with June. OMG THE WIGGY WIGS! This movie could easily drive a full episode with all the radical inconsistencies and go-nowhere plot developments, and HORRIBLE representation of their powers and abilities...

-80% of all the action shots are just 3 people floating in a bubble and, like, doing a brutal job at it.

-Training montage is longer than the final battle.

-Awful dialogue between friends and family who all treat each other like asshole neighbors they have to put up with.

-Absolutely NO character arcs, for anyone.

-50 mins of consecutive setup scenes for cool abilities or relationships, none of which pay off or come back in the 2nd half. (except for a nerd's internet screen-name and one of Sue's Autistic-looking but pre-fantastic skills)

-The best actors in the whole thing were the two 10 year olds as young Reed and young Grimm

-So many promises made, none of which are followed thru with, or even brought up again.

-Grimm ad Reed are best friends who never spend ANY time together

-Johnny can "Build anything" except a car engine that doesn't explode, so he's going to work on the teleporter project cause Daddy said so

-Sue is central to building this teleporter thing, but when Doom and the boys get drunk and decide they should be the first ones to use it cause "it was their dream", they don't even mention to Sue what their doing but instead call up Grimm(who's been offscreen for half hour)

-Doom is an angry hipster hacker guy. He really really hates authority figures but we never get any backstory to explain why, or what THEIR childhoods were like (Sue, Johhny & Doom)

-But we do get to see young Reed and Grimm, so that must mean something right? Nah. But let's be thankful for the only good 10mins of the movie.

-Reed has a tiny jason bourne subplot where he goes on the run (abandoning his only friends) and builds his own solo-teleporter + stretchy power suit. It's over immediately, contributes nothing and is never mentioned again.

-We mostly see the Thing resting in a tiny lockerroom/prison cell or otherwise on monitors, military recordings of his field action

-Doom's "final form" is just entirely static. He has 0 facial expression, no lips to move, nothing. So he walks around menacing vague threats which are unexplained but literally all of it could be ADR

-Doom's powers are... everything? He walks around giving "Talk to the hand" gestures and popping peoples':Heads, electronics, ammunition, etc. Manifests things out of nothing. Kills people for no reason, even tries to kill Sue who he was in love with all movie long.

etc.

 

I wish I brought a notebook to write down some of the worst lines.

 

 

Seriously people, this is the comic book movie equivalent of Winter's Tale! A beautiful disaster.

 

I wanna hear June talk about wigs and character motivations

I wanna hear Jason talk about the choices/changes they made regarding the original F4 source material

I wanna hear Paul's take on Science fairs and 18 year olds supplanting NASA

And I'd love to hear Kevin Smith back in the studio, or some other nerd like Patton Oswalt, to talk about their childhood heroes getting the Syfy treatment.

 

PLSPLSPLSPLSPLS

[RyanSz 3140]

Damn, with a opening weekend of 26 million, this is going to be a huge bomb for Fox. I mean looking at Box Office Mojo, the lowest opening of a comic adaptation of a known comic was Steel at 870K, but for a major series like F4 that is miserable. The only major series adaptations that did worse are Howard the Duck, Elektra, Superman IV, Jonah Hex, and Punisher: War Zone, with a bunch of smaller adaptations sprinkled in. After his recent tangents, I wonder if there will be a director's cut of this movie similar to the Rogue Cut of X-Men: Days of Futures Past, because I've read that there were some big action scenes cut from the money, so I would be interested to see what those were, if they actually exist.

 

-Doom's "final form" is just entirely static. He has 0 facial expression, no lips to move, nothing. So he walks around menacing vague threats which are unexplained but literally all of it could be ADR

-Doom's powers are... everything? He walks around giving "Talk to the hand" gestures and popping peoples':Heads, electronics, ammunition, etc. Manifests things out of nothing. Kills people for no reason, even tries to kill Sue who he was in love with all movie long.

etc.

 

I was really bummed at how Doom finally looked because they basically took the early concept art of of the infected astronaut in Prometheus and sorta shaped a mouth on the face. As for his powers, Doom's powers uses sorcery and electricity to hurt his opponents and it seemed sort of a mod of those powers, but they NEVER explained what he could do. Although I will admit that his killing spree scene was maybe the best scene of the whole movie, next to the kids, because it became so over the top violent in comparison to the rest of the movie.

 

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

http://io9.com/was-the-fantastic-four-reboot-doomed-from-the-start-1722904794

 

 

Well reading this makes me a bit conflicted. This movie never stood a chance. Trank may have fucked himself by not toeing the line or losing his shit on set after repeated mandates from the studio, but its insanely unfair of the studio to put this disaster of a movie all on him like they're trying to. Especially if they did edits to the film that he had no part in.

 

Also I love that Fox is mandating "gritty realism".

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

http://io9.com/was-the-fantastic-four-reboot-doomed-from-the-start-1722904794

 

 

Well reading this makes me a bit conflicted. This movie never stood a chance. Trank may have fucked himself by not toeing the line or losing his shit on set after repeated mandates from the studio, but its insanely unfair of the studio to put this disaster of a movie all on him like they're trying to. Especially if they did edits to the film that he had no part in.

 

Also I love that Fox is mandating "gritty realism".

Before even reading that, I wondered if this was a smaller scale version of WB's "If it worked for Batman..." policy, and it seems to be exactly that, down to the Batman part. It's not even "If it worked for the X-Men...", which Fox has been doing a fine job of running after recovering from the "Origins" incident. I kind of like that even within Marvel properties, there's this competition to actually TRY to keep audiences engaged, because Fox and Sony know that if the rights revert to Marvel, Marvel will be the ONLY ones making money, though with the failure of F4 and Sony's mishandling of Spidey, it looks like they're having a harder time of things. However, I wonder if it's gotten to the point of these other studios knowing they're losing the battle, intentionally running the lesser-performing franchises into the ground with full knowledge that Marvel will have an uphill battle after being given damaged goods. Hmmmm.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Sony was trying so fucking hard to set up the kind of universe Marvel has with all their movies. The Amazing Spiderman was filled with so many plotlines and allusions to villians they wanted to use down the line.

 

They just forgot what made Marvels build up so successful, that every movie leading up to Avengers was a solid superhero movie in its own right.

 

Amazing Spiderman was decent, and then went into Amazing 2 and it just all fell apart as they desperately tried to build a bigger world, and set up stand alone Sinister Six and Venom movies.

 

Fox is just being idiotic, they should either let a director who's actually a fan of the source material do the movie, or work out a deal with Marvel where they share profits from the films using the Fantastic Four.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

And honestly if Fox is trying to just demolish the property before letting it revert it'd be a huge blunder on their part. Marvel studios could easily recover from whatever they did. Guardians and Ant-Man have me convinced they'd do an awesome Fantastic Four movie if given the chance.

 

Its a shame too because they could do cross overs with Ant-Man, Avengers, and now Spiderman.

[sillstaw 414]

its insanely unfair of the studio to put this disaster of a movie all on him like they're trying to. Especially if they did edits to the film that he had no part in.

 

Eh, that's kind of the deal when you direct something. If he wanted to distance himself, I'm sure he could've applied for a pseudonym from the DGA instead of waiting until opening weekend to claim that he had a better version nobody will ever see.

[ElieB 238]

i feel like the juicy controversy over direction and production is overshadowing what is fantastic mess of a film. Honestly, its succession of both fantastic and disastrous scenes is really astounding, in the funniest way.

 

And I'll say this: if you haven't googled Kate Mara fantastic four wig(s), before seeing the movie, then you're doing it wrong.

[OfficerMooney 13]

 

Isn't it pretty clear that the studios hunt for these directors, though? They throw money at these indie directors because they want young guys who they can push around. They want to be able to tell them what to do (exception: Edgar Wright, etc), force storylines and characters, etc. Marc Webb went from 500 Days of Summer to the Spider-Man reboot (what), Josh Trank went from Chronicle to Fantastic 4, and I think like 90% of those Platinum Dunes horror reboots were directed by either former music video directors or Rob Zombie.

 

Oh, it's a trend for sure. Gareth Edwards did one film before doing Godzilla. Colin Trevarrow did one film before doing Jurassic World. The directors for Skull Island and the next Spider Man both did only one film before starting the project. It makes economic sense to hire these directors on the cheap for franchise films that almost always guarantee a profit. So who cares if the actual films being made are mediocre and boring, amirite?

[ElieB 238]

Also I'm quite familiar with Victor von Doom as one of marvel's best villains. A brilliant dictatorial technocrat, who's prowess for both technology and manipulation is almost magical at face value. A foreigner who's world view is so flawlessly justifiable and yet utterly distasteful. Who displays the ego of a God among men and thinks himself sorely misunderstood.

 

He has the potential to upstage the MCUs biggest weakness which is its villains. Yet they delivered a shallow, petty, angsty, immature, powerless, punk charicature to dress the stage for the climactic battle... wut. Why...

 

So many choices were just oddly wrong to the point of laughs, but what they did with him kinda pissed me off.