Fantastic Four (2015)



The Fantastic Four are a quartet and an iconic superhero team created by Marvel Comics. They're known for helping to usher in a new level of realism in comics.

The team consists of Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards) the group leader, The Invisible Woman (Susan "Sue" Storm), Reed's wife, Human Torch (Johnny Storm) Sue's younger brother, and The Thing (Ben Grimm) their grumpy but kindhearted friend.

In the 2015 version of FANT4STIC (Earth-TRN554), Reed Richards was portrayed by Miles Teller, Johnny Storm's portrayed by Michael B. Jordan, Sue Storm's portrayed by Kate Mara, and Ben Grimm's portrayed by Jamie Bell.

In General

 * 1) This version of the famous superhero team takes itself way too seriously. One thing the comics were famous for was their light-hearted nature and occasional humor, and it works, and the 2005 incarnations of these characters, despite their respective flaws compared to the comics, at least managed to recapture the lighthearted nature of their comic book counterparts. But these 2015 dark and gritty versions of the characters on the other hand have none of that. Also, They are literally supposed to be based on the Ultimate Universe versions (a “realistic” take on Marvel’s heroes and villains) from the comics but they failed.
 * 2) There's also too much set-up and exposition throughout the film. Various audiences may either already know about certain aspects, or they don't care. On top of that, there's very little action with the heroes and we seldom see them using their powers. Somehow, they could take the bad aspects of the Tim Story film series and make them even worse.
 * 3) Even the civilian forms are uninteresting. When they're not talking about science stuff, they're moody, awkward, really low energy, and have personalities as thin as paper.
 * 4) They barely have chemistry whenever they're eating Chinese food, and drunk.
 * 5) Idiot Move: The main reason they went to the alternate dimension is specifically for wanting fame. Also, they got drunk and ended up going... without any support. Wow, the movie's that desperate. Also, Ben's the worst case of all; see his section for more information.
 * 6) *What's worse? The team seems to stop acting drunk once they get to Planet Zero, giving the impression that they had all sobered up by then, which still doesn't stop them from running around and touching stuff. Those guys are lucky to still be alive, let alone become superheroes!
 * 7) Johnny becoming the Human Torch, and Ben becoming the Thing make sense based on how the accident happened to them. Fantastic and Invisible Woman on the other hand don't make any sense.
 * 8) They're never referred to by any of their superhero names or even their team name. Not once!
 * 9) The "One Year Later" transformation could have been used to help the team adapt to their new powers and all the craziness that comes with it, but instead, we skip a full year and suddenly they're experts on their powers. That hour's worth of content could have been used to give the team a personality and make them relatable, and they're not going to use it?
 * 10) When it was time to team up and defeat Doom, they each took turns punching him which didn't work, and then suddenly they take turns again and it suddenly works, also, that was a very anti-climatic boss fight.

Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic

 * 1) The first few minutes of the film, portrayed him as a child already being a science genius and working with Ben to create an interdimensional travel machine that would take 7 years to finish. Granted, this could have been a great concept, but here it feels forced.
 * 2) Reed was also very troublesome as a kid when he used a teleportation machine to teleport, which would have him grounded for sure and tries to do it again in a school science fair which led him to be disqualified.
 * 3) He is also an idiot after his transformation and tries to escape from the Baxter Building laboratory to fix his mistakes, but he accomplishes nothing.

Sue Storm/Invisible Woman

 * 1) She probably has the least personality of the group, and the least screen time.
 * 2) She barely joins Victor and the Pre-Fantastic Four in space.
 * 3) She often thinks that she isn't going to be a tool if she was.

Johnny Storm/Human Torch

 * 1) The only reason he's even allowed to attend Baxter Foundation is that his father manipulated him, and threatened to take his car away, and not because he was actually smart in any way.
 * 2) He's a street-racing brat cliché.
 * 3) Michael B. Jordan was seriously miscast and blackwashed as Johnny Storm.
 * 4) * But the reason why director Josh Trank justified his decision was by saying that casting Jordan would have been taken to bring him in line with real demographics. That makes little to no sense when he received death threats through IMDb message boards and admitted that he could have wanted to cast Sue Storm/Invisible Woman as blackwashed since Fox insisted on retaining ethnicity to a white actress and convinced Trank to have been backed off from the project.
 * 5) * They also at the same time made him a shady delinquent big in the illegal street racing scene.

Ben Grimm/The Thing

 * 1) He was turned into a complete joke. While he did have comedic moments in the Storyverse Fantastic Four movies, he was not dumb or clueless. In addition, there is a scene where he headbutts Reed. He would never hurt any of his friends for no reason and never did in any of the previous films as well as the comics. And in general, he acts like a crybaby throughout most of the film. In one scene, he gets upset at Reed for trying to apologize and tells him they're no longer friends.
 * 2) He doesn’t have his trademark gruff voice, which Michael Chiklis perfected in the Storyverse films.
 * 3) It makes no sense why only Reed would get a scholarship to Baxter Foundation and not Ben, considering Ben helped worked on the machine and has an intermate understanding of how it works. Maybe because he's meant to be seen as the muscle?
 * 4) His family is terribly neglectful to Ben, besides her mother, seemingly caring about him. Ben also has an abusive brother who was never in the comics, named Jimmy, who has pleasure in bullying his brother if he insults him, and would beat him and think it's "Clobbering Time", which is the Thing's catchphrase in order to make it very dark and mature unlike in the 2005 film, where the Thing had the catchphrase from a prototype toy.
 * 5) In the comics, his human form was originally less a normal brute, while the movie depicts him as skinny.
 * 6) Idiot move: He doesn't even have the excuse of being drunk. He basically gets a call from a hammered Reed in the middle of the night, asking him to come to the Baxter Building right then and there so they and two guys he doesn't know can take a machine on a dimension-hopping joyride to a distant planet... and he just goes assuming nothing could go wrong. We're sure this is the same genius who worked on the travel machine. Right?
 * 7) After travelling to the alternate dimension and getting his powers, he disappears from the story for a very long time for no proper reason.
 * 8) The design looks kind of ugly because it lacks the iconic pants and consequently he looks naked (albeit unintentional), and in general resembles more like a garbage dump mashed together or even a huge piece of KFC fried chicken. Thankfully, his genitalia isn't showing.

The Only Redeeming Quality

 * 1) As horrible as his character design is, the Thing's size is at least accurate to the comics (even more so than in the previous movies).
 * 2) They were way better in the 2005 film and other versions.