Before I even get into it all, I am not going to mention the Disney stuff or the corporate stuff this time around, because I think I have said it to death at this point. What I will say is, there has been a lot of mis-marketing around this film, from it being called woke due to the hottest guy in Hollywood playing Reed Richards, a Caucasian male, and Pedro Pascal is not. With articles running with "Sue Storm is the leader of the team" instead of Reed Richards, to saying Johnny Storm is no longer a ladies man, as he is in the comics; a lot of negative stories surrounding Fantastic Four were flying around to orchestrate a narrative that Disney has gone "woke" (again, woke does not mean diversity and inclusion, bimbo!), but in fact Disney have made a conscious effort to produce and make a film that will hopefully remove the "stench" off of the old movies from Tim Story and hopefully give us, film-goers and fans of the Fantastic Four and comics, comic book's first family in a way that works.
Recently, I watched both of Tim Story's Fantastic Four and in a way, I felt those two movies (along with Fan4stic to some degree) heavily influenced the characters in this movie. They did not want to re-tread old ground. Rewatching Fantastic Four reminded me that although it had not aged well, there are many elements in that movie that make that movie a movie of that era. For example, if you watched X-Men and Spider-Man (Tobey), you can tell the movie is of that era. Yes it was it entertaining, and the back and fourth between Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm was good, but I found pretty much all of Johnny Storm's dialogue were all "clever" ways to say something that incorporates a mention of heat, flame or fire to a point it became borderline predictable and in some cases, cheesy or cringeworthy. However, comic book movies were not where they are now, and like I said, a product of its era, it is all we had. Reed could do some cool stretchy things, and Sue could turn invisible and maybe project force fields, but she was mainly used as a gag to get Jessica Alba in her undies. Lastly, Doctor Doom seemed to have metal under his skin and could shoot electricity as if he were Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars. It was good at the time because, like I said, that is all we had, so when 'Rise of the Silver Surfer' came about, it was more of the same, but it was lacking, and the only cool thing about it was the Silver Surfer character. Cool action scenes, and before I bury the lede, seeing Andre "Nine Nine" Braugher, who at the time, I never knew who he was, was delightful on the rewatch, but the film does not hold up, nor was it any good. And the less I say about Fan4stic and the exploding heads and nonsense that was Doctor Doom, the better. That was also a film of that era, like The Amazing Spider-Man with Garfield. They thought going dark was edgy, you know. Well, at least until the MCU came with the Avengers movie, where the colour palette was brighter. But on the back of a few good stories with a few good characters, we are possibly 30 projects in at this point and I say all that to say this...the Tim Story and the Josh Trank movies crawled for this movie to run...and run it did, to a full on sprint in some cases, I'll explain.
I missed (you know what, never mind). From what I caught, the Fantastic Four were being introduced, and there was a little backstory behind how they got their powers, and they are at home about to have dinner. Sue and Reed let the rest of the family know they are expecting a child, but when the Silver Surfer turns up, stating the planet is doomed to death, the Fantastic Four must figure out how to tackle this problem and hopefully save the planet.
I tried to keep it as simple as possible without any spoilers because if you have seen the trailers, pretty much all the scenes are mostly from the first part of the movie, but with that said, this movie soars AND takes you places unexpected. To start with, the special effects, this might be one of the best-looking designs in the MCU, next to the city of Wakanda, and the special effects are immaculate. In places, it does dip, but there are scenes in this movie where it looks absolutely fantastic. There is a specific scene where the special effects and the sound design compliment each other for what we are looking at and the weight and depth given to that scene fills you with dread, then immediately after that scene, there is another scene which is filled with soo much tension and action, it was similar to how I felt watching Gravity for the first time with Sandra Bullock...clenching onto the seat for dear life.
Which leads me to the acting. Not a single bad or out-of-place performance. I will say that Paul Walter Hauser's character felt a little off, but that might be because I simply saw the guy from 'I, Tonya' than the character he was playing and although I respect him as a great actor and the way he portrayed the character, maybe something else was needed. Pedro, as Reed, to me, sold a man with the weight of the planet on his shoulders. There was zero charm coming from Pedro; it was all about the technology and trying to assess the threat. The conversation between Reed and Storm, played by Vanessa Kirby, was perfection. Vanessa killed the role as Sue Storm as she was given more than just getting into her underwear, and in some cases, was the MVP of the film. With that said, her brother Johnny Storm, played by Joseph Quinn, played a different hothead than Chris Evans, but I believe that was the point. I always wondered why Johnny Storm would go into space, but in this film, they fleshed him out a bit better than previous versions did. Actually, I take that back, Michael B. Jordan showed intelligence in the last Fantastic Four Movie too, but they also gave him an arc as well. Ben Grimm, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, played a more mild-mannered Ben, but I believe it worked for the movie, especially with what they were doing. I was completely sold on the fact that these people were friends and a family. The way they interacted with each other, joked with each other and worked together. There were undertones and subtle acting where you had to read between the lines because this movie did not spell it out for you. As for subtlety, Julia Garner did a great job as the Silver Surfer, expressionless but terrifying. I completely understand why they went for her over the Silver Surfer, who is more familiar with fans of the comics. There were scenes in this movie with her that sent shivers down my spine, where 'Rise of the Silver Surfer' could not even try to conjure up a thought of even being this good a portrayal. And in case you do not know who the big bad is, I will simply say, terrifying.
The story was good as it all made sense. Not everything was explained, but I do believe that is because I am willing to bet there are huge chunks of this movie on the cutting room floor, because as I said, this movie soars, it sprints, it's choppy, not leaving much room for scenes to breathe. You can be on one scene, then before you know it, you are three scenes deep, and scenarios are happening quickly, and I assume this was done to streamline the movie within an inch of its life so that people stayed engaged and entertained. They trimmed the fat, you could say, but to be honest, I wanted much more. I honestly do not know how much I missed, but 30 minutes (or close to that) is definitely removed from this movie. It is not as if nothing makes sense; it is just that you get from A to F quickly, like where were C and E? And talking about letters, the score was great. More noticeable for me in this movie than Superman, but it gave me vibes of the Ant-Man score style.
In conclusion, this movie is not great; it has a few issues here and there, but they are not major enough to tank the movie because this movie does a lot of things to get you on board. Sci-fi, humour (which hits mostly without being too comedic), tension, loss, emotion, action and also does enough to leave you intrigued to where we go next and how Marvel's first family will be incorporated into the MCU we know and love. I definitely recommend this movie as it is a great, sorry, Fantastic representation of the Fantastic Four than what we have previously had, and hopefully, going forward, we lean more into the power sets and drama of the family, oh...and Doom.
