I don't know or care much about the Fantastic Four or their legacy as superheroes. I thought their prior two movies were dumb and that they weren't particularly interesting as characters. Then I saw the the trailers for last summer's Josh Trank directed Fantastic 4 movie and was intrigued by the sci-fi take on the material and the dark tone. I had also read that he was looking at Cronenbergian body horror as an influence which seemed interesting.
Then before the movie was released there were an avalanche of stories about the movie's troubled production such as Trank's "out of control" behavior on set and lots of reshoots. The media smelled blood in the water and the movie got a ton of bad press. When it was finally released all of the reviews and press seemed to feed into that narrative. It now has the reputation of not only being a flop but an embarrassingly awful movie.
I finally saw it for myself on Blu-ray recently and it is definitely a better movie than you would believe from its reviews and reputation. Now, it has some serious problems most of which are due to areas where it seems to have been significantly altered in editing with reshoots. There are some glaring inconsistencies in visuals, tone, and pacing but I am convinced that there is a good or at least more interesting movie buried in here.
I particularly like the way the movie shows how horrible and burdensome it would be to have super-powers. It seems like in every other superhero movie, the characters get off light. If you really think about it, being Spider-Man would be a gross and horrifying experience. Fantastic 4 actually spends some time on how disturbing and terrifying the character's powers would be and I really like that. I also dig the premise of the these characters working on a project that seeks to uncover the mystery of inter-dimensional travel. This is a fun idea, and a neat way to replace the 1960's era space origins of the characters. It's an interesting idea that actually works well cinematically and adds something unique to the movie.
Also, I don't know if this is a factor of the post-production fiddling but the movie is under two hours long, which feels fresh and wonderful when every super hero or genre movie aims for a butt-numbing two and a half hour run time. For this reason alone, the movie's reputation is puzzling. The short run time helps offset some of the movie's issues. A flawed long movie is one thing, but a flawed shorter movie can still be enjoyable.
In any case, I definitely recommend checking it out. It's not the trainwreck it is made out to be. I, for one, would love to see a director's cut or alternate cut of the movie.
Patrick Garone
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