Fantastic Four had all the right ingredients to make a great movie, so what exactly went wrong? We break down all of the puzzling blunders for you with GIFs.
1. 36 Long minutes of backstory
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Superhero movies usually come in one of two forms: an origin story or the superhero is tasked to take down an established villain. Fantastic Four tries to do both and it makes for a few too many yawns when all of the backstory could easily have been summed up by one of the characters in dialogue. Or in a voiceover. Or a flashback. Or a brief animated sequence over a song by Ed Sheeran. Or through an interpretive dance by that little girl in the Sia videos. We do like seeing Michael B. Jordan in a tank top, however.
2. No clear understanding of the big threat
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Doctor Doom’s line, “You don’t know anything about what’s coming,” is basically the problem. Sure, we can guess it’s something bad, but we need a hint as to what it is. Master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock always made sure we saw the ticking bomb before it went off to create that sense of excited anxiety. In other words, a little information is a dangerous and frightening thing. No information is just boring.
3. Reed’s awkward Stretch Armstrong arms
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We’re not even sure how this is a superpower, but his Spandex arms are just silly.
4. Lack of mind-blowing… snore
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Sorry, did we just doze off? We meant to say that we would love to see something completely new or at least a fresh take on what it means to teleport to another dimension. The filmmakers should have considered involving the Large Hadron Collider that may or may not be creating little black holes underneath Switzerland. Oh, right, we can’t use that idea because it’s based on real science and no one will believe it.
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5. Get Kate Mara’s nose out of the microscope
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Mara is an underused resource, so we were really hoping to see what she could do as Susan Storm. We’re still waiting.
6. The bleached squirrel pelt
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OK, we understand that reshoots happen and sometimes the actress has changed her hair for her next role. But they couldn’t have gotten her a decent wig?
7. Failed fist-pump as metaphor
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This fist-pump sums up the problems in the movie: Johnny Storm firmly reaches for one thing while Reed Richards responds with something sloppy and strange. The movie is a series of failed connections.
8. Space helmets that double as burkas
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Remember Gravity? Sandy Bullock’s entire face was seen clear as crystal through her helmet, allowing us to easily access her facial expressions. Here, all we get to see are the actors’ eyes — why?
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9. Fire is sooo 2014
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We don’t even use matches anymore because we smoke e-cigarettes! The world has changed and it would have been much nicer to see a clever update or twist on the character known as The Human Torch.
10. Rock of (old) ages
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The whole point of The Thing is that he’s super destructive — and we only get to see him smash things in the last 30 minutes of the movie. Ant-Man had more fun with a tiny Thomas the Tank Engine than The Thing has in the entire film.
11. Not all reboots are a good idea. In fact, can we just stop?
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We think it’s clear that audiences and filmmakers are longing for new stories and new characters, as seen in last year’s mega-hit Guardians of the Galaxy. Though we know it’s a lot to ask to retire Batman, perhaps it’s time to let go of the past and focus on a bright new stock of superheroes who reflect our modern sensibility.
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