Fantastic Four

A quality comic book movie, but not quite fantastic enough to compete with the likes of Batman Begins and the Spider-Man movies. I'm just sayin.

Fantastic Four was a good movie, however, if not a little too focused on the respective discovery of powers. The story opens fairly quickly, with Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) and Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) taking the inevitable path to superpowers via radiation. It's always the scientists you know, getting the superpowers and all. Note to nerds everywhere: please become cool by getting yourself irradiated, or bitten by a hybrid spider, or simply wait for a lightning bolt to shatter your beakers so that the chemicals will splash all over your body, thereby giving you superspeed. Anyway, each of these particular characters gradually discovers his/her new powers, with mixed results. Obviously, Ben Grimm, who becomes The Thing, is less than pleased at having permanently assumed the shape of a giant rock as well as such a non-descriptive nickname. The movie devotes a good portion of time on Ben's struggle to accept and embrace his new concretion identity, whereas Johnny Storm takes his new ability to superheat in stride, quickly adopting the moniker The Human Torch. I was a little confused as to why Sue Storm, aka The Invisible Woman, and Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, had anything to complain about, but apparently they had some sort of inner struggle as well and kept trying to find a way to reverse the effects.

Victor Von Doom, who prefers the path of evil, develops the ability to harness and conduct electricity as his body gradually transforms into metal. He becomes Dr. Doom and poses the greatest threat to the Fanastic Four; however, he doesn’t really do a whole lot with his powers except glower and sulk until the very end. I would have preferred it if the film focused slightly less on the discovery and acceptance of superpowers and more on the conflict between the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom. Unfortunately, only the last 20 minutes or so of the movie deal with this particular issue, so there wasn’t a very clear direction in the plot for most of it.

The special effects were not overdone, which is, in my opinion, the best way to do a comic book movie of this type. Each character has his or her moments when powers are used, but I didn’t feel like the whole movie was just an excuse to show CGI and light displays. However, much as I appreciate subtlety in special effects, I think it would have been alright to stick in one or two extra fight scenes with special effects. It is always neat to see superheroes discover their unique abilities and decide how to use them, but a little more fighting and a little less whining would have been nice. In the end it seemed like this movie was only the first half of the story.

Nevertheless, Fantastic Four was definitely entertaining. I confess that I am a bit predisposed to like comic book movies, but I honestly believe that this is a decent film. It has good dialogue, great acting, and an interesting, if not underdeveloped plot. I suppose it’s ok to be left wanting more at times, so let’s just say that I have high hopes for the sequels.