Ben Oliver

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film

Fantastic Four

I stopped believing in your bullshit a long time ago.
11 August 2016

While we’re on the topic of terrible super hero films1 I figured it might be interesting to catch up on last year’s Fantastic Four, which I missed at the time.

I hear rumours of some major clashes between director Josh Trank and the studio over this film. Unfortunately when this happens the end result is always a compromise that impresses no one, and Fantastic Four is no exception to the rule.

Amazingly, there is almost nothing to like here. The acting, is so, so bland. The tone is weird, flitting between dark sci-fi material to goofy bullshit. The special effects are jarring and hastily cobbled together, the editing is a mess and the plot is a damp squib. When the credits rolled, aside from relief, my first question was ‘is that all?’.

This is a soulless, joyless picture. It’s not helped by the fact that the Four are not the most interesting characters in super hero history, but there’s no real excuse for such a boring waste of time.

Not even ‘so bad it’s good’ (except the very end, which is spectacular in its shiteness); this is just noise and words animated by computers. Dire.

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