--- title: "Fantastic Four" year: 2015 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/fantastic-four" fi1m_score: 38 critics_score: 35 critics_reviews: 16 published: "2026-09-16T15:14:19.306828+00:00" updated: "2026-09-16T15:14:54.880184+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Fantastic Four (2015) Directed by Josh Trank · 1h 40m · MPA PG-13 · Action, Adventure, Science Fiction **Fi1m score: 38** · Critics 35 from 16 reviews *In a sentence:* A promising cast explains the science until we no longer want to know > Josh Trank’s *Fantastic Four* gives its cast a serious origin story, then leaves them with explanations instead of relationships. There is promise in the quieter scenes, but the film is tedious and the action poorly assembled. ## Synopsis Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Sue Storm (Kate Mara), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) have yet to become a superhero team. Scientific work and their early relationships occupy the opening stretch, with Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell) also part of the story. The younger generation’s ambitions run up against questions of who gets to make decisions and who has to obey them. Before the action begins, Reed and the others have to establish how they relate to one another, with personal ambitions complicating the task of working together. ## Review Josh Trank’s *Fantastic Four* wants to spend time with its young people before asking them to carry a superhero film. The more appealing early scenes concern ambition, awkward relationships and the older generation’s determination to remain in charge. Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell are good reasons to give that approach a chance. But the film keeps explaining its science while neglecting its people, and the result is poor. Miles Teller’s Reed Richards has to give the scientific talk a human purpose, and he cannot do that on his own. Michael B. Jordan brings welcome energy to Johnny Storm, though the surrounding film does little with it. Kate Mara’s Sue Storm and Jamie Bell’s Ben Grimm need more room to establish what they mean to the others. Toby Kebbell gives Victor von Doom an edge that briefly cuts through the general solemnity. These are useful individual contributions, but the group seldom convinces as people who would choose to spend time together. The screenplay, credited to Josh Trank, Jeremy Slater and Simon Kinberg, spends too much time explaining how things work. Technical dialogue can be pleasurable if someone speaking it wants something we understand, or if the exchange changes a relationship. Here it too often stops the scene while information is delivered. We were bored by the scientific explanations, then irritated by how little the quartet had been allowed to say to one another beyond them. The occasional small character detail makes that neglect harder to excuse. Matthew Jensen’s cinematography suits the early, low-key approach, giving the quieter performances a chance to hold our attention. Chris Seagers’s production design likewise helps make the scientific work credible, even when the explanations have become wearying. The effects are less convincing, and their obvious artificiality makes the growing emphasis on action a poor bargain. Philip Glass and Marco Beltrami’s music takes the material seriously, but it cannot supply the feeling missing from the dialogue. Stephen E. Rivkin and Elliot Greenberg’s editing leaves a persistent sense of scenes being shortened before anything between the characters has been settled. For a film running 100 minutes, it finds a remarkable amount of time for exposition and surprisingly little for its cast to respond. When the action takes over, the cutting becomes choppy without making the film exciting. The shift is so abrupt that the earlier care with tone begins to look wasted. Even the action offers little relief from the sluggish pace. A superhero origin story does not have to be cheerful, and taking young characters seriously is no offence against the genre. Nor does a film owe us a joke whenever someone looks unhappy. It does need curiosity about what makes its central group stay together, especially when it spends so long establishing them. Josh Trank occasionally finds that curiosity in a small emotional exchange, then returns to explanation. Most critics have found the film tedious and muddled; we agree, though its early restraint and committed cast make the disappointment sharper. If this particular cast is enough to make the evening, there are scattered moments worth staying for. We would not sit through the rest merely to collect them. This is one to leave to the completists. *Fi1m score 38, published 16 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics find Fantastic Four a tedious, muddled reboot that wastes a promising cast. Praise, where it appears, centres on the actors and the early attempt to build a quieter, character-led origin story. Several reviews see potential in its darker treatment of the characters’ transformation, but find those ideas poorly developed. The recurring complaints are heavy exposition, weak effects and action that arrives without enough dramatic groundwork. Even the more receptive notices acknowledge a gap between the early promise and the later superhero business. The sharpest divide concerns that restrained opening: some critics find it intimate and likeable, while others see only slow pacing and thin relationships. Scores range widely, though thirteen of the sixteen reviews are negative. Little White Lies stands apart, embracing the film as a spirited B-film with meaningful character details and something to say about generational power. Elsewhere, reservations repeatedly cluster around the rushed climax and squandered cast. ### Reviews we read (16) - **Little White Lies**, David Jenkins (1/4/3): The critic finds it a really good film, a feisty B-movie with something to say. Small, meaningful character touches and subtle emotional spectrum stand out amid themes of generational power struggles. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/fantastic-four) - **Evening Standard**, Richard Godwin (50/100, inferred): The reboot feels intimate and indie-like despite its budget, with strong casting and groundwork for future films in its grounded, character-driven origins story recast as psychodrama and entrepreneurship. However, the shift to action comes too late, subtleties are squandered, VFX are patchy, and the final battle feels tacked-on and low-stakes. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/going-out/fantastic-four-film-review-a2323741.html) - **Time Out**, Tom Huddleston (50/100, inferred): A film of two halves: the first likeable and fun in a Joe Dante vein, the second tiresome and loud with naff catchphrases and lifeless punch-ups. Early promise to transcend the source material is undermined by duff CG and superhero clichés. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/fantastic-four-2) - **Radio Times**, Alan Jones (2/5): The first family of Marvel comics gets royally shafted again in a banal and tedious reboot. Trank fails to bring the shrewd naturalism of Chronicle, resulting in perfunctory CG, trite exposition and cardboard cut-out stuff. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-ociyua/fantastic-four/) - **Screen Daily** (40/100, inferred): Fantastic Four emerges as a wounded animal of a superhero movie, only rarely showing flashes of the darker, more emotional breed it aims for. A good cast is swallowed up in a narrative that grows progressively more muddled and tedious, with choppy action scenes. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/fantastic-four-review/5091259.article) - **The New Yorker**, Richard Brody (30/100, inferred): The critic argues the film should have been great but was ruined by studio interference that diluted Trank's vision, resulting in a critical and commercial disappointment. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/fantastic-four-should-have-been-great) - **The New York Times**, A.O. Scott (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the reboot lifeless and unearned despite its cast, with meager human drama and underwhelming effects that fail to deliver on superhero expectations. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/movies/review-fantastic-four-the-reboot-wanted-or-not.html) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (30/100, inferred): The reboot feels like an also-ran in the comic-book genre, with a low-key approach that comes across as rushed and experimental without fully gelling. [Read](https://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/fantastic-four-review-reboots-marvel-comic-1201555905/) - **The Guardian**, Henry Barnes (20/100, inferred): The film is a dawdling indie drama gussied up in superhero garb that strains for credibility while moving at a glacial pace and wasting promising actors. Trank and his co-writers focus on the quartet's early dynamics but the result feels like mumblecore elements awkwardly inserted into a franchise picture. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/05/fantastic-four-review-marvel-superhero-dawdling) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Todd McCarthy (10/100, inferred): The film feels like a 100-minute trailer for a movie that never happens and proves maddeningly lame and unimaginative. The critic singles out the lack of youthful enthusiasm or reinvention from director Josh Trank and the wasted cast in rote explanatory dialogue with little dramatic nuance. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/film-review-fantastic-four-813140/) - **Vulture**, David Edelstein (10/100, inferred): The film is a catastrophe and a confused, joyless mess marked by tonal dissonance between its grim subtext and cheesy surface. The critic singles out fleeting glimpses of horror and alienation in the characters' new powers, along with Ben's anger at Reed, as potentially effective before the film abandons these ideas. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2015/08/movie-review-fantastic-four.html) - **Collider**, Matt Goldberg (D+): The critic finds the film a dour, tedious slog that loses the family aspect of the comics, obsessing over pseudo-science instead of character relationships, with a bland first two-thirds and a bad third act. They single out the lack of levity and the failure to explore character growth post-powers as major complaints. [Read](https://collider.com/fantastic-four-review/) - **Den of Geek**, Mark Harrison (2/5): The critic finds the film a radicalised take that takes risks but doesn't fully pay off, praising the casting especially Michael B. Jordan and Toby Kebbell, while complaining about lack of chemistry among the team and a rushed climax. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/fantastic-four-review-2/) - **The Playlist**, The Playlist Staff (D): The critic finds the film a muddle of competing visions between director and studio, with some early earnestness in the origin story but an overall failure to establish a clear new identity beyond standard superhero tropes. It singles out the truncated execution of interesting ideas and poor CGI in the climax for complaint. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/review-josh-tranks-fantastic-four-starring-miles-teller-kate-mara-jamie-bell-and-michael-b-jordan-20150805/) - **The Wrap** (30/100, inferred): The critic notes glimmers of potential only in the final moments but slams the tedious origin story, excessive exposition, weak script, and lack of engaging superhero action despite the cast's charm. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/fantastic-four-review-marvel-mcu-michael-b-jordan-kate-mara-miles-teller/) - **Deadline**, Pete Hammond (10/100, inferred): The review labels the film an epic fail, faulting director Josh Trank's blurred vision and lack of class in publicly criticizing his own work while blaming the dumbed-down script and wasted talented cast. [Read](https://deadline.com/2015/08/fantastic-four-review-fail-josh-trank-miles-teller-kate-mara-1201496317/) ## Details - **Director:** Josh Trank - **Director:** Josh Trank - **Screenplay:** Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg, Josh Trank - **Cinematography:** Matthew Jensen - **Editor:** Stephen E. Rivkin, Elliot Greenberg - **Music:** Marco Beltrami, Philip Glass - **Production design:** Chris Seagers - **Costume design:** George L. Little - **Producer:** Matthew Vaughn, Gregory Goodman, Simon Kinberg - **Cast:** Miles Teller as Reed Richards; Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm; Kate Mara as Sue Storm; Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm / The Thing; Toby Kebbell as Victor von Doom / Dr. Doom; Reg E. Cathey as Dr. Franklin Storm; Tim Blake Nelson as Dr. Allen; Tim Heidecker as Mr. Richards - **Runtime:** 1h 40m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG-13 - **Release (the US):** 7 August 2015 - **Genres:** Action, Adventure, Science Fiction - **Budget:** $120 million - **Box office:** $168 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAgnQdiZFsQ ## Where to watch in the US - Disney+: streaming, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, uhd - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $19.99, uhd - Apple TV: buy $19.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-16.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TR, UA, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture 2015: Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture (won) ## If you liked this - *Chronicle* (2012): Young people acquire powers, and the damage to their friendship actually matters - *The Fly* (1986), Fi1m 88: Scientific ambition brings physical consequences that the film has the nerve to examine — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-fly.md) - *The Host* (2006): A fractious family gives the creature attacks people worth worrying about - *Akira* (1988), Fi1m 83: Adolescent resentment and dangerous powers are given time to become frightening — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/akira.md) - *The Invisible Man* (1933): An experiment goes wrong, with wit and menace sharing the same small spaces --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/fantastic-four