Fantastic Four (2015)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.