• Alright guys, so there has been a very conflicting road leading up to this movie’s release.
• When I first heard about two or three years ago that they were doing a Fantastic Four reboot, I thought that was a cool idea.
• They could make it gritty and dark, like every other reboot nowadays and it could be cool!
• Then they cast Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan and Kate Mara, all of whom are actors that I really like!
• But then the conflict comes in… Because then I start hearing stories that director Josh Trank is showing up to the set hungover and that Matthew Vaughn was brought in to do edits and there were months and months of reshoots.
• BUT THEN, the Trailers drop and I was really impressed with what I was seeing. So they sold me for a while.
• Then, only about three days ago, that excitement was once again spoiled with only two words: review embargo.
• Fox embargoed all reviews for this movie, meaning no critics could publish their reviews until one or two days before the movie dropped. Essentially showing that they didn’t have much faith in the movie.
• Then this thing gets a lot of bad reviews when they do come out, and here we are!
• So I go in, I watch Fantastic Four, and I didn’t think it was that bad! I’m not gonna recommend you run out and see it (read the review), but it certainly doesn’t deserve a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes!

• So Fantastic Four stars Miles Teller as Reed Richards, who was my favorite character and performance in the movie. I liked seeing him develop as a character from the shy smart guy into this team leader. There were points towards the end of the movie where he felt a little phoned in, but this guy carried the movie for me.
• Then we got Kate Mara as Sue Storm. She was a character that was perfectly serviceable and completely functional, but didn’t have a lot of depth to her.
• I took that same issue with her brother, Johnny Storm played by Michael B. Jordan.
• Neither of the two felt like they had complete arcs to them, but each character was used decently and effectively for what the movie was.
• Then we have Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm, who does have an arc to him but doesn’t feel completely fleshed out or developed.
• All of the actors in this movie feel like they’re trying hard, but there’s some obstacle in the way (whether it be the directing or the script) that’s just prohibiting them from doing their best.
• Because the cast chemistry doesn’t work all that great either.
• Sure Reed and Ben are good together, and Sue and Reed are good together.
• But there might only be one or two scenes in the movie where Sue and Ben are on-screen together.
• And that ultimately brings me in to my main problem with the movie. Well, one of my main problems. Cuz there’s two.
• This movie was DEFINITELY a half hour too short.
• The pacing feels okay for the first hour, but then the next 45 minutes are pretty rushed through.
• I wish that we had an extra half hour to make the final action sequences and the conflict of the movie feel like they were bigger and not just some random pointless thing…
• Adding in that half-hour could also be beneficial in making our villain better. Because he was the other problem in the movie…
• Doom in this movie…?
• Yeah I didn’t like Toby Kebbell as Victor Von Doom to begin with, he felt really pretentious and nagging, but when he goes full villain it just feels absurd and weird.
• You aren’t sure what his motivation is, and you don’t know what his plan is. You feel like you missed parts of the movie somewhere, because I’m pretty sure you did.
• As I’m writing this, Josh Trank (the director of this movie) just came out and said that the studio made him give up his vision or something like that… I don’t believe that entirely, but I’m sure that there were conflicting ideas of what this story should be and how it should go.
• That being said, Trank was very bipolar in his directing of this movie.
• Overall, I thought he brought this new sense of imagination, intelligence, and realism to the movie’s entire tone.
• In terms of getting good performances out the actors and making the story flow though? Not as much.
• The script was another thing that felt completely split in half.
• The first half of this movie had some issues here and there, but it had a lot of great setup. It did a good job establishing each character and slowly unraveling plot points.
  • There were things that I think could have been handled better, I’ll do a Spoiler-Filled Review for those.
• But overall, the first hour of this movie had really good setup and was written really well. It was probably the half that Simon Kinberg wrote…
• But then that last half hour or forty-five minutes really went all over the place and didn’t develop the characters being set up, or even include any real logic.
• So at the end of the day, this movie did have a lot of potential to it.
• I was excited for this movie, the actors gave good performances but seemed to be held back by issues behind the scenes with the script or director or studio or whoever.
• The movie was shot really well, the effects were really great in parts and the action was good, though I wish we had more of it.
• The first half of the movie really established the characters and had an intelligent and imaginative sci-fi feel, but the last half hour and the moronic thing that was Doom seemingly took that down.
• So if I had to split it, I’d say that the first half of this movie is definitely worth checking out!
• But as an overall movie… Ehh, You Can Probably Skip It.
• I had friends who walked out of this movie absolutely hating it. Like despising the being of this cinema.   I thought it was an okay movie. Not great or even good, but definitely watchable.

• And yeah, I bet this thing only does about 23 or 24 million at the box office this weekend. That crossover with X-Men seemingly won’t be happening anytime soon…
• I would definitely be interested in seeing a sequel to this though. And if the rumors are true, hopefully Brian Singer can get this property on track.

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So guys, those are my thoughts on Fant4stic! What are your thoughts on this movie if you’ve seen it? Let me know in the comments down below, and as always, thanks for reading guys.