Fantastic Four Movie Review

Marvel's First Family

Content Guide: Violence, mild language

The Fantastic Four is one of Marvel comic’s iconic super hero groups. The Fantastic Four are one of the first to employ heroes with “real life” problems and because of this; the Fantastic Four have been wildly popular. Although this is not the first Fantastic Four movie, this is the first to make it to the silver screen.

The story opens with Reed Richards and Ben Grimm going to Von Doom Industries to garner funds and equipment to study a cosmic storm that is scheduled to come near the earths orbit. Victor agrees, but with a large percentage of any profits.

Accompanying Reed and Ben on the mission will be Susan Storm, ex-flame of Reed and her brother, NASA flunky, Johnny Storm. The four, with Doom, travel to Victor’s space station to study the effects of the cosmic storm. The stations shields should be good enough to protect the crew from the effects of the cosmic storm. But due to an unforeseeable error, the storm arrives early and catches the team off guard. Victor seals himself inside the shields to protect him and leaves the others to fend for themselves.

The team awakes on earth in Victor’s medical research center under quarantine. They soon realize the cosmic storm has altered their basic DNA structure and has given them amazing powers The four try to cope with their powers and Reed searches for a cure, but Victor Von Doom has other ideas, being changed by the cosmic storm as well. Victor sees this as an opportunity to seize power for himself and do whatever he wishes. The four soon realize that they will have to work together to stop him.

The latest of a strong run from Marvel comic’s movie studio. Fantastic Four was very enjoyable, but there were a few flaws that kept it from reaching the status of other comic book movies, such as Spider-Man, Batman Begins, and the X-Men.

The main thing I was worried about with this film was The Thing. The Thing is a orange rocky monster. So when they went with a prosthetic suit for actor Michael Chiklis, I was a little worried. The pictures I had seen of the suit had me worried. I have to say I was impressed with the work done on the suit. I believe there was some CG added onto it as well and this gave it a very organic and lifelike appearance.

The character that stood out the most to me was Johnny Storm, played by Chris Evans. He nailed the wise cracking attitude of Johnny and the one liners he had with Ben were great. He really added a lot to this movie in the form of humor and passion.

Overall the acting was well done with fine performances by Jessica Alba, Ioann Gruffudd, and Julian McMahon. The special effects were top notch, especially the action sequences. It was great to see two great characters like Dr. Doom and The Thing duking it out, being blown through walls and using objects like cars as weapons.

There were some negative aspects to this movie though. The biggest thing for comic fans will by far be the origin of Dr. Doom. In the comics, Doom and Reed did go to college, but Victor Von Doom did not accompany Reed and the rest on their journey to receive their super powers. Although in the end, he looked great with the mask and hood, but the problem is that there wasn’t a need to really mess with the continuity of the comic book. In looking at movies like Spider-Man, Batman Begins, and the X-Men, there was very little that was changed which satisfies the comic fans and since it is a great story in itself, it plays well as a movie.

The other negative thing was the music in the movie. There were a few too many pop songs which will greatly date it in a short period of time. There was also some background music that felt out of place as in the instance of the first showing of The Things powers, The Thing is balancing on a bridge with a scared suicide jumper. The music that accompanies this is almost silly and didn’t fit very well at all.

Even with the small bumps on this road, Fantastic Four is a very good and enjoyable movie. I believe kids and teens will really like this movie a lot as I felt it was geared more towards them. That is to not say that this is a bad movie by any means. I just felt that it could have been so much more, especially in terms of keeping true to the comic book, which is a truly fantastic tale.