REVIEW: The Fantastic 4

REVIEW: The Fantastic 4 - First Steps

I'm going on the record to say that, even with the devastation wrought upon Wanda's character in "Multiverse of Madness," WandaVision is one of the best things we've gotten from any stage of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And that has to be the main reason why Marvel enlisted Matt Shakman to pilot their premiere Fantastic 4 film (stealing him away from Star Trek 4 ...), the film that was going to rescue the studio from their post-"Endgame" stupor. There are probably all sorts of soundbites about this being the first real version of the story to get the machine to work, and I wouldn't disagree.

But in the context of Marvel's larger rehabilitation, The Fantastic 4: First Steps reads less like the great MCU reset and more like an elaborate gymnastics routine, an attempt to splice Marvel's Thanos era with its Not-Iron-Man era. Graciously, this works better than it sounds on paper, but it does kind of purchase this at the expense of real personality.

The movie, for example, falls back on humor that probably tested well with the focus groups. Johnny has to remark to himself that of course the first girl he's interested in is heralding the destruction of his planet. Reed wants the school kids to get excited about space travel but has to acquiesce that they're only here to see stuff blow up.

Even the movie's bids for gravity and emotional impact end up feeling like a sum average. Sue delivers the movie's treatise at the precipice of Act III, that being a part of a family means fighting for something bigger than yourself, a thesis that could have been outsourced from any one of a dozen MCU projects.

The film's most unique ingredients are the optic factors stemming from the design of its retro-future universe. (This was no doubt detailed in Shakman's contract.) I wouldn't mind getting to see Earth 828 again at some point. But I couldn't overlook that after dazzling you with its alternate-timeline New York, the movie actually spends most of its time trying to convince you that it's not that different from the other Marvel flicks.

The camaraderie is strong between Marvel's first family. Of the squad, Pedro Pascal feels the most equipped for his character. He brings the optimal measure of insecurity for a science nerd who stumbled into superhero-dom as well as an anxious first-time father.

Edon Moss-Bachrach winds up feeling the most underused here. I don't fault the actor, or even the CGI rock dressing over his face. But his character winds up with the least to do. Where the other players get articulated character arcs, his big culminating moment I think had something to do with the tagline of his in-universe cartoon show.

Julia Garner's Silver Surfer probably has to walk the finest line. The film very clearly announces her early on as the emissary for the big bad guy, and so we're not surprised that her line delivery emerges very sterile, very impartial. It's hard to bring your heart with you as you're announcing the annihilation of a planet. The big test comes during critical character junctions when the team forces her to reckon with her complicity in Galactus' planet genocides. (This is what Johnny's major arc feeds into.) And Garner is able to stick the landing.

Had this been released leading up to "Infinity War," it would likely join the ranks of perfectly fine offerings like Doctor Strange or Ant-Man in the Marvel pantheon. I've enjoyed the players of those movies when they've shown up in the ensemble pieces more than I ever did in their native films. Perhaps that will be the fate of this team of superheroes. Thunderbolts* earlier this summer gave me more active hope for the future of the MCU, though this placeholder certainly didn't do anything to dash those hopes.

--The Professor

Comments

REVIEW: HOPPERS

In the 1950s under the threat of nuclear warfare, Hollywood premiered such exercises as The Day the Earth Stood Still or War of the Worlds where an alien power would pass judgment on humankind, holding its fate in its hands. Here in the 2020s under the shadow of such threats as climate change, Hollywood sends to be our judge ... beavers. Let me back up ... Daniel Chong's new film from Pixar Animation, Hoppers , sees Mabel (Piper Curda), a college student whose self-appointed mission is to preserve the glade where she used to find sanctuary with her now deceased grandmother. Her biggest opponent is hometown boy and beloved mayor, Jerry (Jon Hamm), who has designs to plow over the glade in order to open his new freeway--estimated to save travelers four whole minutes of commuting. Mabel gets her golden opportunity when she uncovers secret technology pioneered by her professor which allows a human to rem...

The Pleasantville Lie

Lynn Hunt, American Historical Association, University of California 2002, is best known for her 2007 work Inventing Human Rights , a cornerstone for academic work on the history of human interaction. This landmark work tracked the developing concept of human empathy across European history, especially the function that art and literature played in allowing humans to recognize the interiority and dignity of other humans who were different from them. But in 2002, she shared in the May Issue of Perspectives on History her observations in “presentism,” and the uphill battle of even getting students to engage with history at all, Gladiator (2000) “Presentism, at its worst, encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation. Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior; the Greeks had slavery, even David Hume was a racist, and European women endorsed imperial ventures. Our forebears constantly fail to measure up to our ...

An Earnest Defense of Passengers

I've heard a lot of back and forth over what the purpose of film is and what we should ask from it. Film as a social amenity kind of has a dual purpose. It's supposed to give the population common ground and find things that people of varying backgrounds and beliefs can unify around. On the other hand, film also creates this detached simulated reality through which we can explore complex and even testing ideas about the contradictions in human existence. In theory, a film can fulfill both functions, but movies exist in a turbulent landscape. It's very rare for a film to try to walk both lanes, and it's even rarer for a film to be embraced upon entry for attempting to do so. Let me explain by describing the premise of one of my favorite movies, Morten Tyldum's 2016 film, Passengers . A key piece of this film ’s plot revolves around the main character, Jim Preston, a passenger onboard a spaceship, who premat...

The Night of the Hunter: Redefining "Childlike Innocence"

I n the early 1960s, American professor and psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg developed what is now considered to be a fundamental cornerstone of understanding humans and morality. He introduced a model by which human beings start out determining what is right and wrong based on which course of action elicits the least punishment. Successful movement through this model sees a person gradually becoming motivated by principles , not simple reward or punishment, and Kohlberg anticipated that a person did not achieve this stage until adulthood, if ever. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) This is interesting because t he media likes to cast children as vessels of uncompromised goodness that adults could only ever hope to emulate. T heir purity forms the bedrock of much of American conversation. Because the future hinges upon their innocence, efforts to preserve their unblemished state can go to any length. You can justify any number of actions as long as you are doing i...

REVIEW: Star Wars - The Mandalorian and Grogu

I haven't historically considered myself a "Star Wars" kid. And to be clear, I take no pride in saying that or anything. I respect the property and what it's given to pop culture. But I do feel like it's worth mentioning in this review that I didn't really go into Jon Favreu's The Mandalorian and Grogu thinking I had much of what I'd call nostalgia for this movie to exploit. And yet watching this movie, I found myself hearkening back to the things about Star Wars that caught my attention as a kid. For me, that was the gladiator-style match in "Attack of the Clones." This film offers quite a few roller-coasters along those lines. And as far as the creature designs go for the monsters in these arenas, they were quite good. I wasn't trying too hard to anticipate which were computer-generated and which were puppeted, but the aesthetics of both the Jim Henson era and the Spielberg era sat very well here in this vessel....

My Best Friend's Wedding: Deconstructing the Deconstructive Rom-Com

Well, Wicked is doing laps around the box office, so it looks as though the Hollywood musical is saved, at least for a season, so I guess we’ll turn our attention to another neglected genre. As with something like the musical, the rom-com is one of those genres that the rising generation will always want to interrogate, to catch it on its lie. The whole thing seems to float on fabrication and promising that of which we can always be skeptical—the happy ending. This is also why they’re easy to make fun of and are made to feel second-tier after “realer” films which aren’t building a fantasy. You know? Movies like Die Hard … We could choose any number of rom-coms, but the one that I feel like diving into today is 1997’s underrated My Best Friend’s Wedding . I’m selecting it for a number of reasons. Among these is my own personal fondness for the film, and also the fact that it boasts a paltry 6.3 on IMDb despite its ...

All The Ways Sunset Boulevard Has Aged Gracefully

So, stop me if you’ve heard this before: Hollywood has a dark side. Particularly in the wake of something like #MeToo or the double strikes of 2023, you can really get a sense for just how famishing, even degrading, it can be trying to make a living in Hollywood. But of course, it all goes back much further than those. One of my very first essays for this blog, for example, was a catalogue of all the ways Hollywood ravaged Judy Garland . Yet for all its mess, we cannot take our eyes off of Hollywood, or the people who build it. Stardom in particular becomes a popular focal point—what is it really like being on the other side of all that spotlighting? And Hollywood has naturally supplied the market with all sorts of imaginings for this as well. Thus, each generation gets its own version of A Star is Born. John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man (1952) Ty Burr wrote in his landmark work, Gods Like Us , “...

Silver Linings Playbook: What are Happy Endings For Anyway?

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave the following words in July of 2005 at the dedication of his plaque outside the Chicago Theatre: Nights of Cabiria (1957) “For me, movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.” Ebert had been reviewing films for coming on forty years when he gave that assessment. I haven’t been doing it for a tenth as long. I don’t know if I’ve really earned the right to pontificate in this same manner. But film ...

REVIEW: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

The fanboy renaissance manages to reach even higher heights with the new "Super Mario Galaxy Movie." The easter eggs and cameos are back with a vengeance, and in much richer resolution than we'd have thought possible even five years ago. It's for this kind of thing that the movie will be called "wish fulfillment" for video game nerds, but I personally felt fed as an animation enthusiast. To see such caricatured designs playing on such a vivid, textured playground is a rarity. It's only when you see the bricks of a giant, fairy-tale castle splintering and disintegrating that you feel like this world has weight, consequences, and there is something about that which feels strangely validating. And as with the last movie, as with the Mario universe as a whole, the animated world's command over its own landscape lets you swim between all sorts of exotic and eclectic locales and genres at leisure. Every single cast member...

How Disney Liberated the Musical Genre

Anytime I’m getting ready for a new musical film, I generally try to put off listening to the soundtrack until after I’ve seen the movie. It’s just my way of ensuring that I experience the narrative in its full context upon its important premiere viewing. Most of the time I’m good about sticking to this, but nowhere is this feat harder than with the arrival of each new Disney musical. I tried really hard with Encanto , but with Lin-Manuel Miranda writing for Disney, what can I say (except "You're Welcome"...) So, why am I talking about Disney musicals? W hen I premiered my Jungle Book essay earlier this year, I decided that going forward I was ready to expand how I talked about Disney. Owing to Disney fans constantly having to justify their fandom, a lot of Disney discourse tends to be purely defensive. Disney fans only ever get to use their platform to try convincing the cool kids that--for the last time!--it's okay for adults without kids to go to...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog