TheRetroCritic

Where to start with this one? What could I possibly say that hasn't already been said? Indeed, this new Fantastic Four did not do well at all with the critics upon its release, nor did it do very well financially due to poor word-of-mouth. But was the film written off too quickly? Were critics much too harsh on it? Mmmwell... I'd love to say yes but this is one hard movie to defend. For one thing, the casting is tough to get behind. As brilliant as newcomer Miles Teller was in last year's mini-masterpiece Whiplash , he finds himself miscast here and, about halfway through the film, possibly due to increasing on-set shambles, soon stops giving a f***. As do we. House Of Cards ' Kate Mara is also miscast as our new Invisible Girl as she delivers no charisma or personality, something for which the script, I should point out, is entirely to blame. Jessica Alba may have been pretty dire as Sue Storm in the 2005 Fantastic Four but at least she seemed awake an

Thinking about it, 2005 was a pivotal year for comic book movies. The first Fantastic Four movie was released after the first wave of modern superhero films reached its peak with the likes of superior sequels Spider-Man 2 and X-Men 2 , the same year that the gritty Batman Begins came out to reclaim the Dark Knight's validity and just before further dire sequels pretty much killed those franchises until Iron Man several years later. It should have been no surprise, then, that the film was both very much a product of that first wave in spirit and yet also the start of the subgenre's decline quality-wise. The Fantastic Four were always a lighter, more colourful bunch so making a live-action version of the comics would require some pretty high-end special effects to pull off the characters' unusual abilities and a script sharp enough to not let the film devolve into farce. With no Roger Corman in charge this time and an audience who accepted Spider-Man as a legitimat