By now, the critical consensus is in – hovering in the high
single digits on Rotten Tomatoes,
Fant4stic
is a fantastic flop (or, in a pun I wish I’d thought up, a fantastic bore).
Entering the critical conversation on a Monday puts me in a weird position,
with the benefit of hindsight beside my keyboard. I’ll try to nuance my stance
on
Fant4stic, but I’m closer to the
90% who didn’t like it than the ten or so who did; it’s an uneven and
occasionally bizarre experience that seems to want its audience held at arm’s
length.
Look, you know the story – super genius Reed Richards (Miles
Teller), his pal Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), and polar opposite siblings Sue and
Johnny Storm (Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan) find themselves the bearers of
incredible abilities after a teleportation to another dimension goes awry. In
this version of the story, the abrasive Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell), their
future nemesis, joins them in the experiment but with only his own interests in
mind.
Here’s the biggest problem with
Fant4stic (and it’s not the clunky stylization of the title): there
are the beginnings of enough good ideas in here to power what should have been
a very engaging and unique superhero film. Instead, we have a movie that is
substantially less than the sum of its parts, a collision of half-baked notions
assaulted by an apparent disdain for the very existence of the superhero genre.
The traditional superheroics comprise maybe eight minutes of the film, played
off unconvincingly when the characters decide to become heroes purely out of
generic conventions. That is, the characters only decide to become superheroes
because they’re in a superhero film; in any other genre, I can’t believe these
characters would have made that choice.
The thing is, I don’t think these characters are actually
The Fantastic Four, as much as the movie hopes to convince us that they are by
the time the credits roll. Teller is quite good at conveying the awkwardness
that comes with Reed’s immense intellect, but I don’t sense the leadership
skills that Reed ought to possess. Perhaps the best casting decision is
Jordan’s Human Torch, whose natural showmanship suits the character quite well,
and perhaps his confidence would have been played up more in the sequel that
now may never come to pass.
The other two, Mara and Bell, are actually quite dull, which
is really disappointing considering that the orange rock monster ought to be
the most interesting part of any
Fantastic
Four film. (Michael Chiklis, we hardly knew ye.) And let’s not say much
about the film’s handling of Doctor Doom because, again, this isn’t Doctor
Doom. This Doom is a petulant demi-hacker who only nails the character’s
signature ego after a bizarre attempt to explain away the fact that the comic
book character wears a head-to-toe metallic suit.
There are, in fact, a few moments that induce whiplash in
the audience as our heads collectively boggle at the inexplicable narrative
shifts
Fant4stic takes. The film
actually gets off to a great start, getting it note-perfect when it introduces
Reed as a boy genius who’s proud to be labeled “insane” by those who don’t
understand him. But the film drags its feet en route to the superpowers, and
once the team has acquired their dysmorphic abilities the movie jumps forward a
year, presumably so director Josh Trank didn’t have to show us how the four
mastered their abilities – in short, what makes them fantastic in the first
place.
Even setting aside Trank’s peculiar tweet-then-delete
casting shade on
Fant4stic, one
senses that he really wanted to make a different film here. I detect no passion
in the film’s obligatory climactic battle (which seems ripped straight from the
vastly superior
Big Hero 6), but
there’s a wonderful invocation of David Cronenberg’s
The Fly during the moments of physical transformation. Kudos to Reg
E. Cathey as Franklin Storm for conveying that blend of wonder and revulsion so
central to the subgenre of body horror.
The film is at its most content – and most compelling – when
it’s focusing on the horrible things that happen to these reclusive scientists.
But when it comes to the superhero aspects of the story, the film absolutely
fails to introduce Mister Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, and
The Thing. In fact, the final scene of the film is a real groaner in which the
characters propose their superhero codenames with a perplexing self-loathing,
as if Trank and company are legitimately embarrassed to have made a superhero
film. If you want to do a body horror superhero film, I say fantastic! The best
superhero films seem to be the ones that mash-up preexisting genres with the
conventions of a superhero tale. Just don’t pull your punches and then cave in
to the genre while wearing your utter contempt on your sleeve. Everyone comes
out disappointed there.
In other words, make mine Marvel.
Fant4stic is rated
PG-13 for “sci-fi action violence, and language.” Some of the displays of the
team’s respective superpowers are played first for fear, but audiences quickly
become acclimated to them. Doom telekinetically explodes several heads, with surprisingly
bloody results for a PG-13. Language consists mostly of a few uses of “the
brown word.”
Whiplash (2014) –
Look, do you need me to be one more voice in the litany of praise for JK
Simmons’s tour de force role as a jazz band instructor who pushes his students
to the brink of madness? If so, consider yourself adequately informed; Whiplash features a can’t-miss
performance from the man you may only know as the newspaper editor from Spider-Man. Equal parts mesmerizing and
terrifying, Simmons’s Terence Fletcher is the stuff nightmares are made of;
think the Sgt. Hartman of jazz. In fact, at a brisk 100-some minutes, Whiplash might be the most intense film
about jazz ever made, leaving me physically shaken in a way that I honestly
can’t recall another film doing. I kid you not; I had lingering jitters for at
least fifteen minutes after putting the DVD back in its case. I single out in
particular an extended drum solo, which sounds far less compelling on paper
than in its execution, to which I credit the frenetic editing and Damien
Chazelle’s tight directorial work. The unsung hero of the film is Miles Teller,
who plays the drumming prodigy protagonist, who appears noir-style in every
scene of the film and who does such a credible job of bringing Andrew Neimann
to life that you’ll forget all about Fant4stic
(as should we all). And without spoiling too much, I’ll say that Whiplash ends in a place of
open-endedness, not on a question of fact but one of meaning, one that is
guaranteed to provoke discussion and stick with you for at least a solid
weekend. Chazelle has created a think-piece disguised as a jazz film with all
the ambience of a David Fincher thriller, and if nothing else you’ll appreciate
JK Simmons in a whole new light.
