MarsAtlas said:
Y'know, as low as Fan4stic is on my list, I can still mention a bit of stuff I liked about the film. Namely:
-I like Reed's presentation to the class at the start. I can accept that it's a cliche - geeky kid who's the laughing stock of everyone who will one day go on to great things. However, I do think it raises an interesting point/concept - Reed wants to build a teleporter, and explains why it's not too farfetched. Teleportation is something that I think can have a case made for it in real life, even though I doubt that we'll ever achieve it (similar to FTL travel). And yet he's laughed down, and asked to aspire for a "real" career. The idea behind it, that children are expected to aspire to only certain career paths, is an interesting one.
Of course it's a mystery why, having finally built his teleporter, Reed is simply showing it as a science fair, and that Sue and Franklin Storm are AT a science fair at all, but hey, credit where credit is due.
-Throughout the film in the first part there's a certain optimism that I like. These are all intelligent people (Reed, Sue, Victor, Johnny, arguably Franklin) who all have a passion for their field of work, and all get to work together to build the world's first teleporter. I like how this is handled, how it's science, and not presented too cheesily, but the enthusiasm and worth of scientific endeavour is on display. It's stymied a bit by Franklin and Victor going on about how "my/your generation ruined the world, we need to go to Planet Zero for resources, boo hoo," but again, credit where credit is due.
-I like the discussion scene after the succesful test, how it's pointed out how we can name the people who went to the moon, but not so readily the people who made it possible. Speaking personally, I can name Verner von Braun and Korolev as being key in the US and Soviet space programs, but most people will sooner remember the likes of Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gagarin than those who worked on the ground. Again, it's a nice point. While the characters act like fools after going to Planet Zero, I can sympathize with the desire to go at all.
-Plus the aftermath is well handled. The atmosphere, the body horror...people may say "this isn't Fantastic 4, this isn't meant to be dark and gritty." To which I say, judging a work by itself is separate from judging it as an adaptation. I think Starship Troopers is a great movie for instance, yet is horrible as an adaptation. These are separate standards, and by itself, I think Fan4stic is fine up to this point.
-Key word "up to this point." Because it's at this moment that the movie falls apart structurally - we've spent an hour on the first act, and have to compress the rest of the film into about 30 minutes. Others have already pointed out the problems in this section of the movie. I like the idea of the F4 being weaponized, of Ben's resentment towards Reed, and I actually like Doom...sort of. He's intimidating, there's a sense of dread when he's walking through the base. Course we then go to "I want to kill everyone" and "let's go to Planet Zero, which now has a breathable atmosphere for some reason," and everything else (and where did Doom get his cape), and then end with "yay, we're all friends now, let's call ourselves the Fantastic 4 now - something that feels like it should be in the middle of the movie rather than end of it."
Fan4stic is between Pan and J. Ascending for a reason. J. Ascending has great ideas but poor execution. Pan is flawed, but I enjoy it regardless. Fan4stic is somewhere in-between...I honestly think a good movie could have come out of this, and there's sparks of that movie there. But at the end of act 1, something...snaps, I suppose. Maybe it was Trank, maybe it was Fox, maybe it was something else. But I do genuinely have some good things to say about it as mentioned above, but ultimately, this is a flawed, arguably even broken film.
