My take on what happened with this film: - Kinberg writes a script based on the Ultimate F4 (the quality of which, who knows? but based on his previous work, probably wasn't that great to begin with). - Trank takes the script, takes a whole lotta liberties with it, and essentially shoots a sequel to Chronicle. - Whilst this goes on the public get drip-fed info which results in a whole lot of backlash. - Fox begin to shit themselves, realise they won't even recoup the budget, go into damage control. - Reshoots are ordered to "fix" the movie. - The result: A complete clusterfuck of a movie with absolutely no cohesion.
Midnight's Edge Personally, I'd love to see a Trank workprint leak so we could see what his "vision" originally was. Sure, it would have probably been everything everybody feared in regards to it's "faithfulness" to the source, but it'd be interesting to compare it to what Fox did with it in post, and find out if the reshoots actually did more harm than good.
Just hit play but just wanted to say thanks so much for keeping up this channel. I spent all of last night watching your vids and you guys have a fantastic thing going. Great analysis, clever editing, intelligent banter and a great range of different opinions. I've studied a few film subjects and you guys are definitely qualified to do a film course. I hope you can work out a way to generate a good income from this because the quality speaks for itself. Cheers guys and thanks
Incredibly high praise! I don't mind saying that André is the genius here, it never ceases to amaze me some of the angles he sees and information he possesses.
arthousefanatic A lot of people have commented on robotic qualities of Andre's voice (I personally think he sounds like what Ultron should have sounded like in the Avengers). However, I've just spent half a day listening to his various podcast appearances. He talks a lot of sense and I've yet to disagree with anything that he says. Everyone has a regional accent, god knows people have took the piss out of mine in the past!
Funny, but I just wanted to point out how it is actually very impressive for someone to speak a second language this well. His speech patterns, if not his accent, remind me of how the great actor Christoph Waltz speaks English. I always think of howbwell I'd speak a persons first language bwhen judging an English accent. Not that you were being mean spirited bor anything, I just felt like giving my two cents on English as a second language.☺
Hey! I just watched a download copy of this movie... I got to say. If Fox hadn't marketed this as a Fantastic Four movie, it would have been a good movie. If this was an original sci-fi movie like what Josh Tranks had wanted, Fox wouldn't have to intervene in his work. If Marvel Studios and its millions of angry Marvel fans didn't exist, Fox wouldn't have to worry about loosing the rights and didn't have to rush things. Fant4stic was like watching another Chronicles movie with the same actors, a very lengthy dramatic origin story and a short action climax that at the end. It had absolutely and very intentionally had nothing to do with the comics at all. All except for the characters' names and powers. So it's only fair that the CEO of Marvel Entertainment ordered that the FF comics be cancelled. And as for the title. They should have just named it with terms they came up with: Planet Zero, Area 57, Quantum Gate, Science Fair or even "Please Don't Blow Up".
In the behind the scenes, it was mentioned that Reed’s arm stretches so slightly when he was trying to pull Victor up the cliff. It was like an energy transfer event.
Great review! You guys captured my thoughts exactly 4:44 to 5:12; this film needed a good screenplay and instead we got a very hollow film that rushed to cram too much much too late. Personally, I feel like this film could have been saved but for whatever reason Fox dropped the ball... Fox never should have assigned Jeremy Slater (The Lazarus Effect) and Josh Trank to pen the final version of the script, they had some interesting ideas but not enough to warrant a meaty three act film. As soon as they hired Matthew Vaughn to produce the film (around the same time Trank & Slater turn in a script to be "polished" back in February of 2013), Vaughn should have completely taken over scriptwriting duties and aggressively touched up character/plot development. And you know what? They would of had plenty of time to correct any plot inconsistencies or tonal issues this movie currently suffers as a result of pushing rewrites off.
Thanks for the detailed thoughts! One has to wonder if they just didn't have the incentive to make it good. If they can break even at least, Marvel still won't have the film rights, and Fox can always try again later. One scenario anyway as to why they wouldn't work harder than they did.
I understood what Josh Trank was trying to do with the film and he had a great idea, with going into deep research for the science and the visual designs for the characters and costumes. I also understand the hate behind it and the drama behind the scenes and how the third act fail to live up to the first two. It’s like one of those films where you understand the hate and yet you understand the vision that was trying to come to light. Recently I saw someone did a fan rewrite of the whole movie and when I read it, the script sounds better than the actual film.
I agree with everything the reviewer said. Trank has emotional issues and he couldn't handle the pressure. Maybe he was never a suitable director. There is a lot of blame to go around but you know what, that also includes people like you that have been relentlessly going after this film from the beginning, attacking it at every turn. The shitty changes that were made to the film were made as a result of the torrent of negative feedback the studio was getting from the "fans". It turned from a pretty good sci-fi/horror flick to a shoddy, rushed Avengers rip off. If I blame the studios for anything, I blame them for choosing a director like Trank, whose sensibilities are obviously not those of the MCU and then not having the guts to defend their choice and their director's vision. Because truthfully, the people who were making the noise were going to make it anyway. They wanted FF back with Marvel.
Joel Henry I agree, although I didn't mind the influences Josh Trank intended for the film. I just felt that this film needed a good screenwriter to fully flesh out some of the great ideas they had.
TheBrabon1 He can be a true fan but have a different creative vision. In fact, why does he even have to be a true fan. This is what I don't get about the "true fans". Even within comics themselves new writers and artists change up the material to revitalise the comic. My favourite FF run was John Byrne, which was actually pretty dark. The issue where Galactus ate the Skrull homeworld - which he showed in painful detail - wasn't light and breezy. When Sue made the transition from Invisible Girl to Invisible Woman was pretty dark too. In fact, she killed a guy. Stories evolve. I've seen these Internet hate trains happen again and again because its not the "real" comic. A creative builds on the source material, he isn't a slave to it. Its the same hate Nolan got for casting Heath ledger as Joker. And look at what he did. He created the most iconic Joker ever. Now the hate train is shitting on Jared Leto because its not the "real" Joker. Particularly in the first hour of this movie, you can see Trank's vision, and it was good. It wasn't the traditional FF but at least it would have been a good movie. It really looks like the studio chopped it up. And some of that is frankly on the "True Fans". At the end of the day the problem this film had was not enough friends and too many enemies.
(allegedly)Trashing a house and doing drugs on set is not a good way to cope with the stress. He should have maintained his professionalism and then maybe he could get a directing job again.
Ant-Man Oh, it won't. The boxoffice projections have been revised ever down. It was originally projected to open to about 55 mill, then 45 mill, then 40 mill ... I think it will collapse completely and struggle to reach 20 over the course of the entire weekend.
Ant-Man I'd rather it open 2nd behind Rogue Nation. Rogue Nation was excellent and I LOVE Rebecca Ferguson so...it would be awesome if it stays No 1 at the box office for 2 consecutive weekends but I digress...
I smelled a rat the *second* that they mentioned Trank wanted to homage Cronenberg with Fantastic Four. Given it's been done before, and even if I'm not opposed to toying with it a little, I knew this was gonna be a bad idea for the Fantastic Four. Frankly I think it was better done with that time DC ripped off Fantastic Four but everyone just died painfully and horribly, at least what Trank was going for. You can't really do this sort of thing without the Four horribly dying or being in a shitty position at the end of the movie, and I doubt Fox would've gone for *that* either, so instead they went for a stale, saturated piece of generic garbage even YA Novel fanatics would've thrown in the trash instantly. The way they've basically thrown any potential for some *really* cool Cosmic Marvel shit like Galactus, the Skrulls, or the Negative Zone with Anihilus in favor of just rehashing the same shit that was done before, but this time without a sense of personality to it is infuriating, and yet Fox brought this on themselves by hiring Trank to begin with. Sad thing? I saw this coming from the beginning, and I'm so depressed from this I can't even bring myself to be *mad* about it.
I just find the channel now. Congratulations for the excellent research and review. I feel a bit as you and a bit as Grace from the Beyond the Trailer channel: with a better guidance and respect, may be it could have been a great movie.
Goshai Daian We haven't seen a script or anything, so this of course is pure speculation derived from what we've heard from the various interviews and rumors. The story Trank was going for was pretty much the same basic story that we see on screen right now. The difference would first and foremost have been the pace, tone and narrative. In Trank's cut, there would have been none of this "One year later", instead we would have been treated to maybe 20 mins of the four been horrified with their new powers, or "disabilities" as the cast referred to them as in interviews. Allegedly, Johnny Storm would deal with it better than the others, because he was used to being different because he "is black". We see this echoed in the current cut of the movie with him being the one embracing his powers and eager to work with the army. We'd also have seen more Thing being airdropped into warzones. Doom would have been Domashev, and gotten his powers not from sticking his hand in green lava, but from touching the blue chronicle crystals. Note that Doom in the movie actually has the Chronicle powers. Because of all of the above, the movie could easily have been half an hour longer, and probably contained the same amount of action - but there would be less action relative to runing time, and it would have felt like even less due to the pace. And no painfully obvious Kate Mara wig.
I liked the movie initially, but it started to drag as it went on, and I found a lot of the actions were very boring. After about a half hour I started to daydream a couple times, and I didn't think the characters were developed very well. I think the chemistry between any of them, except Reed and Ben in the beginning. I didn't like how Ben was basically a tagalong with no character, I didn't appreciate Sue being a nearly non-existent in the movie, even staying behind when the others travel to Planet Zero, and Doom going to the other dimension instead of her. Also Victor was merely an anti-authoritarian, anti-military hacker/programmer/whatever, and gets imbued with powers through the event, and is _merely_ a destructive force with bizarre powers that don't relate to the character - one of the pre-eminent villains of all time. The people have NO idea who he is. People wouldn't complain about the effects if the rest of the film was redeemable. But the plot was really in disarray, and having Reed abandon the others for a year, after promising Ben he'll come back and rescue them, and the over-used evil military trope, with Ben killing enemies and Johnny shooting down drones - it was just painful to watch. And then all the body horror stuff. And then the Scanners stuff. I have a 10 year old daughter who hid her face in my chest twice in the film, and faced away from the screen for a few minutes throughout the film. My older 12-year old daughter did that once to my wife. This was NOT a family-friendly film, and had I known it would be this horror-centric, I wouldn't have taken my family to see it. This is the Fantastic Four - the First Family of Marvel Comics. What the hell were these guys thinking? Anyhow, great review, and I agree the movie wasn't great at first, but it plummeted once the 1-year transition occurred. Trank might have made a better film than what we saw, but I'm under no delusion it was going to be a good movie, or a well-done comic realization to the big screen. Incidentally, there were apparently 2-3 action scenes taken out, and a Fantasticar scene, In the end, this was a "Fantastic Fiasco." I have my own take on how this film flopped, incidentally. :) ua-cam.com/video/L7jYRG4CyJo/v-deo.html
You should definitely check out josh tranks interviews on kevin smith's podcast, Fatman on Batman. Apparently he is going to do another one, but unlikely now i reckon.
Claverleykid1 Yeah he pulled out of the final interview, which was to be recorded post release - but Trank joked that if he at some point decided to do it, "could they pretend Fant4stick was a hit and he was still doing Star Wars"?
This movie was on it's way to being The Flytastic four.. body horror and what work with this particular franchise. It's plenty of comic book characters that align perfectly with body horror. I don't understand why he forced this genre aspect in the Fantastic Four.
Samuel Gray That would be the Cronenbergian body horror oexperiencing your body morphing into something entirely different. "The Fly" is the best example of this, but there is also an aspect of it in last years Robocop remake.
I can actually see the worth of that in a movie where you actually want your audience to "feel" the kind of transformation that's happening to these characters. Seems like an interesting way to go and it's too bad it wasn't expounded upon in dramatic fashion to help the audience bond with the characters.
Wait, is Matthew Vaughn related to Vince Vaughn? I never gave that a second thought, but looking at the picture of Matthew you show here, the similarities are striking.
Advice to superhero movie directors: don’t have your single action scene occur 10 minutes before the end. Oh, and when you film people going to a new planet in another dimension, don’t just slap a filter on the camera.
+Midnight's Edge I just want Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue, Magneto, Apocalyspe, Beast, Mystique, and Xavier, the Fantastic Four in the MCU IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK
Midnight's Edge They want that X-MEN TV Series so bad well. Either or they are going to lose the Fantastic Four that brand is dead any attempt from Fox to revive it will do worse than the previous ones. So for that X-MEN TV Series they either Give up some of the rights to some X-MEN Characters the ones I want Marvel to have would be: Wolverine, Xavier, Magneto, Rogue, Beast, Deadpool, Shadowcat, Juggernaut, Apocalypse, Mystique and Darwin or They make a Sony-type deal where they keep the rights and all movies that are made by them are MCU movies, and the TV Series takes place in the MCU
I love the film. I think it's better than "Winter Soldier" And "Age Of Ultron" I mean I enjoyed the movie. I will trying to one day down the road get it on DVD. One of the best Hero Movies this year!!! Plus they made Doom a Total BADASS!!!! Rating: 7.5/40. My top 40 movie list of all time.
I saw the film earlier today, while it's not particularly good, I don't think it deserves the 10% Rotten Tomatoes rating. My only real problems with it were the slow pace, the gloomy Man of Steel vibe (which does NOT work for the Fantastic Four) and the portrayal of Doctor Doom. Everything else was fine to me, not good, but passable.
Trank was probably put out that he couldn’t hire his girlfriend, or wanna be girlfriend, for the Sue Storm character. The studio made him use Kate Mara. Poor Ben, how does he go to the bathroom?
very nice review! I just found your channel and seems quite good, would you please review mad max: fury road. I think it oes fit the mood for the channel quite nicely.
How does the one thing Stan Lee says about the last try was that Doom was not represented properly not cause you to at least try to fix that? If you don't try to do that, that is a good signal you aren't trying to do anything right.
USALibertarian Anyone else would take that seriously - alas, no one involved in this production seems to care one bit about Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, or the source material in general.
Midnight's Edge I think it's even worse than that. You don't have to care about any of that and you can still just realize that you really shouldn't screw up Dr. Doom. This is where people are wrong when they either criticize or mis-aspire to Nolan and a "Nolanesque" take. Nolan would have made Doom awesome. And not because he's some genius, which he is, but just because he's not a total ignoramous.
I think the screenplay should have been burned before the movie was even made. Fox should have pulled the plug at the that level. Trank and his cast had no love for the characters and it shows. It deserves to fail, miserably.
I haven't even seen it yet. There are some people here on UA-cam we give us links to watch the full movie, but I'm not really sure about it. I just hope no one gets in trouble.
DoubleO88 you should ,josh trank was trying to tell a good story and fox destroyed his project ,so josh trank's movie is good ,but the 20th century fox one is bad
Had to pirate the film so i only use the FREE space on my hard drive so i didnt waste 17$ for a measley ticket. Then after watching the poo film, I deleted it so i can get my FREE space back. FREE
Compared to all the other reviews on UA-cam, this one gave the most facts instead of opinions. After you showed the 2 different forms of Susan, I no longer wanted to check this film out. Even if it's free. Awesome pop-up pics you put in this video which were quite funny.
Guys, guys, GUYS!! No *spoiler alert*? You summed up the ENTIRE MOVIE! (Well, at least up to 11:27 where I switched you off.) I found a lot of your stuff about F4 intriguing, but this is unforgivable!
No prob, say whatever you like m'man. Just let people know what they're in for. Your videos on F4 have been great! You're doing a spectacular job, and I don't mean to complain as I have no issue with the content at all.
We give all this credit to George Lucas for Star Wars but we eventually find out that he had all this help in editing and rewrites to the story that finally made it into what we know today. If George had it his way we would have a cyborg Han Solo and Luke Skywalker would be General: Luke Starkiller or some stupid fuck. But regardless, is that even the young 'rebel' director George Lucas knew when to step back and let the establishment set a standard for the proper presentation of reasonable film making. And the end result was, he got to take credit for all the success. Directors like Trunk could take heed of that, and realize that if he had just sucked it up and let the establishment clean it up while he stayed on to guide the movie to his vision then it could have truly been something great!
+Josh Reiter I think people sometimes go too far in the other direction and try to say he deserves no credit for Star Wars when, like Trank, he showed he had talent when directing more modestly-budgeted films, such as THX 1336 and American Graffiti. American Graffiti, like Chronicle, was a very personal film (based off his childhood) and like Chronicle, was extremely well-received, including being nominated for Oscars like best picture and best director. Both films made them famous and upcoming directors. However, as you said, Lucas stepped back and accepted help and cooperation with others (I believe even asking for it) and both he and the project succeeded due to it. In turn, Trank reacted unprofessionally and immaturely to it. There circumstances aren't completely the same (I just watched the movie and I do feel Trank was screwed to some degree for the reasons mentioned above) but simply behaving positively and professionally during this entire situation would have likely yield him another opportunity. Instead, he's in directors jail.
Great look at what I have gathered to be an exceptionally bad movie and probably the first Marvel film in a long time I won't bother seeing in cinemas. I would be interested in your guys doing a video talking about what you would like to see in a Fantastic Four film series if Marvel got the rights back and incorporated the team and their various villains into the MCU, say post Infinity War for Phase 4.
Bottom line, its obvious this was more important to get done than get RIGHT!! Drink this shit spectacle in folks cause it doesn't happen anymore!!! A movie nobody watched is what happens to a movie nobody wanted to make.
Good review, Midnight's Edge! Glad this Fant4stic movie is a Foxed-up fail. Hope Fox will loose millions of dollars for trying to prevent the rights to return to Marvel.
The movie is not a disaster?! WTF did you watch?! This movie was a classic example of a complete disaster. I'm usually pretty easy to please with movies (especially superhero movies) and try to see the positives. I could not find 1 positive in this movie.
Finally watched this movie out of curiosity despite knowing how badly it was received. I have to say conceptually there where some interesting ideas but its flaws where in the pacing, the tone of the movie and some of the creative liberties they made with some of the characters. First I will being with the pacing, too much time was spent unnecessarily moments leaving the story very little left for the final act of Dr. Doom's introduction and what conflict they may have had with Doom was superficial and lacked any real motivation and seemed tact on the end of the film. The time they could have spent developing those reasons where instead spent on the group displayed like some carnival sideshow of horrors. Where the true conflict of the movie lie was with the governments involvement in their captivity, speaking of which nothing in this movie made me feel as though this was a family or people that cared about each other rather most of the scenes felt isolated. Although not really a FF movie in tone what they had a potentially had was a Fugitive/Science Fiction/Horror movie but even that fell short due to time wasted. Now onto the characters. For someone as intelligent as Reed should have been he seemed somewhat idiotic. Ben seemed out of place and pointless. Johnny although I had trepidation with Michael B Jordan's casting he did an OK job although somewhat shoe horned into the role and didn't quiet feel like Johnny to me. Sue I felt had the best revision as a character making her Reed's intellectual equal however she lacked any chemistry with Reed and was somewhat emotionally flat to me. The worse however would be Victor and Dr. Doom both being terrible. I differentiate between the two because we have Victor this condescending creep who lacks any of the gravitas that his character should have had and the science fiction monster we get at the end. All I have left to say about this movie was that it was a misshapen horror in terms of direction, script and production.
terelon Yeah, sorry about that. Names got jarbled when we did the recording in the middle of the night. No excuse, but that's the explanation. That, and 'Franklin Richards' just rolls off the tongue in a way 'Franklin Storm' doesn't.
I was one of the people who found this film to be terrible. The movie in my opinion is worse than Green Lantern & even worse that Wolverine Origins and you know what, i was one of those idiots defending this movie before it was released telling people to give it a chance, man i feel like a huge idiot. I give this movie a huge Fuck You
I just want to add something Johnny Storm shouldn't be ok with his powers in the Ultimate comics it is a lot more complex than that he hated his powers hell he even feared them but Spider-Man(not owned by Fox) convinced him that the good outways the bad
Dude keeps on messing up names. He names "Franklin Richards" and "Franklin Storm" in the same sentence. And both these names, he's using for a single character.
Commander_Ninja Sorry about that, at 04.00AM in the morning when we did the recording, those names got jarbled. That's no excuse of course, but it is the reason why.
Midnight's Edge its cool, it was just so confusing and I didn't know how to take it. Otherwise, fantastic review. Already subscribed and looking forward to your next stuff
I disagree with certain points in this review. There's no comparing this to Green Lantern. Green Lantern was much better than this. And the idea that the actors give it their all is also wrong. Only a couple of them are more or less invested. Most of them are so obviously bored that they don't even try.
Midnight's Edge I'm still watching but the house music at aroun 14:00 came in a little too loud. Instrumentals in general are probably better for these in my opinion rather than high energy edm or metal
Midnight's Edge I think some chill dubstep would have been better for the video. Search "Blackmill" here in YT. The dude has the best background music IMO.
16:00 it's called "Planet X", because "The Negative Zone" is too comic-booky ? I can't tell if the narrator is relishing the irony, or dismissive of the movie's stupidity......maybe both.
Tim Ritchey It's sort of hypnotic, he speaks kind of like that voice that tells you how to pronounce things on Google translator. But if English is not his first language, he did find a way how to speak clearly.
Did a reaction video (as I usually do_ about your review and I pretty much agree with what you guys said and elaborated on it: ua-cam.com/video/mksfDNrosfA/v-deo.html
My take on what happened with this film:
- Kinberg writes a script based on the Ultimate F4 (the quality of which, who knows? but based on his previous work, probably wasn't that great to begin with).
- Trank takes the script, takes a whole lotta liberties with it, and essentially shoots a sequel to Chronicle.
- Whilst this goes on the public get drip-fed info which results in a whole lot of backlash.
- Fox begin to shit themselves, realise they won't even recoup the budget, go into damage control.
- Reshoots are ordered to "fix" the movie.
- The result: A complete clusterfuck of a movie with absolutely no cohesion.
Mentski That sounds about right.
Midnight's Edge Personally, I'd love to see a Trank workprint leak so we could see what his "vision" originally was.
Sure, it would have probably been everything everybody feared in regards to it's "faithfulness" to the source, but it'd be interesting to compare it to what Fox did with it in post, and find out if the reshoots actually did more harm than good.
TheBrabon1 Yeah, this one is going down in movie history right alongside all the other major troubled productions...
Here's to Fant4stic: The Smokey and the Bandit 3 of comic book movies.
+Midnight's Edge I suppose Trank was doing sci-fi horror but Fox flipped out?
Using racing to establish a character's street cred... oh God, it's Alicia Silverstone in "Batman and Robin" all over again!
Andre's voice and tone is so relaxing. He should make audiobooks.
Or read creepypastas
Thank you for this non-biased review, youve just earned another subscriber and hopefully more to come.
theyoungenzo Thanks so much, and welcome!
Just hit play but just wanted to say thanks so much for keeping up this channel. I spent all of last night watching your vids and you guys have a fantastic thing going. Great analysis, clever editing, intelligent banter and a great range of different opinions. I've studied a few film subjects and you guys are definitely qualified to do a film course. I hope you can work out a way to generate a good income from this because the quality speaks for itself. Cheers guys and thanks
And when I say do a film course I mean teach haha. Fascinating stuff
Incredibly high praise! I don't mind saying that André is the genius here, it never ceases to amaze me some of the angles he sees and information he possesses.
+Midnight's Edge I'm assuming he's the brother of Nicholas Winding Refn and Werner Herzog, must be where he gets it
Is that Werner Herzog reviewing the movie?
arthousefanatic Yes!!!..lol, sounds exactly like him, I think it's him:)
arthousefanatic A lot of people have commented on robotic qualities of Andre's voice (I personally think he sounds like what Ultron should have sounded like in the Avengers). However, I've just spent half a day listening to his various podcast appearances. He talks a lot of sense and I've yet to disagree with anything that he says. Everyone has a regional accent, god knows people have took the piss out of mine in the past!
+arthousefanatic It's him, played at 50% speed. Eeeevery woooord draaaags oooouuut.
Funny, but I just wanted to point out how it is actually very impressive for someone to speak a second language this well. His speech patterns, if not his accent, remind me of how the great actor Christoph Waltz speaks English. I always think of howbwell I'd speak a persons first language bwhen judging an English accent. Not that you were being mean spirited bor anything, I just felt like giving my two cents on English as a second language.☺
I put speed at 1.25 because he was to slow :D
“His teacher, Homer Simpson” will never not be funny
More than anything I want to see Dr. Doom in the MCU.
Hey! I just watched a download copy of this movie...
I got to say. If Fox hadn't marketed this as a Fantastic Four movie, it would have been a good movie.
If this was an original sci-fi movie like what Josh Tranks had wanted, Fox wouldn't have to intervene in his work.
If Marvel Studios and its millions of angry Marvel fans didn't exist, Fox wouldn't have to worry about loosing the rights and didn't have to rush things.
Fant4stic was like watching another Chronicles movie with the same actors, a very lengthy dramatic origin story and a short action climax that at the end. It had absolutely and very intentionally had nothing to do with the comics at all. All except for the characters' names and powers. So it's only fair that the CEO of Marvel Entertainment ordered that the FF comics be cancelled.
And as for the title. They should have just named it with terms they came up with: Planet Zero, Area 57, Quantum Gate, Science Fair or even "Please Don't Blow Up".
This Andre guy kind of reminds me of Thunderf00t
Space Lizard Thought the same thing.
In the behind the scenes, it was mentioned that Reed’s arm stretches so slightly when he was trying to pull Victor up the cliff. It was like an energy transfer event.
Great review! You guys captured my thoughts exactly 4:44 to 5:12; this film needed a good screenplay and instead we got a very hollow film that rushed to cram too much much too late. Personally, I feel like this film could have been saved but for whatever reason Fox dropped the ball...
Fox never should have assigned Jeremy Slater (The Lazarus Effect) and Josh Trank to pen the final version of the script, they had some interesting ideas but not enough to warrant a meaty three act film.
As soon as they hired Matthew Vaughn to produce the film (around the same time Trank & Slater turn in a script to be "polished" back in February of 2013), Vaughn should have completely taken over scriptwriting duties and aggressively touched up character/plot development. And you know what? They would of had plenty of time to correct any plot inconsistencies or tonal issues this movie currently suffers as a result of pushing rewrites off.
Thanks for the detailed thoughts! One has to wonder if they just didn't have the incentive to make it good. If they can break even at least, Marvel still won't have the film rights, and Fox can always try again later. One scenario anyway as to why they wouldn't work harder than they did.
This is the newest installment of Werner Herzog's On Death Row series.
I understood what Josh Trank was trying to do with the film and he had a great idea, with going into deep research for the science and the visual designs for the characters and costumes. I also understand the hate behind it and the drama behind the scenes and how the third act fail to live up to the first two. It’s like one of those films where you understand the hate and yet you understand the vision that was trying to come to light. Recently I saw someone did a fan rewrite of the whole movie and when I read it, the script sounds better than the actual film.
I agree with everything the reviewer said. Trank has emotional issues and he couldn't handle the pressure. Maybe he was never a suitable director. There is a lot of blame to go around but you know what, that also includes people like you that have been relentlessly going after this film from the beginning, attacking it at every turn. The shitty changes that were made to the film were made as a result of the torrent of negative feedback the studio was getting from the "fans". It turned from a pretty good sci-fi/horror flick to a shoddy, rushed Avengers rip off. If I blame the studios for anything, I blame them for choosing a director like Trank, whose sensibilities are obviously not those of the MCU and then not having the guts to defend their choice and their director's vision. Because truthfully, the people who were making the noise were going to make it anyway. They wanted FF back with Marvel.
Joel Henry I agree, although I didn't mind the influences Josh Trank intended for the film. I just felt that this film needed a good screenwriter to fully flesh out some of the great ideas they had.
TheBrabon1 He can be a true fan but have a different creative vision. In fact, why does he even have to be a true fan. This is what I don't get about the "true fans". Even within comics themselves new writers and artists change up the material to revitalise the comic. My favourite FF run was John Byrne, which was actually pretty dark. The issue where Galactus ate the Skrull homeworld - which he showed in painful detail - wasn't light and breezy. When Sue made the transition from Invisible Girl to Invisible Woman was pretty dark too. In fact, she killed a guy.
Stories evolve. I've seen these Internet hate trains happen again and again because its not the "real" comic. A creative builds on the source material, he isn't a slave to it. Its the same hate Nolan got for casting Heath ledger as Joker. And look at what he did. He created the most iconic Joker ever. Now the hate train is shitting on Jared Leto because its not the "real" Joker.
Particularly in the first hour of this movie, you can see Trank's vision, and it was good. It wasn't the traditional FF but at least it would have been a good movie. It really looks like the studio chopped it up. And some of that is frankly on the "True Fans". At the end of the day the problem this film had was not enough friends and too many enemies.
***** I was thinking the same thing. Or even borderline personality disorder. He definitely does not have a filter on his emotions.
True, wasn't judging him. I actually have a lot of sympathy for Josh Trank in this whole thing. And I hope he bounces back.
(allegedly)Trashing a house and doing drugs on set is not a good way to cope with the stress. He should have maintained his professionalism and then maybe he could get a directing job again.
Andre reminds me of Doctor Doom. It's the voice.
Great review. Really informative. it's good to hear a review which takes away all the negative press, and gives a genuine review. subscribed amd liked
_let's hope the opening box office day doesn't pass 50 million...cause that might be a problem_
Ant-Man Oh, it won't. The boxoffice projections have been revised ever down. It was originally projected to open to about 55 mill, then 45 mill, then 40 mill ... I think it will collapse completely and struggle to reach 20 over the course of the entire weekend.
Ant-Man I'd rather it open 2nd behind Rogue Nation. Rogue Nation was excellent and I LOVE Rebecca Ferguson so...it would be awesome if it stays No 1 at the box office for 2 consecutive weekends but I digress...
elsaandnoah IT is probably going to, they way it is collapsing, Fant4stick looks let to poen at No 2, just behind Rogue Nation.
Midnight's Edge good.
Tom Rothman everyone. He was the head of FOX studios then and now the head of SONY pictures... aka feminist ghostbusters
I smelled a rat the *second* that they mentioned Trank wanted to homage Cronenberg with Fantastic Four. Given it's been done before, and even if I'm not opposed to toying with it a little, I knew this was gonna be a bad idea for the Fantastic Four. Frankly I think it was better done with that time DC ripped off Fantastic Four but everyone just died painfully and horribly, at least what Trank was going for. You can't really do this sort of thing without the Four horribly dying or being in a shitty position at the end of the movie, and I doubt Fox would've gone for *that* either, so instead they went for a stale, saturated piece of generic garbage even YA Novel fanatics would've thrown in the trash instantly.
The way they've basically thrown any potential for some *really* cool Cosmic Marvel shit like Galactus, the Skrulls, or the Negative Zone with Anihilus in favor of just rehashing the same shit that was done before, but this time without a sense of personality to it is infuriating, and yet Fox brought this on themselves by hiring Trank to begin with.
Sad thing? I saw this coming from the beginning, and I'm so depressed from this I can't even bring myself to be *mad* about it.
Chronicles 2 movie doing a poor job of trying to disguise itself as a Fantastic Four movie.
Is that The Crow soundtrack in the background?? Cool!
27:27
That cue was probably unintentional.
I just find the channel now. Congratulations for the excellent research and review. I feel a bit as you and a bit as Grace from the Beyond the Trailer channel: with a better guidance and respect, may be it could have been a great movie.
You guys know about some descriptions of Trank's rough cut for the movie?
Goshai Daian We haven't seen a script or anything, so this of course is pure speculation derived from what we've heard from the various interviews and rumors.
The story Trank was going for was pretty much the same basic story that we see on screen right now. The difference would first and foremost have been the pace, tone and narrative.
In Trank's cut, there would have been none of this "One year later", instead we would have been treated to maybe 20 mins of the four been horrified with their new powers, or "disabilities" as the cast referred to them as in interviews. Allegedly, Johnny Storm would deal with it better than the others, because he was used to being different because he "is black". We see this echoed in the current cut of the movie with him being the one embracing his powers and eager to work with the army.
We'd also have seen more Thing being airdropped into warzones. Doom would have been Domashev, and gotten his powers not from sticking his hand in green lava, but from touching the blue chronicle crystals. Note that Doom in the movie actually has the Chronicle powers.
Because of all of the above, the movie could easily have been half an hour longer, and probably contained the same amount of action - but there would be less action relative to runing time, and it would have felt like even less due to the pace.
And no painfully obvious Kate Mara wig.
+Midnight's Edge so basically an awesome fresh take on an old story that been retold thousands of times.
omg 29:40 Score from The Crow, I love you guys.
I liked the movie initially, but it started to drag as it went on, and I found a lot of the actions were very boring. After about a half hour I started to daydream a couple times, and I didn't think the characters were developed very well. I think the chemistry between any of them, except Reed and Ben in the beginning. I didn't like how Ben was basically a tagalong with no character, I didn't appreciate Sue being a nearly non-existent in the movie, even staying behind when the others travel to Planet Zero, and Doom going to the other dimension instead of her. Also Victor was merely an anti-authoritarian, anti-military hacker/programmer/whatever, and gets imbued with powers through the event, and is _merely_ a destructive force with bizarre powers that don't relate to the character - one of the pre-eminent villains of all time. The people have NO idea who he is.
People wouldn't complain about the effects if the rest of the film was redeemable. But the plot was really in disarray, and having Reed abandon the others for a year, after promising Ben he'll come back and rescue them, and the over-used evil military trope, with Ben killing enemies and Johnny shooting down drones - it was just painful to watch. And then all the body horror stuff. And then the Scanners stuff. I have a 10 year old daughter who hid her face in my chest twice in the film, and faced away from the screen for a few minutes throughout the film. My older 12-year old daughter did that once to my wife. This was NOT a family-friendly film, and had I known it would be this horror-centric, I wouldn't have taken my family to see it. This is the Fantastic Four - the First Family of Marvel Comics. What the hell were these guys thinking?
Anyhow, great review, and I agree the movie wasn't great at first, but it plummeted once the 1-year transition occurred. Trank might have made a better film than what we saw, but I'm under no delusion it was going to be a good movie, or a well-done comic realization to the big screen. Incidentally, there were apparently 2-3 action scenes taken out, and a Fantasticar scene, In the end, this was a "Fantastic Fiasco." I have my own take on how this film flopped, incidentally. :) ua-cam.com/video/L7jYRG4CyJo/v-deo.html
Nick Carroll Some excellent observations there.
Thank you! Maybe the next reboot will be better. ;)
You should definitely check out josh tranks interviews on kevin smith's podcast, Fatman on Batman. Apparently he is going to do another one, but unlikely now i reckon.
Claverleykid1 Yeah he pulled out of the final interview, which was to be recorded post release - but Trank joked that if he at some point decided to do it, "could they pretend Fant4stick was a hit and he was still doing Star Wars"?
This movie was on it's way to being The Flytastic four.. body horror and what work with this particular franchise. It's plenty of comic book characters that align perfectly with body horror. I don't understand why he forced this genre aspect in the Fantastic Four.
Hey you speak english clearly , i'm italian and i understand all ! Goood , and good review
KCAR99 Molte grazie ;p
What was that reference to Jeff Goldblum and The Fly? What other movies do whatever it is you were talking about?
Samuel Gray That would be the Cronenbergian body horror oexperiencing your body morphing into something entirely different. "The Fly" is the best example of this, but there is also an aspect of it in last years Robocop remake.
I can actually see the worth of that in a movie where you actually want your audience to "feel" the kind of transformation that's happening to these characters. Seems like an interesting way to go and it's too bad it wasn't expounded upon in dramatic fashion to help the audience bond with the characters.
Wait, is Matthew Vaughn related to Vince Vaughn? I never gave that a second thought, but looking at the picture of Matthew you show here, the similarities are striking.
This guy is so funny very monotone but great review
ty! interesting parallel, in ex iii.
Advice to superhero movie directors: don’t have your single action scene occur 10 minutes before the end. Oh, and when you film people going to a new planet in another dimension, don’t just slap a filter on the camera.
Hopefully Fox doesn't earn any profit for this movie.
totalanthony No they won't, no worries. This will costs them tens upons tens of millions.
+Midnight's Edge I just want Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue, Magneto, Apocalyspe, Beast, Mystique, and Xavier, the Fantastic Four in the MCU IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK
You only want want what we and any fans want. But from Fox' point of view, that is indeed too much to ask...
Midnight's Edge They want that X-MEN TV Series so bad well.
Either or they are going to lose the Fantastic Four that brand is dead any attempt from Fox to revive it will do worse than the previous ones.
So for that X-MEN TV Series they either
Give up some of the rights to some X-MEN Characters the ones I want Marvel to have would be: Wolverine, Xavier, Magneto, Rogue, Beast, Deadpool, Shadowcat, Juggernaut, Apocalypse, Mystique and Darwin or They make a Sony-type deal where they keep the rights and all movies that are made by them are MCU movies, and the TV Series takes place in the MCU
I love the film. I think it's better than "Winter Soldier" And "Age Of Ultron" I mean I enjoyed the movie. I will trying to one day down the road get it on DVD. One of the best Hero Movies this year!!! Plus they made Doom a Total BADASS!!!!
Rating: 7.5/40. My top 40 movie list of all time.
+ramon baugh wow jsut wow.
+ramon baugh Looks like you need to see more movies.
Troll alert.
I saw the film earlier today, while it's not particularly good, I don't think it deserves the 10% Rotten Tomatoes rating. My only real problems with it were the slow pace, the gloomy Man of Steel vibe (which does NOT work for the Fantastic Four) and the portrayal of Doctor Doom. Everything else was fine to me, not good, but passable.
Trank was probably put out that he couldn’t hire his girlfriend, or wanna be girlfriend, for the Sue Storm character. The studio made him use Kate Mara. Poor Ben, how does he go to the bathroom?
very nice review! I just found your channel and seems quite good, would you please review mad max: fury road. I think it oes fit the mood for the channel quite nicely.
Fernando Rüth We will consider it, maybe tie it in with the comics somehow...
Andre,you were unlucky to catch an early showing of Fantastic Four.
Emanuel Lawton Yeah, but I'll take it for you guys!
A BIT kinder..? He just gave it a 30 score compared to RT's consensus of 8... That's more than triple the popular rating.
12:50 Fucking hell! I was on headphones when this fucking sound came up, and I fucking jumped! Fuck!
How does the one thing Stan Lee says about the last try was that Doom was not represented properly not cause you to at least try to fix that? If you don't try to do that, that is a good signal you aren't trying to do anything right.
USALibertarian Anyone else would take that seriously - alas, no one involved in this production seems to care one bit about Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, or the source material in general.
Midnight's Edge
I think it's even worse than that. You don't have to care about any of that and you can still just realize that you really shouldn't screw up Dr. Doom. This is where people are wrong when they either criticize or mis-aspire to Nolan and a "Nolanesque" take. Nolan would have made Doom awesome. And not because he's some genius, which he is, but just because he's not a total ignoramous.
I think the screenplay should have been burned before the movie was even made. Fox should have pulled the plug at the that level. Trank and his cast had no love for the characters and it shows. It deserves to fail, miserably.
Bobby Arcturas Indeed. It will be very interesting to track the performance, which we will cover in our Post Mortem.
TheBrabon1 Funny timing, he never made any such claim before now.
TheBrabon1 Yet nothing about this film has the fun, psychedelic colors or the hokiness of the original.
Andre is Werner Hertzog, stop the foolishness.
what happened to kevin????
I hope you guys didn't pay to see this?
DoubleO88 Got free ticket, don't worry about it;p
Good stuff, great review I like the way your buddy speaks. Lol
I haven't even seen it yet. There are some people here on UA-cam we give us links to watch the full movie, but I'm not really sure about it. I just hope no one gets in trouble.
DoubleO88 you should ,josh trank was trying to tell a good story and fox destroyed his project ,so josh trank's movie is good ,but the 20th century fox one is bad
Dragon 54321 Too bad Trank's version will never see the light of day.
Which nationality is Andre?
Norwegian.
Had to pirate the film so i only use the FREE space on my hard drive so i didnt waste 17$ for a measley ticket. Then after watching the poo film, I deleted it so i can get my FREE space back. FREE
Compared to all the other reviews on UA-cam, this one gave the most facts instead of opinions. After you showed the 2 different forms of Susan, I no longer wanted to check this film out. Even if it's free. Awesome pop-up pics you put in this video which were quite funny.
Bruce Banner Glad you enjoyed it, and to have been of service!
I'm seeing it in two days....dreading it!!
This is the only marvel or dc movie that i didnt see at the cinema
Even with double speed, damn you guys talk slowly.
Guys, guys, GUYS!! No *spoiler alert*? You summed up the ENTIRE MOVIE! (Well, at least up to 11:27 where I switched you off.) I found a lot of your stuff about F4 intriguing, but this is unforgivable!
Jim Slav Sorry about that, spoiler tag added to description.
To paraphrase The Critic; we saw the movie, so you don't have to;p
No prob, say whatever you like m'man. Just let people know what they're in for. Your videos on F4 have been great! You're doing a spectacular job, and I don't mean to complain as I have no issue with the content at all.
We give all this credit to George Lucas for Star Wars but we eventually find out that he had all this help in editing and rewrites to the story that finally made it into what we know today. If George had it his way we would have a cyborg Han Solo and Luke Skywalker would be General: Luke Starkiller or some stupid fuck. But regardless, is that even the young 'rebel' director George Lucas knew when to step back and let the establishment set a standard for the proper presentation of reasonable film making. And the end result was, he got to take credit for all the success. Directors like Trunk could take heed of that, and realize that if he had just sucked it up and let the establishment clean it up while he stayed on to guide the movie to his vision then it could have truly been something great!
+Josh Reiter I think people sometimes go too far in the other direction and try to say he deserves no credit for Star Wars when, like Trank, he showed he had talent when directing more modestly-budgeted films, such as THX 1336 and American Graffiti. American Graffiti, like Chronicle, was a very personal film (based off his childhood) and like Chronicle, was extremely well-received, including being nominated for Oscars like best picture and best director. Both films made them famous and upcoming directors. However, as you said, Lucas stepped back and accepted help and cooperation with others (I believe even asking for it) and both he and the project succeeded due to it. In turn, Trank reacted unprofessionally and immaturely to it.
There circumstances aren't completely the same (I just watched the movie and I do feel Trank was screwed to some degree for the reasons mentioned above) but simply behaving positively and professionally during this entire situation would have likely yield him another opportunity. Instead, he's in directors jail.
The "establishment" did not have any influence at all on Star Wars. It was the people Lucas was working with on the film.
Great analysis Andre
The Thing has no personality?! He was the most interesting character.
dragonknightleader1 ...which does not reflect kindly on the others.
How was that boring ass character interesting?
I never like trunk, for my cronicle was boring and stupid, I hope he never gets a job again.
Great look at what I have gathered to be an exceptionally bad movie and probably the first Marvel film in a long time I won't bother seeing in cinemas. I would be interested in your guys doing a video talking about what you would like to see in a Fantastic Four film series if Marvel got the rights back and incorporated the team and their various villains into the MCU, say post Infinity War for Phase 4.
DerektheDalek You can rest assured that will be covered in one of our next videos;p
Bottom line, its obvious this was more important to get done than get RIGHT!! Drink this shit spectacle in folks cause it doesn't happen anymore!!! A movie nobody watched is what happens to a movie nobody wanted to make.
+Daniel Scott No question about it. Luckily, Fox paid dearly for it at the boxoffice.
Good review, Midnight's Edge! Glad this Fant4stic movie is a Foxed-up fail. Hope Fox will loose millions of dollars for trying to prevent the rights to return to Marvel.
I actually like Renny Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning over Paul Schrader's Dominion. I mean you had the Reagan looking Pazuzu and everything...
Paul Schrader's film was superior.
DC comics, doing SuperHero dongs right.
I love this movie, I care not for your opinions!
The movie is not a disaster?!
WTF did you watch?! This movie was a classic example of a complete disaster.
I'm usually pretty easy to please with movies (especially superhero movies) and try to see the positives.
I could not find 1 positive in this movie.
+mrmarvel8 This movie was Doomed from the beginning.
I love this film. still to 2018 and green Lantern.
Finally watched this movie out of curiosity despite knowing how badly it was received. I have to say conceptually there where some interesting ideas but its flaws where in the pacing, the tone of the movie and some of the creative liberties they made with some of the characters.
First I will being with the pacing, too much time was spent unnecessarily moments leaving the story very little left for the final act of Dr. Doom's introduction and what conflict they may have had with Doom was superficial and lacked any real motivation and seemed tact on the end of the film.
The time they could have spent developing those reasons where instead spent on the group displayed like some carnival sideshow of horrors. Where the true conflict of the movie lie was with the governments involvement in their captivity, speaking of which nothing in this movie made me feel as though this was a family or people that cared about each other rather most of the scenes felt isolated. Although not really a FF movie in tone what they had a potentially had was a Fugitive/Science Fiction/Horror movie but even that fell short due to time wasted.
Now onto the characters. For someone as intelligent as Reed should have been he seemed somewhat idiotic. Ben seemed out of place and pointless. Johnny although I had trepidation with Michael B Jordan's casting he did an OK job although somewhat shoe horned into the role and didn't quiet feel like Johnny to me. Sue I felt had the best revision as a character making her Reed's intellectual equal however she lacked any chemistry with Reed and was somewhat emotionally flat to me.
The worse however would be Victor and Dr. Doom both being terrible. I differentiate between the two because we have Victor this condescending creep who lacks any of the gravitas that his character should have had and the science fiction monster we get at the end.
All I have left to say about this movie was that it was a misshapen horror in terms of direction, script and production.
Who is Franklin Richards?, another vlogger made the same mistake, interesting.
terelon Yeah, sorry about that. Names got jarbled when we did the recording in the middle of the night. No excuse, but that's the explanation. That, and 'Franklin Richards' just rolls off the tongue in a way 'Franklin Storm' doesn't.
I was one of the people who found this film to be terrible. The movie in my opinion is worse than Green Lantern & even worse that Wolverine Origins and you know what, i was one of those idiots defending this movie before it was released telling people to give it a chance, man i feel like a huge idiot.
I give this movie a huge Fuck You
I just want to add something Johnny Storm shouldn't be ok with his powers in the Ultimate comics it is a lot more complex than that he hated his powers hell he even feared them but Spider-Man(not owned by Fox) convinced him that the good outways the bad
What's that accent? Is it swedish?
+peronkop slowish
u guys are the best. --nyc
Dude keeps on messing up names. He names "Franklin Richards" and "Franklin Storm" in the same sentence. And both these names, he's using for a single character.
Commander_Ninja Sorry about that, at 04.00AM in the morning when we did the recording, those names got jarbled. That's no excuse of course, but it is the reason why.
Midnight's Edge its cool, it was just so confusing and I didn't know how to take it.
Otherwise, fantastic review. Already subscribed and looking forward to your next stuff
Made Green Lantern look epic
Toby Kebbell is not a good actor.
Is the German a robot or AI of some kind?
doom bot!!
Doom looked like a crash test dummy wrapped in tin foil and dotted with LED lights.
I disagree with certain points in this review. There's no comparing this to Green Lantern. Green Lantern was much better than this. And the idea that the actors give it their all is also wrong. Only a couple of them are more or less invested. Most of them are so obviously bored that they don't even try.
Can you blame then? I can't.
The script sucked.
It's incredibly ironic that characters with 60 years of comics backing them up could be BADLY WRITTEN.
Kate mara's eyebrows don't even look the same in the reshoots
I think the music takes away from this. I like this type of music I just don't think it fits the tone.
I hear you, it can be a crap shoot. Was there any particular tune that bugged you?
Midnight's Edge I'm still watching but the house music at aroun 14:00 came in a little too loud. Instrumentals in general are probably better for these in my opinion rather than high energy edm or metal
Midnight's Edge I think some chill dubstep would have been better for the video. Search "Blackmill" here in YT. The dude has the best background music IMO.
Gabe N We will look into it, thanks for the tip.
16:00 it's called "Planet X", because "The Negative Zone" is too comic-booky ? I can't tell if the narrator is relishing the irony, or dismissive of the movie's stupidity......maybe both.
The negative zone sounds cooler
s-l-o-w-e-s-t t-a-l-k-e-r e-v-e-r ... no wonder this review is 42 minutes long. solid review.. just too slow.
Tim Ritchey It's sort of hypnotic, he speaks kind of like that voice that tells you how to pronounce things on Google translator. But if English is not his first language, he did find a way how to speak clearly.
Tim Ritchey Yeah, reminds me of HAL 9000 :)
+Tim Ritchey just increase the speed of the video i guess, lol
Oh guys are wrong and Simon Kinberg was wrong. This movie is and was obviously a disaster.
I felt like they ripped off the ending of the movie from Avengers Age of Ultron. Anyone else feel the same way?
jshudo44 How do you figure?
Did a reaction video (as I usually do_ about your review and I pretty much agree with what you guys said and elaborated on it: ua-cam.com/video/mksfDNrosfA/v-deo.html
Tetsuothegreat Awesome, enjoyed your thoughts on the matter!
Worst Marvel movie ever.
Jesus if that guy talked any slower he'd be speaking in reverse. couldn't even watch the entire review cause I fell asleep between sentences