Fantastic Four

Can we please make it a punishable crime to go out in public without first masking your own body odour? I sat through the whole of Fantastic Four with that very stench permeating itself from the bloke in front of me. The Lynx effect, mate. It's not all the adverts crack it up to be, but it's better than what you're offering.

A Partially Educated Review

It stank a lot less than the guy in front of me.

In 50 Words or Less: It feels far too much like an introduction to a bigger (hopefully better) film, but a darker tone and solid to very good performances provide promise. Though the previous incarnations didn't make it hard, this is the best stab at Fantastic Four by some way.

In Detail: This one's a nerve wracking one. I saw Fantastic Four last night and, in the absence of pre-screening for critics, have not seen any other reviews. That's not to say that I would let those reviews sway my opinion (I probably wouldn't even read them before watching it). It just helps knowing whether I need to justify a rebellion against the status quo or not. Given my current track record with superhero films (for a refresher, I was underwhelmed by Ant-Man, liked The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and, though I haven't reviewed it, I really wasn't impressed with Days Of Future Past), I'm thinking justification may be needed.

So, it's not perfect, but the biggest question is whether or not it's better than previous efforts. I've never seen the apparently abhorrent 1994 version, but I have taken the journey into Albaville for the delightful 2005 effort and this pisses all over that. The delightful is sarcasm if you hadn't gathered.

You see, the glasses were what made her a scientist

Taking yet another superhero origin story and making it feel fresh is now a much harder task, but director Josh Trank has made a solid and, at moments, very good stab at it. With our four scientists looking into the ability to shift between dimensions, a journey gone wrong is what bestows them with their powers and casts Toby Kebbell as Victor Von Doom (that name works so well in 2015) into the unknown and his assumed death.

It's not a narrative that packs a lot of surprises, but it has some stylistic choices that help to remedy this and give the film some bite. Trank has bought the darkness from his debut film Chronicle and injected it into a world that felt far too cartoonish last time around. It can be quite hard to make some of these powers look anything but comical, particularly the stretching powers of Reed Richards (Miles Teller), but our initial look at this feels more like an image from a horror film. The arrival of Dr Doom also makes for some more mature viewing than we've become accustomed to from the Marvel universe and I loved it, though it also signals one of the problems. It all feels like it's over too soon, not because it needs to be longer, but because it needs to get going faster. Far too much time is spent waiting for the shit to hit the fan that, by the time it does, the wise decision to keep this film nearer the 90 minute mark leaves us with very little time left. The result: Doom gets shafted.

In the end, it's unarguably disappointing that the film feels more like an introduction to a better sequel. Good will is prevailing though, because the promise that's there makes me want that sequel to happen and makes me want the same team to do it. The performances are all at least solid, but everyone just needs more to do. Trank hasn't created Guardians Of The Galaxy, but when you put this next to Ant-Man, he's done the better job.

SIX out of 10

P.S. I've now seen reaction from elsewhere…