fantastic four: flame on!

July 9, 2005

bypassing war of the worlds, kecia and i decided to take on the fantastic four at the movie theatre. even though there’s a hurricane passing us right now and the wind is blowing trees everywhere, we went out anyway because… we wanted to. anyway, the 1:45PM showing ended up being sold out when we arrived so we bought tickets for the 2:25PM showing. we stood in this massive line that went around the theatre, but we ended up getting decent seats.

so on to the movie: without giving away too many spoilers, i’ll say that the movie did a decent job of keeping the spirit of the fantastic four. these were heroes that didn’t hide their identity to the public and the movie makes that apparent. (especially with johnny storm’s love of the public) those wanting a lot of action will be disappointed as a majority of the movie was spent explaining each character. i actually enjoy super hero origins so i enjoyed this part of the movie. as with just about any big budget film these days, there are spectacular special effects. reed richards, or mr fantastic, and his elastic ability was well done. ben grimm, or the thing, took a while to grow on me, but i got used to him after a while…same with sue storm (invisible girl). by far, my favorite was johnny storm, or the human torch. reading the comic books growing up, my imagination ran wild as to how these guys would be in real life. what the fantastic four movie did for the human torch was exactly what my imagination conjured up.

unfortunately, the movie had its downsides as well. i think the movie’s pacing could have been improved a lot. the comic relief throughout the movie helped a lot, but the pacing was slow enough to put quite a few to sleep at times. the movie was also kind of anti-climatic. sure, the team was formed and an arch-nemisis, dr doom, was established..but it seems this entire movie was a build up to a better sequel. (i believe 20th century fox has committed to a sequel already)

i think the acting was average and the storyline was average as well. the special effects were above average in many regards…but what movie isn’t these days? kecia’s expectations were higher than mine (due to the extreme hype this movie had), and she thought it would be better. it was actually better than i expected, which means i went in with pretty low expectations. i give the movie a c+. it’s a fun family movie and the kids will love it, but those of you who really liked batman begins, don’t expect this movie to be in the same league, because it isn’t even close.

braytek, fantasticfour, movies