After seeing Fantastic Four it’s curious to ponder whether the film that’s presented is director Josh Trank’s singular version, or the board room final cut of 20th Cenutry Fox. Whoever is responsible we may never really know, but from recent accounts it looks as though the studio took the project away from its hired director. Not that they maliciously did so as callous business-folk mind you, because rumors surfaced of Trank’s supposedly bizarre actions on and off set that potentially lead to his efforts being undercut.
The first news tidbits began to circulate wild accusations. This all started in early spring when Trank was let go of directing one of the anthology Star Wars films, and then Lucasfilm gave their reasons. Suffice it to say, they found out Trank was a loose canon and quite the party boy. He quickly came to his own defense and tried to quelch the slander by saying that his behavior was grossly exaggerated, if not completely fabricated. Things are going well in the editing room, he said.
And then last week happened and for two solid days not one critical review dropped. It wasn’t until late Tuesday evening that the first reactions came in and, man oh man, did they pan Fantastic Four. As more and more critics saw the movie the more it bombed on RottenTomatoes ending with an abysmal 8% and an audience score of 25%. And then Thursday evening Trank went on Twitter and said what most suspected, he had a final cut months ago which he was pleased with but the one about to be shown was not his. He hastily retracted and deleted the tweet but still it was said. Was Trank like so many others, the waste of talent and a case of too many voices in the room? Was he like Fincher, Lynch, and Del Toro who had their first major films overrun by prying hands, so much so that they walked off their projects? Maybe. Or maybe Trank is as crazy as they say he is.
The end result of Fantastic Four is is a mostly disconnected film. It’s too easy to say that the film is lost due to lack of talent by the man behind the the curtain, which is often the case. Trank’s small film, Chronicle, sheds a different light on the evidence. No, what Fantastic Four shows is a meta-awareness about the incompatibility of artists and their fanciers (dear Lord, there’s no inference that Trank is a Tarantino or a Kurosawa).
The divide of ideology is the heart of the film. Reed Richards (Miles Teller) is a nerdy scientist guy who’s life obsession is to crack teleportation. His good buddy, Ben Grimme (Jamie Bell), is the “muscle” who gets Reed whatever he wants. By chance they happen to fall into good graces with Dr. Storm (Reg E. Cathety) and his daughter Sue (Kate Mara), who are also coincidentally making a teleportation device of their own. Dr. Storm’s son, Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) and the nefarious Victor Von Doom (Tobey Kebbel) join in helping crack the thing that will finally save humanity from itself. How and why aren’t answered but apparently homosapiens are beyond help at this point.
As one can surmise the teleportation machine goes wrong, giving the five young people extraordinary powers, or curses as they see them. Doom becomes the all-too-obvious uber-bad guy with an unconscious motivation of the film as a whole, while the other four struggle with maintaining their humanity amidst unexplainable phenomena. Essentially, the challenge of the film addresses the clash between the suits and the creative people,which is a commentary about the Fantastic Four and it’s hard road from conceptualization into a fully operational pattern of recognition.
Reed and Dr. Storm are up against Dr. Allen (Tim Blake Nelson), who is the head of the Baxter Institute where everybody involved works, and they are also pited with the military who use The Thing and Johnny Storm as weapons. Dr. Storm wants his pupils to excel and to be brave pioneers while the money wants totalitarian conformity. And thus we have Trank and 20th Century Fox battling it out for domination. The abomination that comes forth is the like of Dr. Doom, Trank’s stand-in croaking on about how he desires to return to his own world and build without interference from those who don’t understand his dreams. The final result is a half-finished and rushed bi-product, much like the hurried team assembling together because gosh darn it, that’s the title of the movie. So who’s to blame for this lacking affair? Ostensibly everyone for attempting to make a corporeal narrative inside a vessel of light, and that’s the guilt of hubris.
Something or Nothing:
Something because it’s nothing. Fantastic Four isn’t nearly as egregious as everybody is making it out to be, but their reasons for saying so are totally valid and justified. It’s a messy film, but the behind-the-scenes drama brings far more interest to the movie because the unseen fray adds a type of depth/tension to the picture. It’s a fantastic, though unconscious, mirror of what happens when extreme potential mixes with real world practicality. Imaginably.
Cinecism 