This weekend after a great deal of drama, turmoil, re-shoots and rumors of director being removed from the final editing process new adaptation of Fantastic Four finally hit the big screen. As expected the reviews, one worse than the next started pouring in and after a while even the director Josh Trank decided to wash his hands of it and point the finger elsewhere. Box-office expectations went from 50 to 40 to 30 million (and F4 didn’t even menage to get that- it earned 26.2 mill. in the end).
As it often happens in this internet age in a less then a few hours new F4 became the most universally hated super- hero movie since 1997’s Batman & Robin (and that’s really saying something). Now as we lament another horrible attempt of adapting relatively straightforward SF/ Adventure comicbook let us remember another Fantastic Four adaptation, the one that never got to the big screen…
Setting some new records for comicbook adaptations!
Yes, we’re talking about Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four! And yes, Corman’s F4 is by the numbers, cheap B Movie adaptation but it still menages to keep most of the elements that make Fantastic Four, well- fantastic! Hell, with a bit more on the budget side and a tighter script it could have been one of better super- hero flicks of it’s day.
The same can’t be said for Trank’s F4, nothing could have saved that mess. Fox should have been smart and pulled the plug on it before it was too late. But, what’s done is done. Hopefully rights finally revert back to Marvel, they did pretty damn good when that happened with Daredevil.
200 years in the future. Entire Earth’s population had been wiped out in a rebel war. Human race is in deep shit. And that’s what you are watching in this movie. 90 minutes of pure shit.
David Bradley is staring in another disaster created by Phillip J. Roth. He and his company will try to save the universe by traveling back through time. His company consists of stereotype black man, ugly, ugly, ugly military chick and Brian Faker. But no, they don’t do this because they have noble intentions. It’s their only choice between this and death penalty they’ve been sentenced to. Apparently each and one of them is responsible for real massacre on some planets. Anyway, let me start from the beginning.
First 20 minutes of movie are half-decent space fights between “The Bridges” and rebellions. The bridges are political party that controls all Earth colonies. Later in the movie, we’ll find out that that party got a name by writer of ” The Universal Being” book John Bridges. Apparently that book is responsible for all shit that happened in last 200 years. Space stage of film is ended by some 2 random guys in small space ship going through time warp. So, after 20 minutes of half-decent space fight we got David Bradley and his company to travel to Earth back to 1998 (probably because entire budget has been spent onto previously mentioned fights). Their mission is simple – finding John Bridges and stopping him from writing his book. And to make things even harder they have only 40 hours to do this since nitro implants have been implanted into their necks and will explode after that time. Why 40, why not standard 48 hours, you might ask? So did we. But we got no answer. Anyway, they lost 3 hours after transition to Earth. It’s interesting how despite using all hi-tech gadgets none of them actually knows how to drive a car. One of those gadgets is military chick’s (who gets uglier in every scene) all-purpose calculator. There isn’t a thing which that calculator can’t do. Ok now, back to the plot. Congressman Jerry has to be stopped as well since he used above mentioned book to form a political party which will rule in future with new kind of totalism as new world order thus which will lead to a global war of epic proportions. Also, two FBI members with interesting names (Agent Smith and Agent Wesson; sounds familiar?) have had their part of a role and they did absolutely nothing. We fail to see their exact purpose here. Let’s not forget two guys from the beginning of the movie who also have traveled back to time. First thing they did when they arrived is destroying their space ship so they couldn’t go back (?!). Of course, mission wouldn’t be successful without help of writer’s ex-wife. David Bradley was about to plow her in the end but he got distracted by one tiny little detail – his head got blown up by nitro implant. You have to admit that that’s not really romantic. Long story short, the only person that ended up with a head on it’s shoulders in the end of the movie is ugly, ugly, ugly military chick. She was the only one who managed to live through to see fixed future and Earth existing in some kind of new modern, sterilized order. Makes you wish for war to start all over again.
Worsemovies 