If there’s a superhero name that has been constantly thrown and shoved into the dirt, it’s the Fantastic Four. The superhero team from Marvel comics which consisted of four members with diverse powers gained from a space accident was one that helped usher in a new age of realism felt in the comic book medium, but a name that has never been popular in the modern era. Throughout several attempts at trying to introduce the fantastic four in several TV shows, radio shows and even films, none have proven successful like the other famous comic book names. But unlike movies like Ghost Rider, Spawn and Steel, who gave up after their first movie failure, Fantastic Four produced at least three movies throughout the years in hoping that one would catch on and make them popular. One was an unreleased film made in 1994 directed by Roger Corman, the soulless and dull reboot made in 2015 which coined the title Fan4stic, and the other was the 2005 and technically first release movie based on the team. Even though it skipped over one of the darkest periods for marvel comic movies, it feels like it belongs in that era. Scientist Reed Richards (played by Ioan Gruffudd) convinces his conceited ex-classmate Dr. Victor Von Doom (played by Julian McMahon) to travel to space and witness a cosmic cloud that could hold the secrets to evolution of earth. Along with them, they take Reed’s bodyguard and close friend, Ben Grimm (played by Michael Chiklis), Reed’s ex-girlfriend Sue Storm (played by Jessica Alba) who now works for Doom, and Sue’s pilot brother Johnny (played by Chris Evans). When in space, the team is unexpectedly hit by the storm and are gifted with superpowers. Faced with unknown abilities, the team try to replicate the energy from the storm in order to transform themselves back in their depowered forms, all the while Victor is slowly losing himself after also gaining powers. Will the team have to embrace their new powers in order to stop this new threat or is it too much for them to handle. This movie pretty well establishes pretty well why the Fantastic Four have never caught on in the modern era.

Fantastic Four came out around the time when comic book movies were slowly starting to find their footing. With films like Blade, X-Men and especially Spiderman, these three helped show the world that comic book movies were capable of being engaging despite their silly premises and that they could be profitable ideas if they were taken with enough seriousness to create something flawed but enjoyable and memorable. This movie feels like it captured everything that the dark age of comic book movies had; horribly told stories, woefully bland and unlikable characters, horrible effects, extremely dated elements and no way of finding a balance between serious and goofy to be an enjoyable movie for either demographic. Even though the movie follows the origins of these characters mostly truthfully, its done without any updates or improvements to the source material that everything feels dated, forgettable and horribly bland. Since the source material relied on episodic villain-of-the-week scenarios, it had no strong meat to flesh out a story with, which leads to the movie having nothing to do outside of sit around and do nothing with its characters. The heroes in this movie spend more time causing damage to others than actually saving anybody. For a superhero team that is praised as ‘’fantastic’’, the only thing they seem capable of doing is show off their powers and fight back against problems that they themselves caused to the world. Despite its campy atmosphere, the movie is mostly dull, unimaginative, and the furthest thing away a movie can be to ‘heroic’. It feels a lot longer that it actually is due to how little is going on in the movie and the movie feels more like a realty TV show than a superhero film, which it should never feel like.

One of the main reasons for why the Fantastic Four never succeeded in being revitalized in a current era could be down to the cast of characters themselves. On the surface, they are recognizable names due to their powers and charmingly silly and on-the-nose names, but in terms of their characteristics, they are extremely bland. This was fine during their creation in the 60s, but unlike characters like Spiderman who worked well as an inspiring role model as well as an identifiable teenager, the Fantastic Four existed solely to fight crime and not be interesting. In a modern version like this movie, these bland and one-note archetypes won’t just come off as extremely replaceable but mixing these elements with their selfishness and toxic relationships, makes all of them incredibly unlikable. None of them come off as good in this movie; Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) is just a bland scientist, Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) only exists to get several naked shots of her , Ben Grim (The Thing) gets some sympathy due to his transformation, but there’s nothing complex added and Johnny Storm (The Human Torch) is just an unlikable jerk throughout this whole movie. The villain, Doctor Doom, is also really bad; with a motivation as stupid and basic as anything and with an actor that doesn’t look intimidating in the least, he leaves no impression. Most of the actors in this movie aren’t overly awful but none are particularly interesting, especially with Alba and McMahon who feel stilted and awkward a lot of times.

The effects in the movie feel like they would look fine for the time that it came out in, but they aren’t ones that have aged well in any way. There are some costumes and make-up that look appropriate to Fantastic Four and don’t look too bad (The Thing’s rock skin looks pretty good), but the CG doesn’t hold up and isn’t creative or visually interesting enough to make up for it. The movie only has two prominent action scenes and neither captures the correct feeling a superhero action scene should have. Both are caused by the heroes themselves and neither feature any sense of high-flying energy that would work in this light-hearted movie. It has a campy feel throughout the movie so this style of comic-book fighting fits in that regard, but because the characters are so uninteresting and unlikable, it doesn’t feel satisfying seeing them succeed in anything mainly because they caused all the problems to begin with. It is a movie that really has dated with everything to its music, to its effects, to its style, even its cinematography but its thankfully not as prominent an issue as it is in other films.

Fantastic Four does an incredible job at showing the world how not to be a superhero; flaunt your abilities and declare yourself amazing despite doing nothing useful, spend a good majority of the time wasting away doing nothing with your powers, and cause more problems for people and then only do hero work when it affects your own safety. With no intrigue or sense of super heroism coming off this movie, it just produces another bland, dated, in-your face movie that showed why superhero movies wouldn’t work. The real tragedy is that its not even one of the worst ones in existence; with better writing, casting, and effects, it maybe could have been something as its still a watchable movie, just a horribly annoying one. The movie that is so unsubtle that your villain literally translates out to ‘’VICTOR OF DOOM’’, this movie is a lot of things, but one thing it definitely isn’t, is fantastic.