Fant4stic (2015) Review

🎞️ Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers, shall we?

(I’m not responsible for your boredom, confusion, or sudden craving for a better movie.)


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🧠 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

Four young people get powers from an alternate dimension and then… nothing happens. No, seriously. This film takes the Fantastic Four origin story, slaps a moody Instagram filter over it, throws out charm, action, or actual story structure, and calls it a day. It’s less a superhero film and more a grim science project with no science and even less fun.


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👤 Character Rundown

Reed Richards (Miles Teller) – Smart guy with stretchy powers. Charisma removed during reshoots.

Sue Storm (Kate Mara) – Smarter than everyone but written like she’s wallpaper.

Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) – Has fire powers and personality, but the movie forgets to use either.

Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) – Becomes the Thing. But instead of depth or arc… he’s just there.

Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) – Oh boy. We’ll get to him. Strap in.



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🧭 Pacing / Episode Flow

Horrendous. The movie feels like two halves of two different films awkwardly sewn together. The first half is a lukewarm science drama. The second half suddenly decides it needs to become a superhero film but forgets how. Then it ends. Abruptly. Like a bad first draft.


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⚠️ Controversy Corner (Because this film has baggage)

This movie was plagued with reshoots, behind-the-scenes chaos, and a director who essentially disowned the final product. There are conflicting stories about who’s to blame—Josh Trank, the studio, the reshoots, the edit. But one thing’s for sure: no one involved wanted this to be the final film, including the audience.

Also the casting of Michael Jordan as Johnny got tons of hate, Here’s my take “Stop it”. Like it doesn’t matter, what matters if the script they arr handed is good.

🗑️ Flashback to Fant4stic — Where Logic Went to Die

Before we all agree Fant4stic never happened, let’s remember why. Namely: Victor Von Doom’s plan in that film makes absolutely zero sense.

According to the movie, Doom spends a year stuck in another dimension (Planet Zero), becomes fused with the landscape, and decides:

> “To save my planet… Earth must die.”



…Okay, stop right there.

Earth and Planet Zero are not in the same solar system.

They’re not in the same galaxy.

They’re not even in the same dimension.

They don’t share air, water, energy, taxes — nothing.


So why exactly does Earth need to die for Planet Zero to survive?
No one knows. Not even Doom. Not even the writers. Not even Planet Zero.

It’s the villain equivalent of saying:

> “I stubbed my toe in the Upside Down, so now Paris must burn.”



He’s basically a rage-powered rock monster cosplaying as a philosophy major. His logic boils down to “I had a rough gap year in the Negative Zone, so now I will destroy existence.”

💩 “Four Schmucks in a Trench Coat” — The Fant4stic Family Fumble

Shoutout to Cinematic Excrement for nailing it: these four don’t feel like a family. They don’t even feel like coworkers. They feel like four awkward strangers who carpooled to the wrong movie.

No warmth. No banter. No connection. Just Reed looking constipated, Sue talking in monotone, Johnny bored out of his skull, and Ben Grimm being so sidelined you wonder if he was digitally inserted after filming wrapped. At no point do they gel as a team — let alone feel like the First Family of Marvel.

Honestly, I’ve seen more chemistry between office chairs in IKEA.




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✅ Pros

The alternate dimension visuals could have been interesting in a better film.

Michael B. Jordan tries to bring energy despite the script.

It ended.



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❌ Cons

The tone is completely joyless. A Fantastic Four movie should not feel like a moody student film.

No action until the last 15 minutes. And even then, it’s bland.

Chemistry? What chemistry? The cast looks like they met five minutes before filming.

Horrific pacing. 75% setup. 25% rushed finale.

Dr. Doom’s design and arc. See next section. You’re not ready.



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🎬 Final Thoughts

This film should’ve been fantastic. Instead, it’s Fant4stic… as in 4 times the pain. There’s a good movie hidden in the concept, but the execution is lifeless, hollow, and tries so hard to be “serious” that it forgets to be anything else.


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⭐ Rating: 1/10

Yes, one. One single, pity point for effort. Maybe.


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⚠️ Spoiler Warning

We’re about to dive into the finale, a design rant, and my one favorite scene (somehow).


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🎞️ Here’s 1 clip I liked:

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💥 Spoilers

The team goes to the alternate dimension. A green ooze gives them powers. It’s not space, not science—it’s just… stuff.

☣️ The Horror Movie That Snuck In

There’s one scene in Fant4stic that feels like it wandered in from a completely different film — and honestly, it’s the most memorable part… for the wrong reasons.

After the team returns from Planet Budget-Apokolips™, we get a genuinely disturbing sequence that ditches comic book energy entirely and dives headfirst into full-blown body horror.

Reed wakes up strapped to a surgical table, sweaty, terrified, and stretched like spaghetti across the floor. He’s not confused — he’s screaming. Johnny is burning inside a containment cell, alive and conscious, while his body flickers like a human furnace. Ben is buried under rubble, groaning in pain, and when we finally see him, he’s already transforming — in agony. And Sue? She’s floating mid-air, flickering, convulsing under blinking lights like she’s mid-exorcism.

None of it feels heroic. None of it feels empowering.
It’s not “Look at our powers!”
It’s “Please kill me.”

This isn’t a superhero origin story — it’s a science accident autopsy. And while it’s visually haunting and tonally heavy, it’s also wildly out of place in a movie that can’t decide if it wants to be Chronicle, Interstellar, X-Men, or X-Files: Sad Teen Edition.

The powers are treated like curses, not gifts. And the movie never recovers. This one scene is a masterclass in setting a tone the film immediately abandons. They teased psychological trauma, horror, and consequence… and then time-skipped to “working for the government now, I guess.”

It’s like watching someone start painting The Scream and then give up halfway to doodle stick figures with lasers.


Doom’s “death” is lazy. They leave him behind. Somehow he survives and merges with the dimension to become a literal walking trash bag.

The design of Doom is a CRIME. He looks like melted aluminum foil with green neon veins, like someone duct-taped Christmas lights onto a mannequin. Nothing about this says “Doom” — no cape, no armor, no gravitas. Just a walking, blinking computer virus.

Doom’s powers? He explodes heads by looking at people. Yes, really. He walks down a hallway and pop pop pop — heads are bursting like water balloons. It’s unintentionally hilarious and never explained.

He wants to destroy Earth. Why? Because Earth bad. You know. The usual.

The final fight? A bland CGI swirl with characters standing still while explosions happen around them. No stakes. No strategy. Just noise.

They win. Instantly. Doom falls into his own energy beam and disintegrates like a bug in a microwave.

Final scene? The government gives them a base and a budget for… reasons?

And then comes the ending. If you can call it that.

Ben, with all the emotional weight of someone ordering a sandwich, mutters, “I gotta say it, Reed… this is fantastic.”

Reed, apparently stunned by the concept of adjectives: “Say that again?”
Ben: “It’s fantastic.”
Reed: “Alright, guys. I have an idea…”

SMASH CUT. TITLE CARD.
No payoff. No team name. Just a fade to black like the film couldn’t get off screen fast enough. It’s not clever. It’s not subtle. It’s a cinematic shrug. The movie spends 100 minutes pretending to be deep, and in its final seconds, it chickens out of simply saying “Fantastic Four.” Like even the script was too embarrassed to own it.