Director: Josh Trank

Cast: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E Cathey

A bunch of high school kids are given a free way pass to make a device to travel to and from another dimension. The bunch of smart-assy know-it-alls also include a character, Victor von Doom, who has destroyed an entire lab a couple of years ago. But Dr Storm, played by Reg E Cathey, trusts them and brings them over to a fully-functional Baxter industries’ lab, where most of the movie takes place. Because what could go wrong?

Something obviously does. Those kids, in a drunken state of mind, fly away to another planet-slash-dimension. Because no one told them not to drink and drive to another dimension. So, when they get back, they have strange powers aka aggressively abnormal physical conditions which need to be ‘fixed’.

Sue Storm-slash-The Invisible Woman played by Kate Mara is as invisible as it gets. She hardly has any role. She doesn’t even get to travel to the ‘other dimension’ and still has to ‘suffer’ the consequences. She can kind of fly, though.

Reed Richards, played by Miles Teller, is the elastic (yet, still not) Mr Fantastic. He’s not married to Sue. He’s not Johnny’s bro-in-law. That’s what the second movie is for, people. Or the third, if the makers have the guts for it.

Not sure if you ever read the comics of yore, but in those, D r Doom, played by Toby Kebbell, is the failed (debatable) monarch of a fictional country with a slew of robots at his disposal. Imagine this super genius who also makes a pretty impressive sorcerer. Now that is His Highness Doctor Doom.

But in the movie, he’s anything but that. And he seems to be the only one who probably liked the movie. Because he is the Doctor Doom. It’s not like he had a choice being the designated villain and all. Duh.

The only creature we kind of liked in the movie is The Thing. But what happened to your pants, Thing? Yes, we know the Fantastic Four series are getting bad to worse but they haven’t cut down on the funding… yet. At least this time around, the Thing is a better looking rock monster than most other Things of the past. You rock, Jamie Bell!

Oh, yes, t hree fourths of the movie are spent on trying to establish the Fantastic Fou r’s world. Because, that’s how all the Avengers’ movies do it, right? Only, here, it falls flat. There is hardly any time left for the villain to do his evil thing. Nor for the Thing to do his thing.

Basically, all the time is spent in just trying to set up the next movie of the franchise. So, no one cares what is happening in this particular movie. Even the CGI sucks.

Ok, yes, comic books have come into their own in the last decade. It’s been proved by Marvel that it is possible to churn out a funny and entertaining film. There are no superlatives to describe this disaster. What were you even thinking, Fox? This movie could, probably, be the worst superhero movie you would ever see. There, we found ourselves a superlative!

Apparently, the failure of the movies is predated by the failure of the comic books. The difference is that the movies are failures on a much bigger stage. Like glacially #EpicFail.

Watch the trailer here, if you really must.

(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of ScoopWhoop)