Fantastic Four (2015) - Josh Trank

Josh Trank's Fantastic Four is just the latest exploit in a never-ending cycle of comic book films which attempts to tell the origin story of one of Marvel's oldest super-hero teams.  Centered around four young outsiders in Reed Richards, Johnny Storm, Sue Storm, and Ben Grimm, the young team of scientists, engineers, and mechanics? develop a transportation device capable of transporting them to a mysterious, dangerous universe.  Backed by government money, the team successfully builds the device, but when they travel to this mysterious planet things go terribly wrong, leaving each character with a shocking new powers.  Josh Tranks' Fantastic Four is the posterboy for how tired and exhausting the origin-story comic book films have become, bringing absolutely no new ideas to the table in a way that leaves the whole film incredibly boring and uninteresting.  For starters, the script leaves a lot to be desired, never fully developing the 'family' type aspect of these characters which is such an important aspect of the Fantastic Four superhero team, relying on a horribly one-dimensional villain and terribly cliched ideas centered around the government wanting to use these characters for military applications.  While I'd argue that Fantastic Four isn't nearly as awful as one was led to believe, the film is truly a staple of just how tired and boring the genre as become.  The strong cast has very little to work with, and outside of one memorable sequence involving Doom going all scanners on a bunch of government officials, Fantastic Four brings very little thrills or excitement to the table.  Featuring one of the most ham-fisted, rushed, and boring action set-piece finales in recent years, Josh Trank's Fantastic Four is a whollfully generic, uninteresting comic book film that completely wastes its strong acting talent.  

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