Truthfully, the Fantastic Four reboot is exactly what I would expect from someone behind Chronicle.  Chronicle was a good film, but it was tonally dark, focused on the breakdown of family bonds and friendship.  It was dark and sad.  None of these are really good tones for the Fantastic Four.

Josh Trank has already tried disowning the movie, but the problem is?  It sure looks like the kind of movie I would expect from him.  The film has a color treatment to suck out any and all vibrancy. It is a serious and un-cheery affair.  Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) is not a carefree adventure loving guy…now he is and aggressive, unhappy street racer.

Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) is…a guy?  Sue Storm (Kate Mara) is awkward socially, so is Reed (Mile Teller) and so is Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell).  There is nothing that makes the characters easy to tell apart…and little to see a spark of heroism.

The film takes forever to get to the pivotal accident that gives everyone their powers.  And then the film gets real boring.  Doctor Doom is terribly dull, and lacks any visual identity.  Sure, he has a green cloak.  But He looks like a generic villain, like they forgot to finish the character design in the pre-production stage.

The film lacks any joy of discovery with the characters, and focuses on the darkest take of their getting powers.  They do not have code names in the film.  Everybody refers to the as Subjects.  Johnny’s digs at Ben are simply mean, lacking the playful spirit (Captured so well by Chris Evans) of the character in the comics.

This is a dull film, that misses why people love these characters in the first place.  I wish it had been a disaster, because that might have been interesting to watch.

And there is just something about the Thing not wearing pants that just looks weird.