Wandering the world of What If...?

What If…?

What if the Fantastic Four got their Super Powers in 2005 instead of in 1961? Well some aspects of the story would have to be changed; after all it’s over 40 years later. It simply wouldn’t do for the plot to begin with Reed Richards racing “the reds” to outer space. It especially wouldn’t do to have him stealing his own under funded rocket ship, with his best friend, his girlfriend, and her kid brother in tow. So we’ll need to modernize that a bit.

Instead of racing for space conquest in the cold war, Reed is trying to save his failing business. What exactly his business is isn’t stated, but it’s got a lot of scientific gadgets, so obviously Reed is a genius of some sort. We’re told that his ex-girlfriend Sue is a genius as well. Even though neither one of them ever has much in the way of scientific dialogue, or even much prowess with words. So we the audience have to trust the scriptwriter when we’re told that they are genius’s, even if there is no evidence of this genius.

Ben and Johnny are both ex-military, Ben has retired, and Johnny was thrown out for dating underwear models. That tells us that Ben is the responsible friend, and Johnny is the teen heartthrob friend. Both of them are pilots, so they argue over who will pilot the ship to the space station where they will experiment with cosmic rays, which will eventually grant them super powers. Even though we never see either of them pilot, they are pilots. Again we have to trust the scriptwriter in this small facet of the film.

We have two geniuses, which don’t seem it, and two pilots who don’t actually fly anything. I’m not seeing anything Fantastic here, are you? Obviously the fantastic element of this movie should have been the scripts ability to handle 4 strong heroic characters, give them all equal screen time and allow us to watch all four of their characters develop. Sorry folks, don’t get your hopes up, it didn’t happen that way.

Jessica Alba has potential to be a strong presence on the screen, so they had her turn invisible every time things got good. What is the point in having her best scenes in the movie without her actually being in them? Her special affects over shadowed her, such a waste of an actor’s talent.

Well I found the fantastic in this movie, buried under orange rock was a man named Michael Chiklis. Cast as “the ever lovin’ blue eyed Thing”; he single handedly saved this film. Deep brooding, angst, ugly, rejected, despondent, three fingered clobbering was the only thing that could save this film. Over the years, the fan favorite member of the Fantastic Four has always been, Ben Grim. The man trapped inside an orange rock shell, a monster tormented by his own body. The Thing comes through in the nick of time and saves his friends from a horrible enemy, the script.

60 years is a lot of pulp ink to squeeze into 90mins of film, I feel that they shouldn’t have tried to do it. A simple origin story would have been an excellent way to tell this tale; there was no need to burry the audience in dozens of plot points and characters.