Fantastic Four (Special Edition, 2 DVDs)

It seems that superhero comic-to-film adaptations have been quite the thing over the last few years, with the success of films like Spiderman and X-Men inspiring more and more. Coming along in 2005, Fantastic Four was arguably scraping the barrel to catch onto the end of the bandwagon (if you'll pardon the mixing of metaphors) and received some rather poor reviews. Personally though I have to say I quite enjoyed it. I'm not a comic book fan and the Fantastic Four are probably less famous than many other Marvel superheroes so, although I'd heard of them, I didn't really know much about them. I can't say whether the film is faithful to the original stories or ...  Read the complete review

OK. What happens when you make a movie adaptation of one of my favourite comic books of all time and then put the second sexiest man in the whole world in one of the leading roles? It must surely be a recipe for success, right? Well, maybe… When Reed Richards wants to undertake groundbreaking research in outer space, he needs the financial backing of multi-millionaire Victor Von Doom. With this secured, the only thing left to do is enlist the crew. Apart from Reed himself, he takes on Benjamin Grimm, a lifelong friend and trusty assistant, Susan Storm (Victor Von Doom's assistant)and Johnny Storm (her hot-headed brother). With Victor along for the ride, ...  Read the complete review

Through an associate I have procured an advance copy of the DVD release of Fantastic Four. Sadly it’s not the special two-disc edition but then I very much doubt I’d have wasted my time with going through another disc on the film. I saw Fantastic Four on its cinema release, I don’t why I did but morbid curiosity got the better of me. The trailers for the movie were pretty poor and the advance word told of the movie going in a direction not faithful to the original comic book. The only thing I was intrigued by was the thought of The Shield’s Vic Mackie playing The Thing. The rest of the cast were bland and Fox had chosen to give a multi-layered comic book romp ...  Read the complete review

note: also appears in part on Flixster and The Student Room The Fantastic Four has never been as celebrated as the more "mainstream" flagship comic book heroes, such as Batman, Spider-Man and Superman, but it does have a certain goofy charm, and while far from one of Stan Lee's better efforts, it is decent, bombastic fun if not classically well crafted. The film follows along the same methodology: it is goofy, corny, and totally not serious, and while therefore not as great as the recent comic book heavyweights, it does deliver some fun fights and decent characterisation, even if some of the casting choices (particularly Alba as Sue Storm) are a bit ...  Read the complete review

After an expensive expedition into space goes wrong and a cosmic blast engulf their space ship five lives are changed forever. Sue Storm, Richard Reed, Ben Grimm, Victor Von Doom and Johnny Storm all discover that because of the blast they start to receive super powers, each person having a unique gift (such as invisibility, super strength and the ability to manipulate fire). Victor facing financial ruin after the space disaster starts to use his unique abilities to hunt down the investors who backed out of his company. Forging together the other four try to bring him down, attracting a lot of media attention along the way. Also Ben has to deal with becoming a monster ...  Read the complete review