Fantastic Four (2015)

"I could easily say that this new Fantastic Four outstretches its welcome, that its plot vanishes without a trace, that the action fails to ignite, or that the script could have used a good clobbering. But I’ve got a simpler statement: this is a bad movie. I know what many of you are thinking: “Can it really be as bad as those campy previous two films?” It’s a photo finish, even (and especially) with its bold shift to a serious/humourless tone."

"All told, the movie feels like a protracted teaser for a more exciting follow-up that, depending on whether audiences warm to this relatively low-key approach, might never happen."

"Trank's origin story brings nothing new to the party, apart from a rather muted, real-world aesthetic that counters the colourful worlds dreamed up by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the original Marvel comics."

"A dawdling indie drama, gussied up in superhero garb."

"The drama is laughable, the attempted humour is strained and the script simply never allows the special effects crew to do anything particularly inventive."

"A really good film, shorn of glib know-all theatrics, faux profundity and the spangly CG that's usually ushered in as dramatic short hand for, "we got nuthin'." It is, as the old saying goes, a proper movie."

"A sense of heaviness, gloom and complete disappointment settles in during the second half, as the mundane setup pays no dramatic or sensory dividends whatsoever."

"While it never quite becomes a bad film, it can never quite make you forget it is a botched film."

"As an origin story that’s all origins and no story, there’s a hollow, stale feeling to this occasionally admirable attempt to Nolanise Marvel’s dysfunctional family."