Well, here I was. All dressed up to go watch Fantastic Four: First Steps in the cinema. That’s one of the nice things about living in the Philippines: movies are released in the middle of the week rather than close to the weekend. This usually means we get to see movies a couple of days ahead than the rest of the world. This includes Marvel films as well. Unfortunately, the Philippines is also known for getting hit by typhoons during this time of the year. As such, flooding in my area got really bad so I simply was unable to go to the movie theater to catch the latest live-action iteration of the Fantastic Four.

Still, I had to get a review out this week and I wanted to do something Fantastic Four themed. Well, I already reviewed the Roger Corman version of Marvel’s First Family and I simply didn’t want to relive the horror that was Fant4stic. But there was still a couple of Fantastic Four movies I haven’t reviewed for this site. It just so happened one of them is celebrating it’s 20th year anniversary now. Yes, for now, I rewatched 2005’s 20th Century Fox‘s Fantastic Four movie. Yay?

Now, as this movie is already two whole decades old, I will be making this a SPOILER FILLED review. I mean, I’m not going to restrain myself from giving details about the film just because some of you haven’t seen this rather old superhero movie. So, yeah. SPOILER FILLER review incoming.

20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four pretty much tells the origin of how Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm got bombarded with cosmic radiation, which gave them superpowers. The cosmic radiation granted Reed the ability to stretch his body, Sue the power to turn invisible and create force fields, Johnny Storm can now set his entire body in flame at will without harming him and Ben Grimm was given super strength and nigh invulnerability but his entire body is now like granite. They all adapted monikers; Reed Richards as Mister Fantastic, Sue Storm as Invisible Woman, Johnny Storm as the Human Torch and Ben Grimm is The Thing. However, hiding in the shadows, Doctor Doom, Mister Fantastic’s former boss and Sue Storm’s ex-fiancee, who also has powers now, plots his revenge as he blames them for what happened to him.

To be fair, way back in 2005, I thought this Fantastic Four movie was fine. It wasn’t great but I couldn’t say it was bad. But as superhero movies have gotten way better and our expectations are higher, how does it look like through a modern lens? Honestly, it’s a little worse for wear but it’s still fine.

I will say the casting does feel wrong. Ioan Gruffudd‘s take on Mister Fantastic makes him look like the dumbest genius in Marvel. He’s so different from the more stoic, matter-of-fact kind of character he’s supposed to be in the comics. While this was during the peak of Jessica Alba‘s popularity, I just couldn’t buy into her playing Invisible Woman. It also hurt that her chemistry with Ioan Gruffudd was non-existent. Then again, I guess 20th Century Fox got her so the little boys can go imagine her in the buff while she turned invisible as she had to dispose of her clothing to do so.

I will say I did enjoy Chris Evans (the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s future Captain America) as The Human Torch as I did like his cocky demeanor. I guess the best performance in the film is Michael Chiklis as The Thing. Despite being caked in prosthetics for the majority of the movie, he still gets to emote a lot because of the emotional moments the character gets throughout the film’s 106-minute runtime. I am pretty torn on Julian McMahon‘s Doctor Doom, though. I can see him trying to pull out a good and cheesy performance here but it doesn’t work. But that’s to no fault of his own as that’s mostly because of the script, which I’ll talk about now.

2005’s Fantastic Four’s plot is just… dumb. That’s the best way I can describe it. It essentially starts out with Reed Richards and Ben Grimm looking for a way to test cosmic radiation. So, they, along with Sue Storm, Johnny Storm and Victor Von Doom go to Victor Von Doom’s space station to collect data. This version of Doctor Doom doesn’t have a genius level intellect like Mister Fantastic! He’s just really, really good at sweet talking investors! So, when he does become the big baddie with electric powers and organic metal, he comes off as unmatched against The Fantastic Four as a whole.

The action scenes are mostly underwhelming with the exception of the final battle with Doctor Doom. The entire space station deal is kind of boring. The collapsing bridge sequence (which The Thing accidentally caused, mind you) comes off as pretty unexciting. As I said, the only action scene I enjoyed was the final fight against Doctor Doom… but I kind of liked in ironically! There some pretty silly moments like The Thing tossing a car at Doctor Doom, which hits him and a bus… then Doctor Doom walks out of the bus doors. And the final solution is just dumb. The writers thought they were being clever by getting the Fantastic Four use all their powers to a degree. But in reality, only the Human Torch and the Invisible Woman did something fantastic here. All The Thing did was open a fire hydrant and Mister Fantastic acted like a hose to direct the water at Doctor Doom. They could’ve gotten a fireman to do that! It’s stupid but I love it!

The final battle pretty sums up what this iteration of the Fantastic Four is: dumb fun. The 2005 Fantastic Four is childish and cheesy. But there is a kind of charm to it being childish and cheesy. I do wish it were a little more earnest in trying to be silly, however. There is a kind of artificial saccharine layer that does make some of the silliness feel forced. While I do think there is still some enjoyment to be had here, it’s not something you actually have to see now. This Fantastic Four came out when a good superhero movie was super rare. I’m not sure if it was trying to be one of those rare great superhero movies or trying to capitalize on the hope this was another of those rare great superhero movies.

One thing’s for sure: it’s waaaaaay better than Fant4stic.

What did you think of the 2005 Fantastic Four movie? If you watch First Steps, how does this stack up to that? Let me know in the comments section below!