The Good
From a purely an audio/visual standpoint, this release deserves to take its place on Blu-ray disc.
The Bad
Something tells me that this Blu-ray release should have contained more extra features.
Fantastic Four is more or less an origin film. The story is pretty simple in that it focuses on Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and his desire to do something that requires a great deal of money in space. Going on this mission are Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) and Sue Storm (Jessica Alba). In addition to this there is a man funding this whole project named Victor von Doom (Julian McMahon). As you can guess, something goes very wrong on this space mission and everyone comes out of it with special powers. Ben Grimm turns into a solid rock yet is still highly mobile. Reed Richards has amazing elastic ability. Sue can now become invisible. Johnny has the ability to turn into a flame and von Doom is suddenly very strong even though he is turning into a piece of metal. What ensues for the majority of the film is an epic battle between von Doom and the Fantastic Four.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Visually this movie looks awesome. It is a thrillride of epic proportions and the effects employed are 100% state of the art. It isn’t any surprise that when I interviewed Stan Lee he was very excited about this film and he was also ecstatic about its $330 million dollar gross worldwide. All of this is great, I just had hoped that a movie of this nature, especially with a title like Fantastic Four, would have delivered something more than a typical story wrapped in special effects.
Features
Surprisingly, this is the only feature on this DVD. It features the aforementioned stars of the movie and I don’t know what I was expecting from this track, I just thought that it would be better. I wanted to hear these people talk about making this film in a way that was exciting and I guess I was hoping for too much. They discuss the comics, working with director Tim Story, shooting the amazing effects sequences but too much of this feels like something that we have already heard before. I am wondering if this DVD might not have been better served to jettison this track and do a historical piece on these superheroes? Maybe it could have included a better feature from one of the Standard releases of this title?
Video
2.35:1 - 1080p HD. This movie was made for Blu-ray disc. It might be short on story, plot, good acting and just about everything else, but man this thing will make your Blu-ray player sing. The images are so well compressed and so vibrant that it really brings out all the different facets that that are offered. Even in the scenes where there isn’t a lot going on, the images still sparkle. There’s a lot of different colors, special effects and stunts that really seem to be contained well on this release. In addition to this there isn’t a difference in the way the picture looks when juxtaposing the interior and exterior shots.
Audio
English DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio. The sound on this release really complimented the picture. I think it is a ironic that this movie can look and sound so good yet it is lacking in so many other areas. I liked the way the audio seemed to fill the room while at the same time it wasn’t afraid to give us natural sounds that could have seemed out of place. Again, from simply an audio/video perspective this is the kind of release that you need in your collection.
Package
The Fantastic Four, clad in their fantastic outfits are all present and accounted for on the cover of this Blu-ray release. The fact that Jessica Alba gets front billing should certainly not be lost on anyone. The back cover gives us some shots from the movie, a tiny description, a Bonus Features listing and some technical specs. Nothing about this cover jumped out at me but they aren’t lying when they say that Fantastic Four is beyond High Definition.
Final Word
The biggest complaint that I have heard about this movie is that it doesn’t really have too much of a story. That is something that I agree with but my biggest complaint is how much this movie (and superhero movies in general) seem to telegraph all of their stories so that all of the nuance is lost. I know that people say that these movies have to do that to make them accessible to the largest possibly audience, but the big problem that I have with that is that I just don’t think Fantastic Four is really that deep no matter what you do to it. I mean the main bad guy in this story is named Victor von Doom. Okay, who in their right mind would get involved with somebody who had that name? Then there’s just the mission that Richards is leading them on and the battle with von Doom that is the crux of this film. It all just felt hokey. As if the audience could be blinded by a huge amount of special effects and not notice that when all that played itself out, everything would hinge on a story of which there was very little.
Fans of superhero flix are always going to watch movies like Fantastic Four. Popcorn pictures are always going to be what studios want regardless of how much money they cost. It’s just a shame that with all their resources they couldn’t have done more with the writing which, comparatively, costs very little.
Fantastic Four was released June 29, 2005.
