If I'm being honest, I had more fun eating the entire Denny's Fantastic Four menu.

Additional thoughts:

-The Fantastic Four is unique among comic-book heroes because they’re a family. This movie whiffs on that concept completely. Reed and Ben are buddies, but along the way they grow apart. Reed seems to like Sue in the way that teen boys pine for beautiful, unattainable women, but their relationship never goes any farther than that. And Johnny and Sue, who are brother and sister, barely seem to know each other at all. There isn't a single scene of their home lives with their enigmatic father Franklin (or, for that matter, almost *any* scenes outside the maze of laboratories, hospitals, and army bases where these heroes spend their time).

-I don't know who I feel worse for here. Jamie Bell, who has maybe three scenes and ten lines before he's replaced by a pile of rocks; Kate Mara, who gets sidelined even more pronouncedly than the typical female character in these comic-book movies; Miles Teller, who is totally miscast as a shy nerd (who mysteriously becomes a cocky nerd at the end of the movie for no reason); or Michael B. Jordan, who is *perfectly* cast as the Human Torch, but gets almost nothing to do.

-That brings me to my next point: Trank's CHRONICLE worked because of its total investment in the three lead characters' relationships and personal growth. In the early scenes, Trank seems to be taking the same tact here, but pretty quickly this movie abandons any pretense of caring about the FF as people to focus entirely on their invention of this dumb teleportation device, then their exploitation by the government, and then their battle with Doctor Doom (who is somehow even worse in this movie than he was in the two Tim Story FF films). I can't say how much Trank, or Simon Kinberg, or Fox is responsible for the final product, but the movie feels like a mish-mosh of like ten different kinds of movies, and none of them fit together. It's like a salad made of out lettuce, gummy worms, and carpet samples dressed with some Mike's Hard Lemonade.

-Poor Kate Mara's wig in the reshot scenes is so tragic we should start calling last-minute reshoots "Mara hair" in her honor. (i.e. "Man, that movie was a mess. What happened?" "You didn't hear? They Mara haired the whole thing after some bad test screenings.")

-Also, am I crazy or does Michael B. Jordan suddenly and inexplicably have a mustache and goatee in the last scene?

-They make a big deal about how the characters’ suits are specially designed to help them control their powers. There's like a whole scene devoted to it. But they STILL make the Thing walk around completely naked. I mean, I get it, a costume won't help control his power. But c'mon; you couldn't at least sew him a pair of board shorts or something?

-Do you think these superhero movies keep paying VFX houses to make new giant beams of blue energy, or do they just reuse the same special effect over and over?

-Much was made of the fact that Marvel canceled the long-running FANTASTIC FOUR comic book in the run-up to this movie's release. At the time, most fans speculated that Marvel was trying to stick it to Fox, and didn't want to give the movie any free publicity or . Having now seen the finished film, I suspect the opposite; Marvel wanted nothing to do with this thing, and was trying to get as far away from it as possible.