Critics rating: 1.5 Stars

Cast: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson.

Direction: Josh Trank.

Produced: Simon Kinberg, Matthew Vaughn, Hutch Parker, Robert Kulzer, Gregory Goodman.

Written: Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg, Josh Trank

Genre: Action.

Duration: 100 Mins

They are never going to be the Avengers and after this outing are much less likely to ever associate with them in the same league. It does not matter. This reboot of the franchise cranks the suspension of disbelief and ‘science, biatch!’ trope to a lethal degree.

Reed Richards (Miles Teller) is the classic Hollywood nerd (smart and cutesy, hidden behind those spectacles), obsessed with building a makeshift teleportation device that eventually blacks out the lights in his neighbourhood. His classmate and soon-to-be BFF Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) lives in a rough household next to a junkyard.

After discovering Reed scavenging through the metallic remains for an essential spare part, Ben joins in as a witness and helper to the experiment. This backstory negates Ben’s scientifically-inclined mind and multiple engineering degrees from the comics and the books, but this is a reboot so we bear with it.

Reed gets recruited by Professor Franklin Storm (Reg E Cathey) of the Baxter Foundation, meets up with the other members of the gang – Sue Storm (Kate Mara), Johnny Storm (Michael B Jordan) and Victor von Doom (Tony Kebbell), who is the sketchiest of the lot with his unsavoury precedents, blinds drawn in his house and Vivaldi’s Spring to really brighten up the ambience. The rushed allusion to his feelings for Sue is barely of consequence.

In a night of drunken bravado, the four men bundle into their teleportation machine. Cue random scientific jargon, a disaster and the acquiring of superhuman powers. It is a template anybody could have seen coming. Here’s the thing, though: if you cannot be subversive in a superhero flick, at least you can make it fun. Pick the best Marvel films of the lot and you will find that they worked because of the action, great dialogue and a spectacular mounting.

The alternate universe the dream team travels into looks like a planet in the making for Guardians of the Galaxy. The dialogue is banal. And the climactic confrontation between the heroes and the supervillain is short and underwhelming. The build-up, the interconnections and the fight itself are handled amateurishly. It is not Josh Trank’s mistake so much as of the mighty studio for saddling an inexperienced filmmaker with a big project.

Fantastic Four seemed to have a promising beginning but fizzled down just when the plot ought to have gathered steam. If only the makers could teleport back in time to rework the script. The reboot comes across as a tiresome set-up for the sequels. Let’s hope those raise the bar and the expectations for the franchise.