Stan Lee has a knack for creating villains as victims and reluctant heroes, ordinary people who through circumstances beyond their control are transformed into bigger than life forces for evil and good.  In this first film of what is destined to become yet another comic book derived franchise that sprang from his fertile mind, we learn the origins of the Fantastic 4.

Research scientist Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and his right hand man Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) solicit funds and the use of a corporate space station from Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon).  Von Doom, seemingly obscenely successful, is an old collegiate rival and, apparently, a romantic rival as well.  Richards and Von Doom both have a thing for Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), a delicious geneticist.  They and Sue’s brother, shuttle pilot Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), travel to the orbiting platform for a study of a primeval, cohesive cosmic storm whose path just happens to intersect the space station’s orbit.

Reed miscalculates and the storm arrives early, before the five can take shelter behind the station’s formidable shields.  Before you can say Shazam, they are enveloped in a raging, DNA-altering maelstrom that affects each in a unique way.  After the stricken crew returns to Earth to recover in Victor’s clinic, Reed finds that he can change shape, stretch, and bend impossibly - he becomes known as Mr. Fantastic.  Sue inherits more benign gifts; she can become invisible and project force fields - she’s to be known as The Invisible Woman.  Her bother, Johnny, finds that he can ignite and project flame and great heat - he dubs himself the Human Torch.  Ben’s gift is more poignant; he’s transformed into living rock and imparted with remarkable strength - as may be befitting his appearance, he becomes The Thing. 

And that leaves Victor Von Doom.  Just as the other characters seem to be transformed into beings that reflect their personalities - mental flexibility, career invisibility and hidden strengths, extreme volatility, and rock-solid steadfastness - Victor is transformed into the hard and harsh evil Dr. Doom.  His body becomes metallic as his strength grows; able to generate and project powerful electrical discharges, he becomes a formidable foe.

Although the film is ostensibly about the heroes desperate struggle to regain normalcy and dealing with the emerging threat of the evil Dr. Doom, the filmmakers wisely wove emotional subtext into the adventure.  We vicariously experience the downside of having great powers imparted, losing love, losing privacy, being forced to abandon normal lives to a higher calling, and, ultimately, the rekindling of love lost.  Most poignant is Ben’s plight; unlike his fellow superheroes, he no longer resembles anything that hints of normalcy.

The screenwriters conjure up a clever storyline that requires that you surrender yourself to the absurdity of the situations.  The outlandishness of the characters and the humor blended into the melodrama make that easy.  The cast is uniformly excellent, but a special mention must be made of Michael Chiklis.  His performance is outstanding; impeded by his extensive costume, he was nonetheless able to convey frustration and desperation.  Even in the makeup, he was able to project a greater range of emotion than any of his fellow cast members.  Jessica Alba is lovely in this film and the filmmakers didn’t hesitate to exploit her physical appeal, gratuitously stripping her down to bra and panties on the Brooklyn Bridge.  (Her equally exploitative and equally appealing Bikini makes a bit more sense in Into The Blue.)  And as is somewhat traditional in productions of Marvel source material, Stan Lee makes a cameo appearance; this time he’s a postman.

I rather enjoyed this playful and colorful romp.  It’s escapist entertainment that doesn’t require that you leave your brain at the door.  There are no pretenses here.  It doesn’t take itself seriously.  This is a comic book brought to the big screen with a sufficient budget to please the eye and please the ear.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 is presented in a surprisingly good high definition transfer.  I write “surprisingly” because this single-layer 25 GB Blu-ray Disc was compressed with the MPEG-2 video CODEC.  My first exposure to MPEG-2 on a single-layer Blu-ray Disc was The Fifth Element, and the images were less than pristine; these results were far different.  The video dynamic range is exemplary; the level of detail is outstanding; both small object detail and finely grained textures are superb; blacks seamlessly merge into the windowbox bars; shadow detail in the many dark nighttime sequences is excellent; colors are vivid and utterly noise-free; and the transfer print is spotless.  The only minor complaint I have is that primary reds lean ever so slightly toward blue; this is most apparent in the color of the fire engine on the bridge.  Fantastic Four’s bit rate peaks at roughly 37 Mbps, considerable (BD’s max is 54 Mbps).  I noticed no macroblocking or mosquito noise or edge halos, characteristic artifacts of the MPEG-2 CODEC.  Fantastic Four drew me in with its wonderfully detailed images.  I’m impressed. 

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

This Fox disc features a terrific DTS-HD 5.1 lossless audio track, which I enjoyed through the Sony Blu-ray Disc player’s analog outputs driven by its internal conversion to linear pulse code modulation (LPCM).  Alas, the Sony only decodes core DTS when converting to LPCM.  Regardless, improved clarity and definition is apparent.  The mix is just as active as it was on DVD.  The surrounds envelop the viewer in a three-dimensional sound field enhanced by activating EX decoding.  The dynamic range is terrific, with great attack times and the ability to provoke a real visceral response.  I recall impressive, gut-thumping bass on the DVD.  The bass on the BD is significant, but I’m still not confident that the bottom most audio octave is being reproduced properly with my current (and very new) configuration.  Further experimentation will be required.  Dialog remains crystal clear throughout.  And Jon Ottman’s lively and heroic score is presented with authority across a broad soundstage. 

The alternate language is in Spanish, presented in Dolby Digital 5.1.  Optional subtitles are in Spanish and English, for which Closed Captions are also included.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

The limitations of digital space limit the available supplements.  Only one extra has been culled from the film’s DVD release and ported to this Blu-ray Disc.

You’ll find a Cast Commentary by Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, and Michael Chiklis.  They sound like a group of old friends getting together to reminisce.  I was left with the feeling that this is a group of players who get along rather well.  I don’t know what I expected, but I found myself surprised that Michael Chiklis took the lead and was the most chatty (my expectations were likely influenced by my residual reaction to his character).  He’s very outgoing and has quite a few anecdotes to offer.  Based on the lovely Ms. Alba comments, I was also reminded of just how young she is - charming but not yet insightful.  I’m sure that will develop as she matures.

Fox has also included the film’s Theatrical Trailer (2:29) in high definition along with other Fox Blu-ray titles: X-Men: The Last Stand; The Omen; and Kingdom of Heaven.
 
The 106-minute film is organized into thirty-two chapters.

Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?

There are no DVD-ROM features on this DVD.

Final Thoughts

This is a delightful frolic and a great first effort for a new franchise.  Spider-man has a more satisfying emotional undertone, and X-Men takes itself oh so seriously, but Fantastic Four is a nice compromise between playfulness and action-adventure.  (I hesitate to make comparisons with the best of the Batman films or the best of the Superman films; those are in an entirely different league.)  This is a reasonably entertaining film presented with a superb high definition transfer and a great audio track.  It’s accompanied by modest supplements, but that shouldn’t be a deterrent.  I can’t end this review without a comment about Fox’s pricing policy.  With an SRP of $40, Fox is not exactly encouraging sales.  We’re in the midst of a format war; this is the time to trim margins and be generous with consumers.


Here’s a note about the apparent duplicate Buy Guide.  Our I.T. people are hard at work on a large project and have not yet had the time to modify the underlying site database formatting code to accommodate the new 0-to-10 rating scales.  So until they do, for HD on disc, I’ll insert this note and a Buy Guide at the end of the review text and leave the conventional 0-to-5 Buy Guide blank.