4 Reasons Fantastic Four Is Anything But

by Tony Dayoub


I take no pleasure in piling on a bad movie, but a lot of us who grew up reading "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine," as Fantastic Four was sub-titled for many years, are mystified by the fact that not one of its movie iterations has been successful. It shouldn't take rocket science to re-calibrate the property to reflect what made the Marvel Comics' flagship title and a template for the superheroes that would follow. Take one look at director Josh Trank's version, though, and one starts to wonder if even the team's gifted scientist, Reed Richards (Miles Teller), could work out the formula needed to make Fantastic Four truly live up to its name. Here are four reasons Fantastic Four was anything but:

Movie Review: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Things were looking up for Caesar (Andy Serkis) when last we left him at the close of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. He had just shepherded his followers through a fierce battle on the Golden Gate that, though not without its fair share of deaths, didn't claim as many casualties as the revolt did in Rise's 1972 iteration, Conquest. If you stayed for Rise's closing credits, you'd have seen that the story's worst news was saved for a quick stinger depicting the spread of a genetically engineered virus that would soon wipe out most of humanity. In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, director Matt Reeves (notable for somehow improving the noteworthy Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In with its American remake, Let Me In) picks up from there, quickly explaining the state of civilization in a world purged by plague. Humans have all but disappeared. And the super-intelligent apes led by the regal Caesar (Andy Serkis) are thriving peacefully in a forest outside of San Francisco.