Early on in the new rebooted "Fantastic Four," Franklin Storm (Reg. E. Cathey, whose deep, rumbling voice serves as one of the film’s few positives) delivers a speech to several of his grumbly pre-fantastic young prodigies. He preaches that they will have to learn to work together and stop their petty squabbles if they want to change the world and undo the mistakes of generations before them.

It’s a shame the movie and those behind it, seeking to put the mistakes of the past "Fantastic Four" films behind them, seemingly didn’t take their own advice.

Well before the release of "Fantastic Four," there was already word of reshoots and trouble on set – reportedly so much so that director Josh Trank lost his gig on an upcoming Han Solo Star Wars movie. Trank reportedly hated the studio; the studio reportedly hated him right back. Both forced cast members upon one another, who were then supposedly treated poorly on set – to the point of Trank and star Miles Teller almost coming to blows. The studio was rumored to be overbearing on Trank – insisting on drastic budget cuts and script rewrites – causing the relatively new director to reportedly turn into an unraveling and unstable headcase on set and unleashing his dogs at his rented home.

By the time Teller and writer/producer Simon Kinberg were giving defensive interviews (having to say, "It’s not a disaster," is the opposite of a vote of confidence) and Trank was disowning the film on Twitter, you could’ve found better, healthier buzz in a beehive filled with Raid.

Some legendary movies managed to emerge from production fires stronger – "Jaws" and "Apocalypse Now" most famously – but "Fantastic Four" lands far from joining that company. The movie is a mess, one that – even at its best and most promising – plays like a sleepy also-ran before it even gets out of the gate. 

The film starts with young grade school Reed Richards, a scribbling boy genius attempting to make a dimensional shuttle in his garage. His parents and teachers mock him, but he does have someone who believes in him: Ben Grimm, whose family owns the local trash yard. With Ben’s help, Reed manages to get his transporter to work, sending a toy car to an unknown location, bringing back a pile of mysterious rocks … and killing all the power in the city in the process.

This first chapter comes with a few flickers of the dumpster fire to come. Ben’s abusive bully of an older brother, for instance, serves as the perplexing origin of his signature catchphrase, "It’s clobberin’ time," (who wouldn’t choose a zinger that recalls get smacked around by a family member). And even with comedian Tim Heidecker and the voice of Homer Simpson himself Dan Castellaneta briefly showing up, there’s an oppressive lack of levity. Even so, it’s actually a decent start, dialing up a Spielberg-lite – or more like Abrams-lite – sense of wonder and mystery.

Anyways, seven years later, Reed (Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) grow up into the only 30-year-olds in their high school class, still perfecting their transporter and still getting harped on by their teacher. However, that’s where Dr. Storm and his adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara, "House of Cards") conveniently find the boys – nothing says family time like trotting around random school science fairs – and invite Reed to the Baxter Foundation, a government-sponsored research facility for young geniuses.

There, with the help of Sue, her street-racing brother Johnny (Michael B. Jordan, "Fruitvale Station") and the angsty, totally not destined to be evil Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell), they complete a full-sized and fully functional version of Reed’s transporter. Their excitement is short-lived, however, after the guys take it for a drunken test drive (research facility for young geniuses indeed!) and things go awry trying to get home from the other dimension.

Reed’s body turns into Laffy Taffy. Ben turns into the rock monster The Thing. Johnny is constantly on fire. Doom is left for dead, while Sue gains the ability to turn invisible thanks to the power of the transporter’s return blast – as well as the ability to distractingly change her hair on a scene-by-scene basis thanks to the power of bad wigs and reshoots.

Some bad costuming and makeup, however, is far from the worst of Trank and company’s worries. The concept of the alternate planet and the special effects used to bring it to life are thoroughly underwhelming, creating basically a stormy desert with some testy electric Nickelodeon slime scattered about. Teller comes off miscast, his usual smart-mouth sarcastic nu-Vince Vaughn routine not jiving with his supposedly nebbish character, and the rest of the cast is just as stiff – despite the fact that these are four proven and impressive actors.

Part of the problem is the script from Trank, Kinberg and Jeremy Slater doesn’t give them much characterization to work with. Possibly even more damaging, though, is that the script constantly keeps the Fantastic Four apart. Johnny hops onto the team late, while Ben disappears from the film until Reed invites him out of nowhere to on their drunken dimensional jaunt. And speaking of their trip, Sue doesn’t even get to go; she’s stuck behind playing concerned mom and making their outfits.

Even when they get their abilities, Reed winds up on the lamb guilt-stricken while the rest are left mostly secluded in a government lab. For a movie about a supposed makeshift family coming together, starring a usually charismatic cast, the group never gets much of a chance to get some chemistry and grow a connection.

And yet, even with all of that, the first hour of "Fantastic Four" still remains fairly watchable. When the cast gets a chance to be natural, they’re too talented to not spark a bit together, and you can see glimmers of what Trank wanted to do here – especially soon after they return to Earth with their new powers. Early in the press run, Trank mentioned David Cronenberg as one of his inspirations for this film, and this brief middle sequence shows it, their new abilities portrayed more as disturbing bodily horrors.

"Fantastic Four," however, doesn’t find a way to turn that middling promise into something consistently entertaining or interesting. As with his well-received debut "Chronicle," Trank uses angst like an anvil, having von Doom mutter obviously evil things about the state of humanity and generally giving the film a dour and dreary tone – despite the fact that it’s a movie about a super stretchy man and his friends battling a villain whose actual given name is Doom. Still, the biggest problem with "Fantastic Four" isn’t that it’s a disaster; it’s that – with the gloomy tone, non-characters and stiff performances – it’s just dull.

That is, until the third act hits and the dumpster fire you’ve been fearing shouts, "Flame on!"

After taking its sweet time with the first act, setting up our heroes eerie new deformities/abilities and establishing the overzealous government (led by Tim Blake Nelson) as the big bad, the second act is shockingly short – which is to say there is no second act. Instead, a baffling "One year later" title card shows up where a second act should be, and "Fantastic Four" charges into its horrifically rushed final act.

All of the character development that should serve as the meat of the movie is instead compacted into a montage (a big action sequence involving The Thing implied in the trailers is nowhere to be found). The once horrific powers needing to be tamed and coped with are suddenly no big deal to any of our four leads. The government officials start making predictably dumb and controlling decisions. And oh, by the way, it turns out Dr. Doom is in this movie. Despite being utterly forgotten about and undeveloped as a villain, he shows up, literally blows some minds and heads back to his new home planet with one of those token blue world-destroying portal lasers that comic book movies grew out of years ago.

The most disappointing part of this third act is that this really is all of the stuff the audience should be happy and pumped to see. It’s finally the Fantastic Four in action, finally using their powers and finally trying to work against their most famous threat. But it’s all handled so poorly that there’s no fun or excitement to be had, even as just a silly comic book action movie.

It’s horrifically rushed, with a year’s worth of resentment and dislocation between the four forgotten after a predictable set of failed action beats. It’s mind-boggingly cluttered and confusing; none of the character motivations – from Doom to the government to Dr. Storm to our heroes – particularly makes sense, and the big finale involves our heroes throwing Doom’s energy into his energy field, which fueled by the same energy as Doom’s energy gathered from the planet’s energy … I think.

It’s poorly acted, with Teller getting the worst of it, shouting desperate random exposition with all of the effort desperate random exposition deserves. And it’s tediously trite, with the predictable beats of each singular member getting punched into the inter-dimensional dirt only to discover that, lo and behold, it’s teamwork that makes the dream work. It plays like someone had the bulletpoints of a typical team-based action climax but forgot to actually fill them in any further.

It all wraps up with the awkward cast – complete with Mara’s fake blonde wig – stiffly trying to make clunky banter with their barely developed characters before ending on a laugh-inducingly awful joke that would’ve been cut from the first two "Fantastic Four" abominations. It’s the experience of watching the whole mess of a movie in one sad scene.

The saddest thing of all is that the bar wasn’t even set that high for "Fantastic Four." Those first two films by Tim Story were universally loathed both critics and fans alike; it was assumed anything would be an improvement. All that needed to happen was for the disparate partners behind this reboot to find a way to work together and make a movie that had fewer noticeable production stitches than Frankenstein’s monster.

Their own Dr. Storm preaches this exact thing, but it goes ignored. So instead of making up for past generation’s mistakes like he – and the producers – hoped, "Fantastic Four" does a fine job of making them look maybe not that bad after all.