Headscratchers / Fantastic Four (2005)

• Why in the world did the nurse who took Johnny's temperature not only allow him to leave the hospital with a fever higher than 200ºF, but (presumably) not even so much as tell anyone in the hospital that one of the patients has a temperature roughly twice as high as is normally considered fatal? She is so fired.
  • Maybe the Nurse thought he was hot...it did imply that they did something in the "hot tub".
    • which makes that even dumber. A nurse sees a hot guy with a fever, she wouldn't advise or accompany him on a ski trip. This guy not only had a high fever, but should've died twice over. You don't shrug and say huh that's odd, then go dating. This is the worst nurse ever!
  • Given that anybody with that body temperature should already have died about 70 degrees ago, and Johnny wasn't even remotely showing symptoms of a mild fever, she very likely jumped to the conclusion that the thermometer was broken.
• Victor Von Doom's space station has artificial gravity. Not from spinning the station, but outright artificial gravity. No mention of this is ever made, by any character at all. Why is Doom in such financial trouble that his company is in danger, when he has access to literal miracle technology that could revolutionize the entire world?
  • Maybe that's why his business was a multi-billion dollar company, because he invented artificial gravity. As for the financial problem, that was brought on by the fact he invested tons of money in the project so he could take advantage of Reed to triple his money, and when it failed lost almost all of his money. It doesn't matter if someone invents something to completely revolutionize the world and make billions, if they then waste that money, it's gone, forever. He could sell it to another company, but that would lead to losing the project as well.
• Why didn't Doom just, you know, file a lawsuit against Reed like a normal, sane, rich person instead of trying to trick his friend into losing his power, kidnap and torture him, and then fire a rocket at Johnny? Instead of effectively Crossing the Moral Event Horizon, he could have just taken away the Baxter Building and anything Reed had, sell all his projects, use the money to refinance his company and back to the Smug Snake he was, plus cool Shock and Awe powers. Unless the power of lightning caused him to drop a few IQ digits and become comepletely insane.
  • Because the movie gradually shows us that he IS going insane (because he kills people that know about him getting powers instead of spin-doctoring the hell out of it to save face). Power Corrupts and all that.
    • There are a few points where the movie seems to imply Doom's internal organs are converting to metal as well, and that the metal process is painful. That plus his ego plus his perfectly reasonable stress probably didn't do wonders for his psyche.
  • Also because lawsuits aren't exactly the basis of particularly exciting action-adventure films. True, the Fantastic Four films weren't particularly great anyway, but I doubt they'd have been improved with a plot involving litigation, depositions and settlements rather than, well, Doom going batshit crazy and trying to electrocute everyone.
• Ben keeps struggling with normal size forks and breaking glasses, when he's trying to drink. Just how difficult was to make some custom utensils for him?
  • To be fair, making custom utensils for Ben would have taken a while to make from scratch, and in between trying to work on restoring Ben and everyone else as quickly as possible, the others just might not have had time to get around to it. Also, Ben was almost certainly trying to act as if everything was normal when it quite clearly wasn't out of stubbornness, denial and a refusal to accept that his condition might be permanent or long-lasting.
• Why does Sue hurt Reed every chance she gets? I get that prior to their get together, they have to have some sort of speed bump to overcome. Yet they never specified what exactly broke them up, she makes it no secret that she hates him for being a scientist, ranging from glaring at him over the suit rather than her to trying to stop him from mentioning one scientific thing when he was trying to propose to her in his own way. When they were testing her powers and he mentioned they were emotion based specifically hostile ones; she "unexpectedly" smacked him with one claiming it was an accident, but judging by the look on her face, she clearly meant to do it. To top it off, Sue made it perfectly clear that, she broke up with him. Yet acted as if he was the one that broke up with her. Lastly, until Doom becomes the bad guy it's just Reed she takes it out on. With Johnny she does argue with him, but that's what brothers and sisters do and it's clear she concerned about him. With Ben, she's in full sympathy mode. Yet with Reed she pretty much goes all out and doesn't even get called out for it. Granted she gets better in the second movie, but prior to their rekindling their love, she has no mercy on him.
  • Most Writers Are Male. Ultimate Invisible Woman was a strong female character, and a common mistake in writing a Strong Female is to simply make her rude and abusive to all the male characters to make her appear 'strong.'
  • Sue doesn't hate Reed or the fact that he's a scientist. She hates that he's so wrapped up in his work that he ignores people, especially her, and her feelings. It happens right in the scene you describe, he was so wrapped up in his research into her powers he didn't notice that he was insulting her to her face. She didn't blast him on purpose either, she didn't have the familiarity or control of her powers at that point to be able to do so, she just wasn't upset it happened since he was unharmed and she was mad. It could have been handled better but the troper above me is right, a lot of male writers use anger as short form for 'strong woman'.

---