Ant’s Rant: I Am Number Four

Imagine this scenario: You turn on the TV and you see a young man running around shooting what looks like energy bolts out of his hands and using what looks like Magneto powers on cop cars (we haven’t seen that before). Insert more action shots of things getting blown up and colorful special effects shots. Cut to question who Number Four is. You’re left wondering what it’s going to be about and possibly interested in loads of action. Does this satisfy your hunger for super-powered action and solve the mystery? Read on and find out.

First off, let me explain what the trailers don’t tell you. The “numbers” are aliens, there’s 9 of them left from their planet and they escaped to Earth as children. They’re being hunted down by another alien race known as the Mogadorians, who wiped out their planet called Lorien and are going to wipe out Earth. There, I just saved you part of the mystery. The only reason I’m telling you all this is because they reveal that pretty early in the movie. Anyway, the Loriens, particularly the 9 that escaped to Earth, get special powers as they get older called Legacies which are different and particular to each person. The story focuses on “John Smith”. Three are killed and John is the fourth on the list to be exterminated. He is aided by a Lorien guardian who has no special Legacy power (if there’s only 9 survivors, why do each of them have guardians?) named Henri. He eventually meets up with the “Number Five” and take out the Mogadorian hunters that were after them. Working together, the two Lorien “Numbers” set out to find the rest of their kind.

My expectation was to see something like Push or Jumper or possibly even Xmen, with like 9 mutants fighting each other all over the place for some reason. What I saw was a typical high school teen drama like Degrassi but throw in a class-after-dark battle with big aliens like The Faculty and powers like Xmen during one big action scene. I shit you not, I felt like I was watching Dawson’s Creek for most of the movie. There were 3 real action scenes but nothing particularly memorable until the end.

John Smith moves to Ohio, enrolls in high school, and falls in love with the outcasted love interest of the stereotypical bully jock. We spend most of the movie dealing with John’s courtship of Sarah while the jock she used to date broods and causes all kinds of trouble. A few times John even pulls a Peter Parker vs Flash Thompson and impresses one of the bystanders. This movie takes so many bits from so many other high school teen dramas and superhero films it’s ridiculous. We finally get to the big action scene at the end and it’s just like they went nuts and started pulling ideas out of their asses. John now has the power to telekinetically move anything he wants, deflect alien plasma gun fire, move like Spiderman, use his hands as flashlights, and then he pulls another trick out of his ass. Number 5 runs out of alien juice or something and needs to be recharged before she can use her powers again. Yes, somehow, magic runs on alien batteries or Mana something. So John Smith uses his glowy hands to jump start Number 5 and give her power. This lets us see more of Number 5’s Elektra meets Nightcrawler teleporting and stabbing with the special alien blades that are never really explained. The Loriens use them and prefer them, but what do they do that’s different than any other knife?

The movie spends more time explaining the backstory through dialogue than actually moving forward. It moves at such a slow pace that by the time it’s over, you realize it only made one step through the story progression and we’re definitely set up for at least two more films. I hope the next couple films are more original and less teen drama. Even Sam Raimi’s Spiderman didn’t seem like such an unoriginal high school crap film. I felt like I was watching Degrassi but the main character was in the wrong school for gifted youngsters. I wouldn’t pay to see it again. I’m also not very interested in seeing where this movie goes as a series. I think it just doesn’t cater  to me, or my girlfriend for that matter, but I can’t figure out who it would cater to. Simple minded people who love stuff on Teen Nick and CW? I don’t know. For anyone who is expecting something worth at least $7.50 to watch, this isn’t it. I give it a 2.5/5. I’ll catch the sequels on Netflix streaming so I don’t have to pay to sit through them all at once.