John Ottman's score for X-Men 2 polarised opinion amongst film music fans, with as many singing its praises to the rafters as criticising it for being limp and uninspired.  I was firmly in the latter camp: it was such an unimaginative, bland score for such a colourful and unusually impressive comic book film.  Clearly Twentieth Century Fox were big fans though, because he was hired for Fantastic Four.  So - is this one a fantastic flop?  No, not at all.  I can't help but start by saying that it's now pretty clear why Ottman needed to use Henry Mancini's theme from Lifeforce for X-Men 2; as soon as his theme for Fantastic Four begins, it is difficult not to be awed by its sheer banality.  It is so ultra-simplistic as to be almost comical and it's difficult to believe it got past the first demo stage.

Fortunately, that is easily the score's weakest element; the rest may be a little routine and lacking much ambition, but it's well-crafted and enjoyable music.  Its real asset is the action music, and there is no lack of that on this 45-minute album.  The six-minute "Superheroes" is terrific stuff, and Ottman even manages to do enough with his main theme to make it sound rather better than it did in the main title.  The action music is pretty ferocious, if not exactly complex; the choral writing which crops up from time to time seems like it's trying to have a similar effect to Don Davis's use of choir for The Matrix trilogy, but it's far too simple to be as impressive - however, as with the rest of the score, it is rather enjoyable despite the simplicity.

Of course, a modern-day superhero film just wouldn't be right without some serious emoting and so we get tracks in the middle of the album like the touching "Planetarium", which features a lovely melody, but music like that really isn't Ottman's strong point.  What follows, "Entanglement", is far more like it.  It is extremely similar to something the late Michael Kamen might have written (at least in form, if not in detail) and is very entertaining.  Ottman introduces some surprisingly dissonant music sometimes, but one really wishes he had pushed that side of the score further: the orchestration is never harsh enough, the melody never far enough away for it to be entirely effective; the music's just a bit too inoffensive, too nice!  

I say again how enjoyable the album is, but I have to once again point out the music's general lack of ambition.  Ottman seems content for his music to be an enjoyable by-product of the film, but never seems too interested in actually adding something to the film.  This is hardly a problem unique to him and indeed has become a bit of an epidemic these days, but films like this one provide their composers with greater opportunities than most.  The composer's next big project is the new Superman, so let's hope he manages to come up with something just a little more imaginative for that.  Things like Fantastic Four are fine as a kind of light snack, but really, film music is capable of having so much more meat on the bone.