Fantastic Four Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell. Directed by Josh Trank. Rated PG-13. Opens Friday.

Initially, Fantastic Four director Josh Trank (Chronicle) seems to care about the nerds that are Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Sue Storm (Kate Mara), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) and even Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell). It's just that he doesn't appear to care about superheroes or their nemesis Dr. Doom.

Arriving after weeks of bad buzz, Fantastic Four clearly stacked its deck on the wrong side, spending a large portion of its 100 minutes setting up the origin story, stretching things out with some awkward distractions, and then rushing through a climactic battle that feels almost obligatory. It might have been a more comfortable movie if the superheroes were jettisoned and the nerds never left the lab.

As a kid, Reed, paired with his childhood pal Ben—whose ruffian family owns a junkyard—invents what he thinks is a teleporter, but which actually opens a door to a new dimension. Years later, Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) offers him admission to the Baxter Institute, where he can continue to develop his research. He will be working with Storm's brilliant (adopted) daughter Sue (who studies patterns) and the even more brilliant Victor. Johnny is a hothead racing nut who shows up when he gets in trouble with his dad.

It takes forever for these guys to get their legendary powers, and then still longer to "test" them before actually doing anything. To make matters worse, Reed runs away and spends several months in hiding for no apparent reason, and no mention is even made of Victor until a second trip to the alternate dimension.

If Fantastic Four is a disappointment, Trank does manage some cool visuals, and it's at least a slight improvement over the lousy earlier attempts, 2005’s Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Plus, Kate Mara seems to have been cast for reasons other than how she looks in a body suit, and it's refreshing that the cast isn't entirely white. But even a great actor like Miles Teller can't keep from sounding bored from time to time.

It leads one to wonder whether this franchise is just simply, to make an obvious reference, doomed. Back in 1994, a first, low-budget version of The Fantastic Four was made and shelved, basically for contractual reasons rather than creative ones; and despite the more ambitious scope of the three newer films, it's hard to shake the feeling that, even now, nobody really wants to be here.