Fox’s Fantastic Four hit theaters last Friday and promptly fell apart. After being savaged by reviewers prior to release, Fox somehow managed to alienate comic book geeks, casual moviegoers, and the director, leading to a stunning weekend take far below expectations.
With the prospect of a sequel or shared universe now almost officially dead, what’s next for Marvel’s First Family?
I believed in Fantastic Four. I’ll go ahead and admit it. I was suckered in by trailers that looked great and seemed to be a good take on the material, then the rumors started. “Josh Trank is a disaster”, “extensive reshoots”, “studio interference”, and more started popping up on superhero movie news sites, and with these kinds of things where there’s smoke there’s almost always fire.
Well, Fox’s Fantastic Four arrived this past weekend like a bag of flaming dog shit on the porch of the American moviegoer and comic book geeks everywhere.
Calling this movie a disaster is an understatement; it’s a catastrophe. FEMA should be sending bottled water and blankets to Fox Studios. Jerry Brown should be sending in the National Guard. President Obama should be flying to California now to oversee the recovery efforts. Someone should be filming a commercial with Josh Trank and the cast looking super sad and asking for donations set to a Sarah McLachlan song. It’s that bad.
For the third time, Fox Studios has utterly failed in their attempt to bring a decent version of the Fantastic Four to movie screens, and their latest iteration may be the worst comic book movie in history. How bad is it? Rotten Tomatoes has Fantastic Four at 8%. Elektra and Catwoman clock in at 10% and 9%, respectively. If this keeps up, Fantastic Four is going to end up in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 territory (6%).
So, what happened? How did a movie that seemed to have some level of hype after the first trailer release go so disastrously off the rails that it’s now become an answer on Jeopardy for “This 2015 film is the worst rated comic book movie ever”? Well, there’s no one factor that goes in to a screw up like this. There are many, and the compound over time, so what starts as a tiny ball of shit ends up as a giant boulder of shit at the bottom of the mountain.
Over the last few days competing details have come out about the film’s production. The rumors began months ago, with Josh Trank supposedly behaving in an unprofessional manner and arriving to set intoxicated. Rumors of extensive reshoots surfaced not too long after, and as most movie fans know “extensive reshoots” usually means “this thing is so awful we’re trying to patch it together to make it at least palatable”. The latest rumors are that Trank purposefully damaged the home Fox had rented for him, and was hostile to the cast, crew, and stars.
Just prior to the Thursday opening, director Josh Trank tweeted “A year ago, I had a fantastic version of this. And it would have received great reviews. You’ll probably never see. That’s reality though.” Those are not the words of a man that is proud of what his name has been attached to. So, given those two pieces of information, it seems like Fox was trying to protect Trank from himself, and the blame needs to be laid at Trank’s feet.
As with most things, the answers may not be that simple. Fox reportedly delayed casting and script approvals, slashed the budget by tens of millions, and tried to force last-minute changes as principal photography was beginning. Apparently Fox was looking for more famous actors to play the leads, and stalled crew workers building sets and making costumes and props as well. Trank, whose only previous work was the small indie Chronicle just didn’t have the juice necessary to push back against studio interference, resulting in tremendous frustration on Trank’s part.
Ultimately, whoever is responsible for the mess that is Fantastic Four, someone is getting fired, Josh Trank’s reputation is probably toast, and Marvel’s first family is once again relegated to Hollywood’s scrap heap.
Earlier today, Fox Studios reiterated their commitment to the franchise, which basically means “We’re going to sit on the rights for another ten years until we have to crank out another shitty Fantastic Four movie to keep the rights from going back to Marvel.” A persistent rumor has been floating around since Disney acquired Marvel that the Fantastic Four rights were one of their top priorities to reacquire, as they see the potential for a more family friendly MCU that isn’t exclusively geared toward fanboys. Given that Marvel now has the House of Mouse in their corner, the question must be asked: is Fox’s Fantastic Four so awful that Marvel could make a legitimate claim that Fox has irreparably damaged the IP to the point where Fox might have to surrender the rights to Marvel? It’s extremely unlikely, but certainly a possibility. What’s more likely to happen is that Fox realizes they don’t know what they’re doing with these characters and give Marvel an opportunity to buy them back. Marvel gets Fantastic Four and their associated villains, and Fox gets enough cash to make it worth their while. Alternatively, they could pursue a Sony style deal where Marvel gets to produce the film and Fox gets a few points on the back-end. Under that scenario, it’s worth considering that Fox has a significantly more adversarial relationship with Marvel than Sony does, so it’s possible Fox could just sit on the rights and do nothing just to piss off Marvel.
It’s clear that big changes are ahead for Marvel’s first family whether that’s a trip to the cinematic dustbin, the MCU, or the courtroom. For right now, the only thing that matters is that the new Fantastic Four is terrible and you should not waste your money seeing it.
