Back in 2015, in an attempt to cling to the film rights to the Fantastic Four – rights that have now finally been reacquired by Marvel Studios – 20th Century Fox rebooted the franchise with Fant4stic. Josh Trank directed the movie, which had an unusually dark take on the typically lighthearted characters, and it was quickly dismissed by audiences when it was discovered that Fox dug its claws into Trank’s movie and drastically changed it.
Now, with a few years worth of retrospective, the 2015 reboot doesn’t seem quite so abysmal. But of course, many parts of it are still very, very bad. So, here are 5 Things Fant4stic Did Wrong (And 5 It Did Right).
Right: Standing out among the crowd
It would’ve been easy for the makers of Fant4stic to just copy the MCU formula. (In fact, it’s pretty clear that in their reshoots, that’s what Fox wanted to do.) But instead, they did their own thing. Whether or not you think that the deviations from the source material (well, the classical source material – the 2015 movie is more in step with the controversial “Ultimates” storylines) were the correct decisions, it’s hard to deny that Fant4stic goes its own way. In a moviegoing landscape that’s rammed with superhero blockbusters, it was just refreshing to see one that tried to break the formula.
Wrong: Painfully obvious reshoots
Each scene in Fant4stic makes no attempt to cover up the fact that it was partially reshot by the studio late in the game. Even if we didn’t go into Fant4stic knowing that Fox had reshot half of Josh Trank’s movie, it would be obvious, because Miles Teller’s facial hair changes from scene to scene and Kate Mara is blatantly wearing a wig that’s a different color and length than her actual hair, sometimes from shot to shot. It’s the quickest way to distract an audience from what’s happening on the screen and devalue the whole thing. If you’re looking out for a wig and not for character development, then something’s gone wrong.
Right: Casting
Although the characters were poorly written, the casting was right on the money. Miles Teller had the awkward, nerdy charm to play Reed Richards. Kate Mara had the plucky attitude and resilient spirit to play Susan Storm. Michael B. Jordan had the effortless coolness to play Johnny Storm.
Even Jamie Bell, who many considered to be too small to portray a believable Thing, played Ben Grimm with a reserved sadness. And the actors all share palpable chemistry with each other. With a better script and better direction, this cast could’ve made for a terrific on-screen portrayal of the Fantastic Four.
Wrong: Lack of humor
The Fantastic Four have always had a comedic dynamic. The old comics are filled with humor. So, any movie about the Fantastic Four should be, too. Unfortunately, Fant4stic seems entirely uninterested in even getting you to raise a smile. It actively avoids anything becoming too fun. There were little dashes of humor, like cutting from Reed saying he doesn’t drink to a drunk Reed rambling to his friends, but nowhere near as much as there should’ve been. When Marvel Studios reboots the franchise again for the MCU’s Phase 5, they’ll undoubtedly inject some of the funny that was missing here.
Right: Score
One area that most critics praised Fant4stic for was its musical score. The soundtrack was composed in a collaboration between Marco Beltrami and Philip Glass. Beltrami has famously worked with James Mangold on the last two movies of Wolverine’s solo trilogy and with Guillermo del Toro on Blade II and Hellboy. Glass is lesser-known, but he’s still composed plenty of memorable soundtracks: Candyman, The Hours, The Truman Show, Notes on a Scandal. The work they did on the Fant4stic soundtrack – which was masterfully done, surprisingly, with majestic, beautiful sounds – was one of the only memorable parts of the movie.
Wrong: A rushed final act
After the whole movie has been spent leading up to the introduction of Doctor Doom, building up anticipation for just how powerful he’ll be (powerful enough to destroy New York in a heartbeat, apparently), he only shows up with 10 minutes of runtime left. That’s not enough time for a final battle that will live up to all that anticipation and satisfy viewers who have been following the plot.
And lo and behold, it doesn’t. The final battle hits all the expected beats – the team members each fail to defeat Doom alone, then realize they can do it if they work as a team – but it rushes through them, and there’s no emotional attachment.
Right: Understanding the characters
Fant4stic doesn’t match the right tone for the characters, but it does understand the characters. The reshoots imposed by Fox removed any chances of subtlety by having the characters literally explain their own development to the audience, but buried underneath all that is a real love for the characters and an understanding of what makes each one of them tick. In execution, they don’t come together as a family and their relationships seem unclear (Johnny ruthlessly mocks Ben in the film’s closing moments, apropos of absolutely nothing), but the individual characters are convincing big-screen translations of their comic book selves.
Wrong: Awful portrayal of Doctor Doom
Doctor Doom is one of the greatest comic book villains ever put on the page. He deserves to be done justice on the big screen. If it was done right, a film adaptation of Doctor Doom would be on par with the MCU’s Thanos and The Dark Knight’s Joker. In Fant4stic, the version of Doom played by Toby Kebbell (reportedly only in a few scenes, with a studio-appointed stand-in filling in during the reshoots) was dreadful. He looked like a crash test dummy, he didn’t seem at all powerful, and he was laughably easy to defeat in the final battle.
Right: Drastic departure from the previous films
It would’ve been easy for the reboot of the Fantastic Four franchise to just rehash the earlier Tim Story films, especially since Fox was only making the movie in order to retain the rights. Whether you like the new tone or not, Fant4stic departed drastically from those previous movies and set itself apart.
In a world where movies are getting remade and retooled and rebooted every weekend, it’s important that each new movie does something different than the movie it’s based on. Fant4stic’s brazen disregard for the previous films and bold storytelling choices help to differentiate it and even justify its existence.
Wrong: Gloomy tone
In the wake of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, every studio started giving their franchises a gritty, grounded reboot. In some cases, it actually worked out, like Casino Royale and Dredd, but in most cases, it fails. The rule of thumb seems to be that it only works if the franchise suits a dark tone (duh!), so when J.J. Abrams gave Star Trek a dark sequel and Zack Snyder gave us a Nolan-ized version of Superman, it didn’t work. The same goes for Fant4stic. It’s easy to make a character named Batman work within a dark tone than a character named Mr. Fantastic.
