Fantastic Failure: What’s Next For The Fantastic Four?
If you have been paying attention to movie news and box office dailies, you might have heard of the catastrophe styled situation of 20th Century Fox’s newest Fantastic Four reboot which debuted on Aug. 7.
It is a box-office bomb. Both a critical and audience flop. Its own director, Josh Trank who was a trendy young director whose only other film was the 2012 superhero-esque found-footage film, Chronicle, publically disowned the film on his Twitter account saying: “A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though.”
He deleted the message shortly after.
Fox has been in active damage control almost a week before it opened to less than half of what was expected to make on its opening weekend making only 25 million. It debuted in second place behind the fifth Mission Impossible which debuted the week before.
This film is a disaster on every level. What happened you might ask? Simple. Fox made a bad movie. Specifically, a movie nobody wanted to see made by people who didn’t want to make it.
You see, the Fantastic Four is a Marvel Comics property that is famous mostly due to the fact that they were the company’s first ever superhero team.
Yes. Before X-Men, Avengers, and even Spider-Man, The first family of comics were the ones who put Marvel on the map, changed the entire dynamic of the superhero genre, and set the foundations of the Marvel Universe all back in 1961.
Sadly, the titular four themselves have not been as popular ever since the turn of the 21st century. Once upon a time, this would have been the end of the story. They took a shot at a franchise, it didn’t work, no more Fantastic Four movies from Fox.
But in today’s Hollywood where basically any comic-book character can be considered profitable, it’s only a matter of time before Fox tries again. And it doesn’t help that Fox kind of has to.
Before Marvel Comics started making their own movies with the whole Marvel Studios brand, they sold the licenses to their most popular characters to major Hollywood studios (Fox, Sony, etc.) to get out of bankruptcy.
However, those agreements came with a clause; if the studios don’t make a movie off of them every couple of years, Marvel gets its characters back.
Conventional business wisdom to Fox would be that they give the rights back to Marvel for whatever they can get. Hollywood wisdom would tell them not to because if Marvel makes a hit out of it, studio bosses would take the hit out on their employees, so wait five or six years and try again.
What happens now? I don’t know, but I’ll say that so far, Marvel Studios success will allow it to get what it wants to get. So yeah, odds are Marvel is getting their first family back. Maybe in time for the next Avengers film but most likely afterwards which is good because Avengers 3 is set to be the big blowout of the universe and the last hurrah for the original Avengers team.
What should they do to make it good this time? It’s not complicated. Go back to the source material and remind people why this was popular in the first place. Embrace the unique blend of ‘60s family archetypes and pop sci-fi weirdness. Do something character wise with the self-contradictory nature of the characters.
Reed Richards is a stiff whose powers is to be the most flexible person alive. Sue Storm is a showy glamorous woman whose power is stealth. Ben Grimm is a raw nerve of feelings, emotions, expressiveness, and a zest for living whose body is rock hard and impenetrable. Johnny Storm, is a teenager who happens to wield a core, yet immensely delicate, elemental power.
Any half-decent screenwriter can make a solid 90 or so minutes off of that alone and when all else fails they still got Doctor Doom, who is the greatest comic-book villain of all-time.
