Since Disney acquired 21st Century Fox, Marvel Studios now has the rights to the Fantastic Four characters, and Kevin Feige has pledged that at some stage, the team will the it’s certainly a tantalizing prospect.
However, the previous attempts to bring the Fantastic Four to the big screen have fallen flat. In particular, the last attempt, 2015’s ridiculously titled Fant4stic, stands out as a low point. It actually managed to make the Ioan Gruffudd/Jessica Alba movies look good. So, here are 10 ways the MCU can avoid a disaster like Fant4stic.
Find A Director With A Strong Vision
Josh Trank was hired to direct Fant4stic with a pitch for a body horror movie with a gritty tone in the vein of The Dark Knight. This wasn’t the right vision for the Fantastic Four characters — the clue is in their silly name — and the result was an unequivocal failure.
Marvel needs to find a filmmaker with a deep understanding of the characters, who will dive headfirst into their lightheartedness instead of shying away from it.
Trust The Director
During production of Fant4stic, Fox executives notoriously took charge and demanded an absurd amount of reshoots, either giving the cast wigs or replacing them with stand-ins altogether. Director Josh Trank claims that his original cut would’ve gotten great reviews.
However, according to various reports from people who worked on the film, Trank’s vision was even worse than the studio’s. Marvel needs to find a director who gets the characters and has a great vision for the movie, and just trust them to bring that vision to life.
Avoid A Dark Tone
One of the most heinous things about Fant4stic is that it has a dark tone. Just like Man of Steel before it, it took a comic book property bursting with color and optimism and Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies.
Darkness works for the Caped Crusader — he’s an emotionally tormented orphan who dresses up as a bat and takes out his rage on henchmen — but it doesn’t work for the Fantastic Four.
Cast Older Actors
The Fantastic Four aren’t supposed to be teenagers; they’re Marvel’s first family. They’re the older, more experienced heroes in contrast with their peers. Granted, Fant4stic was an origin story, but still, the studio cast it like it was a YA franchise in the mold of Twilight or The Hunger Games.
John Krasinski and Emily Blunt are a popular fan casting choice for Reed Richards and Sue Storm, and frankly, they’d be perfect for the roles.
Give The Thing His Shorts
In Fant4stic, the Thing didn’t wear shorts, seemingly in an attempt to make the character more grounded and realistic (he’s a dude who gets turned into a rock monster — there’s not much room for realism), and he somehow looked even more ludicrous without the shorts.
In the MCU’s reboot, whatever they do with the Ben Grimm character (one of the Marvel universe’s most complex and underrated figures), they should let him keep his shorts.
Get The Story Right At The Script Stage
The main reason why Fant4stic is such a mess is the massive amount of reshoots that completely changed the tone and plot of the film. Whenever that happens, it’s painfully obvious and it ruins the experience of watching the movie, because something like Kate Mara’s ever-changing hair can’t be unseen.
It’s much easier to get the story right at the script stage so that everyone’s on the same page — the cast, the director, the studio etc. — before filming begins.
Keep Simon Kinberg Away
For some reason, Fox kept bringing back Simon Kinberg to work on its Marvel movies. He delivered a poor adaptation of “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” then the studio hired him to mess up another one. He co-wrote and co-produced Fant4stic, and claimed that it was a “celebration” of the Fantastic Four, when it was actually an insult to them. Whatever happens with the MCU’s Fantastic Four movie, just keep Kinberg away.
Adapt Doctor Doom Faithfully
the awful portrayal of Doctor Doom in Fant4stic? Everyone said he looked like a crash test dummy. And after the audience was told how powerful he is in exposition throughout the whole movie, his powers extended to simply pushing people into walls and he was insanely easy to defeat.
Done right, Doom could be a Thanos-sized threat to the fabric of the MCU. Unfortunately, the live-action Fantastic Four movies have yet to get Doom right. The MCU can’t afford to screw it up again.
Embrace The Silliness
One of the fatal flaws of Fant4stic is that it tries to subvert the Fantastic Four’s silliness. The MCU’s Fantastic Four should go the other way and embrace it.
It would be fun to see the team riding around in the Fantasticar, which was glimpsed in Rise of the Silver Surfer, or the Fantasti-Copter.
Skip The Origin Story
When the MCU rebooted Spider-Man, there had already been two live-action Spider-Man movie franchises that gave moviegoers the character’s origin story. Kevin Feige wisely avoided telling that origin story a third time, because audiences already know it.
The same goes for the Fantastic Four’s origin story, which has been told on the big screen twice before (thrice, if Roger Corman’s schlocky B-movie counts). The origin story in Fant4stic made the movie feel more like a trailer for the sequel that never materialized as opposed to its own thing.