We’ve Seen Worse: Why the New Fantastic Four is a Good Thing No Matter What

By: Julian Mancini (with some thoughts from Chris.)

Over the past few days, the first critics’ reviews of the new Fantastic Four reboot were released, and everyone shook their heads without surprise. My hopes for this movie have taken a roller coaster ride since watching its first trailer: they started low, continued to increase as more stills and trailers were released, and then (within the last 24 hours) dropped down dramatically when it spread that the soon-to-be-released film is a disappointment. Despite the fact that I, and now most people going to see this movie in theaters, have extremely low expectations for this film, there’s two major reasons that this film is still a good thing: Tim Story’s Fantastic Four from 2005 and the sequel.

Here’s Fox’s 2005 Fantastic Four in a nutshell:

A nerd, a girl, the girl’s hotshot brother, and a dense guy (who not-so-ironically actually becomes dense later on) walk into a space station. They get hit with some magical space dust, all get completely different superpowers (that happen to line up PERFECTLY with their temperaments), and then go back to Earth to try and recreate said space dust. Also, there’s this rich foreign guy who too got space-dust powers and is evil because…jealousy? Reed “The Nerd” Richards (Mr. Fantastic) keeps trying to make a space-dust chamber so they can ditch the superpowers, Sue Storm (The Invisible Woman) complains incessantly about her relationship with Reed, and Ben Grimm (The Thing), despite his unfailing loyalty, is absolutely abused by everyone from Johnny Storm (The Human Torch) to his wife, who decides to leave him because he…looks different.

Over the course of the film, we see that Reed has literally no idea how to interact with any human being ever, Sue will repeatedly turn invisible while not wearing any clothes, and Johnny will make out with every female in his line of sight. The ending involves a showdown against the villain with unexplained powers, in which the Fantastic Four pulls a total “cross the streams” to end up defeating the bad guy.

The sequel was no better. In fact, most would aruge it was worst. Does anybody remember how Jessica Alba described this movie at the MTV Music Awards? She called it the "best family/comedy film of the summer." In real life, that's how she described a superhero film. Rise of the Silver Surfer was just a disaster. The special effects were absolutely horrendous. The Silver Surfer looked so terrible. The horrible characters from the first just didn't improve and this movie was boring. For some reason, the folks attached to this franchise could not pen a decent script. The best part of this film is that they HINTED at a third movie. Executives saw the finished product and thought a third film would hold up. That's absolutely baffling. And talk about the most far fetched plot ever in terms of the Galactus story. The team fought Dr. Doom and a cool looking black hole in this movie. Thank the lord great superhero movies came out after this. 

This, plus its horrible predecessor, are the films that the new Fantastic Four, out Friday August 8^th, is following. As the guys over at Screen Junkies pointed out, during a time period when superhero movies were just beginning to show the world how great they could be, the 2005 Fantastic Four and the 2007 Rise of the Silver Surfer reminded the world how utterly awful they could be as well.

I'm not saying the brand new Fantastic Four film will be great. I haven't seen the film and cannot confirm or deny such a claim. Yet, look at the previous films in this franchise. I think anything will be an improvement. Therefore, I implore you at the very least to be happy for the new Fantastic Four, regardless of how bad it might be. While I’m sure it’s no X-Men: First Class or Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I’m absolutely certain that it can’t be any worse than the 2005 attempt and its sequel. If nothing else, be happy, for you can now erase the previous blockbuster bombs from your memory and have a slightly better connotation in your mind when you ponder Marvel’s original superhero team.