WHY CAN’T THEY GET THE FANTASTIC FOUR MOVIES RIGHT?
The Fantastic Four, Marvel’s first family, was responsible for the rebirth of the company and the countless other superheroes that came to prominence for them in the 1960s, and yet adaptions of the title have all failed miserably in trying to capture the essence of the team.
Well, maybe not miserable; in 1966 during the Superhero Craze which was caused by the tremendous success of Adam West’s BATMAN TV Series Hanna Barbera created a FANTASTIC FOUR Animated series that used the original comics as a template for stories and did manage to get the “family” feel that other adaptions have missed. A big part of the FF’s success is the subtle humor of the series, with Ben and Johnny often bickering like siblings and Reed often oblivious to the needs and feelings of his girlfriend/wife Sue due to his super brain focus on whatever incredible task he’s trying to accomplish. Hey, the guy named himself Mister Fantastic after they gained powers, that’s an ego.
In 1975 Marvel Comics produced a 13 episode old time radio show which featured narration by Stan Lee and a pre-SNL Bill Murray as Johnny Storm, The Human Torch, the show was slightly tongue in cheek but it’s a lot of fun and it faithfully adapts many of the series storylines. You can give it a listen at the Internet Archives.
Live action has been a challenge for The FF. Roger Corman produced a feature film on the cheap in the early 90s but the film was done to complete a contract agreement and was never intended to be released, Betrayed by cheap special effects and acting which at times seems best described as Community Theater level the movie has found life as a cult classic as bootleg DVDs are widely available at comic-cons around the country. As bad as it is, it’s still more faithful to the source material than the three big budget films that followed.
THE FANTASTIC FOUR (2005) was the first attempt by 20th Century Fox and it’s 5.7 rating at IMDB and 27% Rotten Tomatoes score might explain why the only thing most fans remember is that Jessica Alba played Sue Storm while the reminder that Chris Evans (later to play Captain America in the Marvel Universe) played Johnny Storm usually rates a “oh yeah!” response. I found the movie boring and lacking of the chemistry between the team, I’m also a stickler for getting Ben Grimm’s Thing to look just right and they seemed to miss the mark here making him look too human.
It’s sequel in 2007, THE FANTASTIC FOUR; RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER rates lower on IMDB with a 5.6 while it’s Rotten Tomatoes gets a jump to 37%. I really wanted to like this one, The Silver Surfer is one of Marvel’s greatest characters but giant points off for making Galactus appear as merely a sort of big black hole. The chemistry was still lacking and so was the box office so that ended the series.
Ten years later THE FANTASTIC FOUR (2016) hit screens and the best summary are it’s scores here, a 4.2 on IMDB and a whopping 9% on Rotten Tomatoes. This one was a complete misfire with the decision to go full CGI for Ben Grimm. If the first series team had no chemistry they looked like Bogie and Bacall compared to this one.
So why can’t they get the adaptions right? In the case of Fox there just wasn’t enough humor in the film. Part of the charm of the comics is characters recognize the absurdity of the situations they’re in, and they act like a real sometimes dysfunctional family. The characters of the printed page in their earliest adventures also seemed like real people, so when you put movie stars in these roles with posing grand shots it makes them seem less like ordinary people.
The MCU which had tremendous success for many years in “getting it right” has had a few misfires recently, but we’ll see if the rumored adaption of The FF potentially with Jim from The Office as Reed and his wife as Sue might actually do the one thing no big screen adaption has done yet; Get it right.
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