'Fantastic Four' is Finito

For a long time, people wanted to see movies based on The Fantastic Four comic book. It was never going to be easy, thanks to Reed Richards and Ben Grimm, two heroes that are almost comical the minute they jump off the page. The movies we wound up getting were pretty bad, the second one undeniably so. The other Marvel characters woven into both movies - Dr. Doom and Silver Surfer - are worthwhile inventions, so maybe we haven't seen the last of them, but Chris Evans, Johnny Storm from the 4, says the franchise is dunzo. Sitting down for a round of interviews about Push, Evans tells Jo Blo, "I think they're done. They've closed the book on that franchise. I think if there was talk I think that I would've heard about it by now." Let's look at the financials: The first movie made over three times its $100 million budget, so that's a big hit, and the second one more than doubled its production costs. That's not good enough, even when you make just under $300 million worldwide. It's not a bomb, but it's in that area where it's risky to continue. And really, why should Marvel keep pumping out these movies? Most of Marvel's products get great reviews and make embarrassing amounts of money (Iron Man made nearly 400% of its budget last year) that it makes more sense to focus on those or try any number of its other heroes. I would think this also means we won't get another Hulk movie, at least not before The Avengers in 2011. I can't say I'll miss the Fantastic Four franchise, but I wonder what this means for the proposed Silver Surfer off-shoot.

Comments

[Will]

It's funny because I remember a really cheesy looking version of the Fantastic Four that was made about a decade ago. I think it was going to be a direct to Video thing, and the trailer popped up on all of the videos I rented back in those days (and it was a hell of a lot of videos, what with the 5 for 5 special my hometown video store offered).

Anyway, I think Mark Hamil was Dr. Doom, and as cheesy as it looked, I always wanted to see it. If anything, it didn't seem to take itself too seriously, and looked as though it could be a fun evening of escapism. Better than a much of the other direct to vid crap that was being produced back then, anyway.

Then news came that that cheesy version was shelved indefinitely because some big studio was interested in doing a big-budget FF movie, and that studio then bought the "bad" Luke Skywalker is Dr. Doom version outright for an undisclosed sum. I thought, well here's something to pay attention to...

Well, FF came out, and I realized that something had gone horribly horribly wrong. It will forever be remembered as a piece of a long lineage of bad Marvel movies. Not as bad as the series of Straight to Video live action films of the late 80's and early 90's, but the first wave of glossy big-budget yet mildly entertaining Hollywood films. Punisher, Daredevil, Elektra, and FF 1&2 are there.

So is Spiderman 1, 2, & 3 (and 4, 5 and beyond fro the sound of things).

There is now a new wave of Marvel movies that is substantially better, although I am beginning to think by accident. Iron Man and Hulk are the two successes, and there may indeed be more down the way, but others like Punisher keep failing no matter what they do to reinvent it.

But to stay on topic, I must say that I am not sad to see this incarnation go away. Even though I thought F. Gary Gray might be able to do something with the series, he could not. Or at least he was not aloud to. I suspect that this is not the last time we will see the 4 on film but rather, Marvel was able to wrest them away much more easily than they could Spidey. Their care will be handed over to a new up and coming director, and a better bunch of actors, and they will be brought into the new business model if it doesn't disintegrate from within...

No matter how much legitimacy is injected into the franchise however, deep down I still yearn to see that direct to video version, made when the Clinton's were just taking office, and hidden from the world forever. Maybe it's just the kid in me, but superheros don't always have to be so brooding and complicated. Sometimes, they just have to go BAM and POW when they throw a punch.