July 8, 2005
FANTASTIC FOUR is one of the more pure artifacts of its time that we’ve encountered in this retrospective so far. While BATMAN BEGINS was pushing forward and innovating new approaches to comic book movies, this represents a studio (20th Century Fox) following, formulating and second-guessing their way into a flavorless, impact-less nothing of a super hero adaptation.
My feelings haven’t changed on this one – I thought it was laughable at the time, which I believe was the general consensus. But it was a hit, had a sequel that was a hit, presumably has people who are fond of it, though I’ve never met them. I’d say this is a better example of a “no cultural footprint” movie than AVATAR ever was. It’s about to get its second reboot and I don’t hear anyone calling for a Jessica Alba cameo (though come to think of it that would be cool).
As I discussed in my review of SIN CITY (also featuring Alba), 2005 was a time when there was still a divide between the “geek” culture and the mainstream – they had not yet devoured each other. FANTASTIC FOUR is in some ways the polar opposite of SIN CITY – big budget, seemingly studio-noted to death, aiming for the broadest possible audience, juvenile in the other direction. While SIN CITY was aggressively stylized and faithful to a fault, FANTASTIC FOUR is visually bland and does not appear to have a strong opinion about how much adaptation should occur. They’ll contemporize or movie-fy things in the ways that were expected at the time (sculpted jump suits that they still have to make jokes about, soundtrack of randomly shuffled popular rock bands and rappers [Velvet Revolver, Chingy, Joss Stone, Sum 41, Lloyd Banks], Reed Richards on the cover of Wired Magazine, Johnny Storm participating in the X-Games with various athlete and correspondent cameos) but the story of their origin and the relationships of the characters aren’t developed much beyond what could fit into the word balloons of a 26 page comic book in 1961.
I think SPIDER-MAN and SPIDER-MAN 2 made executives think this sort of thing was easy. It didn’t occur to them that those required the ingenious cinematic vision and life-long dorky passions of Sam Raimi. This iteration of a FANTASTIC FOUR movie (after the shit-canned Roger Corman b-movie version) had actually been in the works for a decade, with a succession of… let’s say not-as-good-as-Raimi directors attached: Chris Columbus (coming off of MRS. DOUBTFIRE), Peter Sagal (coming off of MY FELLOW AMERICANS), Sam Weisman (coming off of GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE) and Raja Gosnell (coming off of BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE), who left to do SCOOBY-DOO instead. The most promising was Peyton Reed (BRING IT ON), who said he wanted to make it as a sixties period piece inspired by A HARD DAY’S NIGHT. The studio didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about so he eventually left and they hired Tim Story (BARBERSHOP), who had captured their enthusiasm with his early cut of TAXI. (Yes, the Jimmy Fallon/Queen Latifah American version of the Luc-Besson-produced French car chase movie.)
I think Fantastic Four required a bolder style and tone to work – none of this middle of the road shit. The pleasures of the characters are in their retro colorfulness, and they fail to pass them off as modern. Also it’s not that fun to see them bickering so much. At the beginning Sue Storm (Alba) is the director of genetic research/launch-scheduler/girlfriend of Von Doom Industries CEO Victor von Doom (Julian McMahon, who was hot from starring in Nip/Tuck at the time). Victor allows scientist Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd, TITANIC) to do an experiment on his private space station, even though (or because) Sue and Reed were college sweethearts but she left him when he was too wrapped up in scientific research to move in with her. After the cosmic energy explosion that gives them all their super powers Sue and Reed are quarantined and have a date-like dinner together that goes well until he tells her he’s glad she and Victor are happy together and she gives him some “be a real man and take what you want” type shit.
Mostly Victor is written as the sort of guy who would propose to his girlfriend while on a space mission with her ex-boyfriend. (He describes becoming his wife as “a promotion.”) Occasionally they’ll throw in a part where he behaves like a reasonable person, and you can see how the love triangle could create some good drama if approached with some nuance. But Victor is neither a dimensional, humanized character or a fun, over-the-top super villain. A half-hearted feint toward two opposite approaches, achieving neither. McMahon (who just died of cancer, R.I.P.) is good as a handsome business asshole, but they don’t give him a chance to be very fun as Dr. Doom.
I’m sorry to say the weak link is Gruffudd as Reed. I kind of like that he seems to me like an actual dork more than a leading man, but then again it leaves a hollow movie without enough charisma at the center to fuel it. Despite the incorrect things I wrote at the time, Alba does balance some of that with her movie star powers, but she’s saddled with playing a square character and having to provide some of the PG-13 “suggestive material” in jokes about having to take her clothes off to be fully invisible…
…or being disappointed when she realizes Reed is excited by the technology of her suit and not how smokin’ hot she looks in it.
When Chris Evans played Sue’s delightfully slutty brother Johnny his entire filmography was THE NEWCOMERS, NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE, THE PERFECT SCORE, CELLULAR, FIERCE PEOPLE and LONDON. So obviously the historical importance here is the transition from his established wiseass dick persona to super hero wise-ass dick, on his way to just super hero. It seemed so weird when they cast him as Captain America, but obviously that worked out, and now this part of his career seems like the footnote (or the joke reference in DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE). Johnny’s wildest scene here is when he ditches quarantine to snowboard and is so charming that a character called “Sexy Nurse” (Entertainment Tonight correspondent/future pre-movie programming host Maria Menounos) – not to be confused with Marvel’s Night Nurse, I don’t think? – ignores his 209 degree temperature to go with him and then ignores him turning into a human torch to (it is suggested) have sex with him in a sort of makeshift hot tub created by his fire powers melting the snow.
I guess by default the best character is Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis, SOLDIER) after he becomes the orange rock monster The Thing. It’s cool that they had Spectral Motion (who did HELLBOY) create a fully practical suit, and although I still don’t like the design of his face, it is very expressive, and I do like his hands and feet. When he temporarily turns back into Michael Chiklis it made me realize how well the suit sold me on a size and shape that’s not really his. Chiklis also does a good voice, and the whole idea is so cartoony that his simplistic characterization doesn’t seem as bad as it does with the others.
And yet I still think the highlight of the movie is the unintentional laughs I get from his tragic reunion with his wife Debbie. Because this is… this movie, it doesn’t occur to Ben, his friends, his doctors, or anyone to be in communication with his wife and let her know his condition. Instead he comes home, calls her from a payphone across the street, and hides in the shadows while she comes out to meet him in her sexy silk nighty. When she sees him she asks no questions, has no conversation, just runs away and they never speak another word to each other, ever.
They do see each other one last time in the next sequence, the movie’s biggest set piece. The Thing causes a massive pileup on the Brooklyn Bridge while trying to stop a guy from committing suicide. (Shoulda let him jump, is the moral, I guess.) Coincidentally the Fantastic Other Three get caught in the traffic he creates and are able to join him – I’m not sure how Debbie ends up there. But while firefighters and onlookers are applauding his heroism for saving some of the people almost killed by the chain reaction he caused, she cuts through the crowd, tearful, as if maybe she’s gonna apologize and beg his forgiveness for having the world record for most disgusting reaction to a loved one’s horrible accident. Instead she shakes her head no, removes her wedding ring, puts it down on the cement and runs away!
And that leads to The Thing learning that his giant fingers cannot get a grip on a discarded wedding ring!
When Reed does pick up the ring and put it in Ben’s hand it draws attention to these guys’ complete uselessness as friends. The only other gesture of support is his misguided promise to make The Thing into “Ben again.” Otherwise the three of them just stand there like fantastic dummies as this all goes down. They don’t embrace him, don’t chew out that despicable wife of his, don’t ever tell him hey, that is the most reprehensible and bizarre human behavior I have ever or will ever witness and I’m so relieved you don’t have to spend another second with that irredeemable monster who made up a new divorce ritual as a response to you being disfigured by an explosion. What in the cosmic fuck!? It’s amazing to watch the movie just act real casual like this stuff makes sense.
With 2025 eyes the scene is even funnier because Debbie is played by Laurie Holden (THE MAJESTIC), who I now know as Andrea from The Walking Dead, a protagonist who turned so unbearably awful that at least in my household her death in season 3 was long anticipated and celebrated. Playing Debbie must’ve gotten poor Holden typecast as the woman to go to to play The Absolute Worst.
Another actor who’s better known now is Hamish Linklater, who plays Doom’s assistant Leonard. I didn’t really know who he was until Midnight Mass. Now he’s the voice of Batman.
Oh, and also Kerry Washington (MR. & MRS. SMITH)! Ben goes back to his neighborhood bar and the bartender Ernie (David Parker, BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER) praises him as “the first mook from Brooklyn to go to outer space,” which is nice. Washington plays Alicia Masters, who puts Ben’s drink on her tab, but it took me a second to pick up on oh, the concept is that she’s blind and doesn’t know what he looks like, so only after she feels his face (well, first his chest!) do we know if she’s cool with it. I guess they didn’t know a way around it because that’s from the comics, but it just feels so old timey in a bad way. Maybe for it to work they would need to establish her separately so that her blindness is not solely a gimmick for falling in love with a rock monster.
This is really only an origin story, it doesn’t even set them up to do some heroic thing in the third act. It’s still the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom growing into their powers and their roles as good guys and bad guys who fight each other. Reportedly Story had to rework things quite a bit after THE INCREDIBLES came out and his plans were too similar. There were also many scenes cut for length – a 20 minute longer extended cut was later released on video.
The screenplay credit went to Mark Frost (SCARED STIFF, STORYVILLE) and Michael France (CLIFFHANGER, GOLDENEYE, HULK, THE PUNISHER), with Simon Kinberg (xXx: STATE OF THE UNION, MR. & MRS. SMITH) reportedly having done some uncredited drafts. Despite what some may expect from the co-creator of Twin Peaks, Frost is a big fan of the comics and has spoken very positively about his work on this.
FANTASTIC FOUR got the poor reviews it deserved, but was a decent-sized hit, making $333.5 million in theaters and spawning a 2007 sequel, FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER that was almost as successful. I haven’t had a chance to re-evaluate that one, but back then I wrote that it was a little bit better just because “You get alot of mileage out of a silver guy.”
Story did return for the sequel, and has continued to be a journeyman with a successful career making the types of mainstream movies I mostly ignore: the THINK LIKE A MAN movies, the RIDE ALONG movies, the comedy version of SHAFT, the TOM AND JERRY movie. I did kind of like THE BLACKENING (2022), a horror comedy that leans a little closer to actual horror than I expected and has some laughs and some clever ideas.
Despite these movies doing pretty well, I wouldn’t say the Fantastic Four have really broken through as cinematic icons the way Spider-Man and the X-Men did. The 2015 reboot attempt was a behind-the-scenes disaster with director Josh Trank side-lined, re-edited and practically run out of Hollywood, so it was pretty much dead on arrival (despite coming closer to being a good movie than this does, in my opinion) and I don’t think non-comics people were necessarily clamoring for the new MCU version that’s finally coming next week. It seems to have sort of followed Peyton Reed’s notion because it’s set in an alternate universe version of the sixties. I can’t imagine it won’t be better than this, but we’ll see.
tie-ins:
There was a novelization by famed comics writer Peter David.
Marvel published a comic book adaptation as well as a promo comic given away at Best Buy.
Toy Biz made a line of 26 different 6” action figures based on the movie, plus four toys of The Thing riding vehicles, a “Fantasticar” vehicle (not in the movie), 12” versions of each character, Electronic Tuff Talkin’ Thing, Light-up Flying Human Torch, Human Torch Dress-Up Set, Mr. Fantastic Stretch & Grab Arm, Electronic Thing Hands and Electronic Thing Feet. The most scene-specific figures are Extreme Human Torch With Dirt Bike and Snowboarding Human Torch (sorry, no Rule-Breaking Sexy Nurse).
Summer of 2005 notes:
Johnny Storm joins Cholo (LAND OF THE DEAD) and Ray Ferrier (WAR OF THE WORLDS) in the “cool leather jacket guy” club
The “Johnny Storm goes off and joins a dirt bike race at the X Games” scene definitely reminded me of the “Herbie is in a demolition derby” scene of HERBIE: FULLY LOADED
Things that brought me back:
A billboard for Sobe Adrenaline Rush
July 10th, 2025 at 12:25 pm
I saw this in theaters and… did not hate it. And I think the reason I didn’t hate it is that I think superhero comics are stupid, and intended for children, so a movie based on a superhero comic should be stupid and aimed at children. (I am aware that this is not an original thought.)
The harder a superhero movie tries to be not-stupid and not-for-children, the worse it fails, because you can’t overcome the absurdity of the core concept of superheroes. So movies like this, that strive for goofy fun, work better — ARE better — than, say, the Dark Knight movies.