Fantastic Four's critical drubbing and underwhelming box office haul has led some to call the film the biggest superhero disaster since Halle Berry's Catwoman.
The blockbuster's director even disowned it with a scathing (and swiftly deleted) tweet on the day of release, hinting at epic behind-the-scenes turmoil that torpedoed the project before it even hit cinemas. We look into the high-profile failure of the Fantastic Four below.
1. Director Josh Trank made a leap too far after Chronicle
Found-footage thriller Chronicle put director Josh Trank on the map, landing him the Fantastic Four gig after it became a box office hit in 2012.
The film cost a relative pittance at $12 million, and this low budget meant that the film slipped through the cracks at Fox somewhat, giving Trank full creative control. That all changed on Fantastic Four as the 31-year-old filmmaker had to answer to studio bigwigs and a vocal fanbase.
The pressure might have been a little too much. Rumours swirled on set about Trank's erratic behaviour, and he was reportedly at odds with execs over the direction of the project.
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2. Kate Mara's appalling wig covers a multitude of sins
Reshoots (or additional photography in less dramatic terms) are commonplace among big studio blockbusters. However, it's thought that Fantastic Four's entire third act has been completely retooled.
Trank's incendiary tweet points to major changes, and this is no more evident in Kate Mara's appalling wig work - a sure sign that she was brought back to add new scenes into the mix.
3. The studio paid too much attention to moaning fanpeople
The movie went through a lot of changes (we'll get to that shortly), and it seems that a lot of these were at the instigation of the fanpeople. The most frequently cited change was the decision to change the name of Toby Kebbell's villain from Victor Domashev back to the original Victor Von Doom.
"I think the fans heard that and said, 'It's got to be Doom', said Kebbell in the below interview. "I think that was me. I have brain tumours every now and again and I say, 'His name's Bill. Bill Winklebottom'. And they print it and then I ruin everything."
Imaginary brain tumours aside, it's rarely wise to listen too closely to the fans. Online, the most vocal fans are not always representative (read: trolls), and fans are notorious for hating change of any sort, which would leave the majority of comic book movies trapped in the 1960s or earlier. Studios and filmmakers would be better off sticking to common sense and good storytelling (if only).
4. The movie doesn't really get what Fantastic Four is about
The movie follows the unfortunate trend championed by Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy for dark 'n' gritty superhero movies. But that isn't what the FF is all about.
Fox would have been much better taking inspiration from its primary-coloured '60s roots, which focused on both space opera and a close knit family dynamic sadly missing in this drab outing.
And before you say that Tim Story tried and failed to do just that in his 2005 and 2007 films, Pixar got this balance right in The Incredibles. And as we all know, The Incredibles is the only good Fantastic Four film to date.
5. The film was cut to blazes in the editing room
Even without Trank's bitter tweet, we could have easily guessed that Fantastic Four was put through a brutal editing process that can't have ended very long before the film's release.
The trailers are full of shots and sequences that never made it to the final cut - many look to have offered more personal moments for Michael B Jordan and Jamie Bell - and B-roll footage gave us a glimpse of even more casualties, including the Fantasticar. It makes us wonder what might have been.
6. The movie itself just isn't very good
Sounds fairly obvious, but Fantastic Four's quality (or lack thereof) has done it the most harm. Combine that with bad word-of-mouth on opening weekend and you have a film that fell short of its $40 million debut prediction by some distance.
Ultimately, Four is a messy patchwork of multiple visions with plot threads left unresolved, awkward transitions between Trank's scenes and reshoots, and a ropey CGI finale that abruptly brings things to a close. A lot of Fantastic Four may have been left on the cutting room floor, but was there anything left saving in the first place?
Movies Editor
Simon has worked as a journalist for more than a decade, writing on staff and freelance for Hearst, Dennis, Future and Autovia titles before joining Cision in 2022.
