The Fantastic Four (2015)

[Linkabel]

You know, I'm pretty sure that while there was some studio meddling and that the movie was rushed that doesn't take away that Trank himself  was a huge reason why the movie was bad.

Chronicle was a "fantastic" movie, but it was on a smaller scale, he had more control and I feel like things fell into place out of luck.

Though, now he had to work with a franchise with more people and pressure.

Also, anyone remembers how he was on board to helm the second Star Wars solo film but left the project for "personal reasons/other projects *cough  cough*"

Well, on May the Hollywood  Reporter ran an article about how Disney/Lucasfilm did not want him to do it after hearing how difficult it was to work with him during the F4 project.

Supposedly he was unresponsive, indecisive and other people had to drop projects in order to help finish the movie and do reshoots.

So it sounds like the talent is there but he still  doesn't have the skills to use them. Plus, if his "better" F4 movie was the one where Doom a hacker then it honestly still sounds like  shit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Johnny Boy]

Well guys I just got back from seeing the movie with my dad. The good news is that this  movie didn't destroy my soul like I was expecting it to. But sadly, it's still an atrocious movie. 

Hell, when I went into the theater there was barely anybody in it and usually it's fun watching a summer blockbuster with a big crowd but there is barely any response from the audience I was with throughout the entire film.

But hey, some of you said in my status update that you want my personal thoughts on the film and I'll give to you. This is easily the worst superhero movie I've seen since X-Men origins Wolverine.

First of all, let's get to the biggest problem I have with this movie, the pacing. Good lord, if there's anything I've learned from screenwriting class it's that all movies must have a 3 act structure: a beginning, middle, and end. With the Fantastic Four however, the whole film feels like one gigantic first act. The movie spends way too much time throwing exposition at its audience that there is barely any action in it. And seeing that this is a superhero flick, little action is a HUGE sin.

And then we have the effects. I've seen a lot of bad blockbusters over the years (Transformers immediately comes to mind), but if there's one redeeming quality those said blockbusters had its that their visual effects were incredible. And guess what? Not even this movies special effects impressed me! The dimension where the characters get their powers has to be the most unconvincing green screen I have ever seen and the effects used for the heroes powers don't fare any better. And the CGI on the thing is just laughable, I mean the structure on his face alone just changes from shot to shot and while I would comment on the fact that he's naked 24/7 after he gets his powers but there are plenty of memes floating around that do that for me. But the biggest part where they fumbled with the CGI is a scene where Reed uses his powers for a disguise. Come on, CGI has come a long way and this shit looks like something from the 90's. Yes it's that bad!

And lastly we have the characters. I'll be honest, I felt that some of the cast honestly gave it their all despite the shortcomings with the script. I especially liked Micheal B. Jordan and Reg E. Cathy's performances. But the characters honestly have little to no chemistry between them and some of their interactions come off as kind of awkward. But by far the worst character in this entire movie is Doctor Doom. Dear god, if you thought the Tim Story F4 films fucked this character to high hell then you're in for a rude awakening because what they did to doom in this movie should be a crime.

Because you know the Doctor Doom from the comics that was always five steps ahead of the heroes, a master of magic and science, and a badass dictator who rules his own country with an iron fist? Yeah, they turned him into a fucking hermit who stays in a room all day and plays video games. And in case you're wondering how he becomes the villain, he ends up going into the alternate dimension with the heroes, and the film just fucking forgets he even exists up until the last 20 minutes of the movie! Because you know, it's a superhero movie! The heroes gotta have somebody to fight am I right? Ugh...

After seeing Fox screw the first family of comics over for the third time in a row, it's high time they admit defeat, sell the rights back to marvel, and stick to mutants. Fuck this movie and everything it stands for. 

Edited August 9, 2015 by Johnny Boy

[Balding Spider]

Tom Cruise officially clobbers Fant4stic at the Box office: http://deadline.com/2015/08/fantastic-four-the-gift-shaun-the-sheep-box-office-1201495506/

From originally predicting 50 million to lowering expectations to 45 million after bad reviews Fant4stic's official gross comes to an embarrassing 26 million.

Kneel before Cruise!

[AdventChild]

Here is the Double Toasted review of the movie.

 

[Johnny Boy]

Despite the film bombing critically and financially, a fox executive says that they're still trying to push forward with the F4. Yeah, it sounds like they're trying to save face if you ask me.

Edited August 9, 2015 by Johnny Boy

[...]

They're still planning to hold onto the rights after this entire fiasco? What a load of bollocks. Fox's hatassery never ceases to surprise me.

[Ratcicle King]

Again, this fiasco did start because they wanted to keep the rights and rushed it to hell all while just not caring about how the movie would turn out as long as the rights kept being theirs, so it's not surprising they don't care about the damage done and will still try to work on F4 movies after this. Heck they probably were expecting all this damage from the get go.

[Failinhearts]

Damn it... We aren't ever getting a good Fantastic Four movie, are we?

FOX is the SEGA of movies, rushing things out to the market in order to meet a deadline.

[AdventChild]

Angry Joe's review

No Stan Lee cameo in this one? You know it's bad when the creator of the F4 himself doesn't want to get involved in this crap. Not to mention Fox have the galls to slap the Marvel logo on this when they had nothing to do with this turd and fooling the audience into thinking it's in the same universe.

Edited August 10, 2015 by AdventChild

[Klinsy]

Okay, I got an question I asked a lot, but I still want to see an answer one day, why does Fox still want the rights to the Fantastic Four?

The obvious answer is money but only the 2005 movie did super well and they keep getting worse and worse critical reputation so audiences might eventually go not bother with the FF anymore.

What's stopping Fox from making their own superhero movie beyond brand name? they don't seem to care about the brand itself unlike the X-Men so what gives?

I think this is what is starting upset me the most, a company holding onto something they don't even love and preventing someone who might give a crap from giving it a nice home.

Edited August 10, 2015 by Pink Cat

[Teoskaven]

My wild guess is that FOX fears that Marvel Studios may actually gain a profit with the movie rights, so they prefer be stubborn assholes rather than use common sense.

[Johnny Boy]

My wild guess is that FOX fears that Marvel Studios may actually gain a profit with the movie rights, so they prefer be stubborn assholes rather than use common sense.

Of course they'd be shitting their pants because think about it, if Marvel gets the F4 back that just opens up a huge door of material that can keep the MCU going strong even after infinity war. Marvel could then gain access to characters like Namor, the skrulls, Silver Surfer and of course motherfucking Galactus. It makes perfect sense to why they're scared about selling the rights back to Disney because then the MCU would be stronger than ever before.

[Teoskaven]

Namor as far as i recall has his movie rights held by a complete different company (Universal? I don't remember.), but the F4 package includes the Skrulls and Galactus indeed, so yeah, there's a lot of stuff.

You know, if FOX managed to use it better, we would not have this instance of us hoping that Marvel can make better use of it.

[Ratcicle King]

Okay, I got an question I asked a lot, but I still want to see an answer one day, why does Fox still want the rights to the Fantastic Four?

The obvious answer is money but only the 2005 movie did super well and they keep getting worse and worse critical reputation so audiences might eventually go not bother with the FF anymore.

What's stopping Fox from making their own superhero movie beyond brand name? they don't seem to care about the brand itself unlike the X-Men so what gives?

I think this is what is starting upset me the most, a company holding onto something they don't even love and preventing someone who might give a crap from giving it a nice home.

They got the rights for a LOT of Marvel's cosmic mythos thanks to having the F4, and Marvel's brand by now is selling like water, just like Sony before the deal, Fox probably fears that giving Marvel back this cast would lead to them making a shitload of money that could be theirs, so they will probably sit on the IP until an idea work for them, and once that happen, run wth it.

Would a deal with Marvel work here? Probably, but from what we've seen from interviews and some of their actions in the past, they're not exactly on good terms with Marvel.

[Teoskaven]

Well, if you consider that the company that bought Marvel recently bought Star Wars, wich Fox distributed for decades, i think i can see a motive here.

[Ratcicle King]

Not only that, but the entire team behind the X-Men series kept trying to one-up Marvel just out of dickery during Days of Future Past. IIRC the entire reason they added Quicksilver and made him memorable on the movie was to have Quicksilver on a movie before Marvel and make their Quicksilver a fan-favorite.

[Balding Spider]

Masterful troll Ed Boon weighs in on the Fant4stic debacle.

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

This movie in a nutshell:

 

[Failinhearts]

Seeing Angry Joe's review on how he says that some people think this is connected to the MCU disgusts me.

It sucks that some people will falsely give the MCU a bad name because of this unconnected film. I know, it doesn't feel like a huge majority as many people online know that Fant4stic is not connected to the MCU but still, it bugs me when people are tricked into seeing a piece of crap thinking it's something else. It's like a small kid asking someone to buy "Ratatouille" or "Kung Fu Panda" and the person returns with those knock-off films like "The Little Panda Fighter" or "Ratatoing." That kid will think the movie sucks and blame Pixar or Dreamworks even though they're unaffiliated.

Is there anything good that came out of this movie?

[Milo]

So as mentioned by Pink Cat in the statuses, despite the film flailing at the box office and widespread negative reviews, though that hasn't stopped Fox before, Fox is still reportedly going ahead with a sequel to Fantastic Four 2015.

..pfft! As if! I would be surprised if anyone who worked on the first film would be willing to come back for a second movie given the executive meddling that was going on throughout the entire project (probable contract stipulations notwithstanding). And even if they do get the old crew back and/or hire a new crew, they have an uphill struggle to get the market interested in a sequel, simply due to how due to how notoriously awful the first film was.

If Fox is pressing forward with another F4 movie, it's definitely going to be another reboot; either by making the second reboot by themselves once again or they'll pull a Sony and strike a deal with Marvel Studios to produce MCU-related Fantastic 4 films for them (a la the current contract concerning Spider-Man). Because there is absolutely no way a Fant4stic sequel would be anything but dead before arrival.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Señor Gabe

[Failinhearts]

What's going on at FOX? They should know that if the first movie is being a flop, the second won't do any better.

Especially after the last Fantastic Four movie series!

Lemme guess, they're doing it just to hog the rights, correct? They'll keep making each movie and waste money and will get little back due to poor box office performance and critical reception.

Who wins? FOX loses money and the viewers feel ripped-off!

[Johnny Boy]

What's going on at FOX? They should know that if the first movie is being a flop, the second won't do any better.

Especially after the last Fantastic Four movie series!

Lemme guess, they're doing it just to hog the rights, correct? They'll keep making each movie and waste money and will get little back due to poor box office performance and critical reception.

Who wins? FOX loses money and the viewers feel ripped-off!

Which is exactly why I think they're saying this to save face. Hell, they've even been projected to lose $60 million on this movie.

Edited August 11, 2015 by Johnny Boy

[Celestia]

Didn't Sony say they were going to go ahead with ASM3 and all their spinoff ideas even after ASM2 barely made any money and got less than stellar reviews? We saw how that turned out, and this movie got even worse reception.

Granted that doesn't guarantee anything, but y'know. Something to keep in mind.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Celestia

[Tornado]

even after ASM2 barely made any money

It should be pointed out that ASM2 made Sony a huge bundle of money, as did Spiderman 3 (and Batman and Robin, for that matter). The issue was Sony was projecting wildly higher (unrealistic) numbers for the division to stay profitable overall, couple with audience reception and returns being on a consistent downward spiral and the budgets being too high to risk trying to force a third movie anyway. It's the same reason that a videogame can sell in huge numbers but not anywhere near enough to warrant a sequel because the numbers needed to justify it weren't reached.

 

 

Fox losing 50 million or whatever on this one doesn't mean much if their internal projections allowed for the possibility; and while trying to force a sequel anyway would be odd (but not unprecedented), if they can shit it out and keep the budget under control they might be trying for a sleeper hit. They want the rights (presumably) until they can put a creative team in place that can actually make their epic Marvel-rivaling movie, and the current market dictates even the most lackluster superhero movies should clear enough to make it so they don't take a bath on them. It's just a matter of if the rights are worth it for the low risk, low reward game they are playing.

Fox spent 120 million making the movie, and they are definitely going to clear that (marketing costs are a bit different), so they should be fine even if it loses money in the end. Sony in comparison was throwing so much money at their ASM movies that they were even outspending Marvel but having much shakier return; so at any given point they could have throw over 280 million at ASM3 and plan for 800 million (and allocate their finances based on those projections) but only take in 300 or something to that effect because people were just sick of it; so even when they made money it was hurting them.

[Gabz Girl]

Fox is probably waiting until Fant4stic is released in other regions before declaring it an outright disappointment. They're pretty damn stubborn though. I would be shocked if they made a sequel to one of the lowest performing superhero movies in years. And the rating is so bad it's actually rivalling Catwoman right now!

But honestly, I'm not surprised. I never liked the look of this movie and it's obvious that there were some serious problems behind the scenes. Don't even get me started on how ridiculous Doom looks. Not as stupid as Galactus space cloud but it's up there.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Gabz Girl