[Patreon Preview] The Fantastic Four: First Steps Review

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The following audio was recorded by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer on June 6th, 2020, when covering 2015's Fantastic Four, directed by Josh Drake.

I don't know why they rebooted this.

I have a weird backhanded compliment for the film on what went right, which is I find the Fantastic Four to be a completely uncompelling group of superheroes.

It doesn't seem like a particularly appealing story.

I'm kind of fine with the fact that this movie seems to have buried them for good.

It feels almost exactly like X-Men First Class.

And I don't think we need another fantastic horror movie.

As far as I can tell, it's like the Kirkland brand versions of all of the regular superheroes.

I do think that in a weird way, Josh Trank may have proven that there isn't a great way to make these characters work.

Like they couldn't make it work in a hokey way, and then it seems like they couldn't make it work in a gritty way.

So maybe these guys just aren't adaptable at the end of the day.

They work in comic book form, but they don't seem to work

on film.

No, I know they're going to do one at some point.

Well, hello, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make one, let alone a good one, let alone...

one that we did uh or rather a franchise that we did quite a lot of trash talking on about five years ago if you remember our old episode on 2015's The Fantastic Four, it was fascinating.

Chris did a great job presenting it.

I just re-listened to it, but that was a bit of a

bit of a dumpster fire.

And today

we are talking about The Fantastic Four First Steps, which I believe is the franchise returning to the Marvel cinematic universe.

And

I have a lot of feelings about it.

I'm Lizzie Bassett.

I'm here with Chris Winterbauer.

Chris, what did you think?

As you mentioned, Lizzie, this movie is very important to the Marvel cinematic universe.

The

maybe on the ropes Marvel cinematic universe, or the overexposed, maybe we should say, Marvel cinematic universe.

It's positioned alongside Thunderbolts from earlier this year as kind of the opening salvo in their bid for continued supremacy slash relevance in our fractured media landscape.

Before we get to my thoughts, and maybe an apology to the Fantastic Four themselves,

who I dismissed five years ago.

Yeah, I believe.

Although I will say that was largely Mr.

Trank's doing, to be fair.

I didn't disagree.

I believe I referred to them as all off-brand superheroes.

And you know what?

That's still kind of true, but I think they knew that in this movie, which is why it was maybe a bit more of a success, but we'll get there.

Before we dive in to our thoughts, just a heads up, guys.

This episode is a Patreon bonus episode.

If you're not a subscriber, enjoy the first 15 minutes or so of this for free.

Also, free of spoilers.

And we'll talk a lot about how this movie came about, specifically the transition of rights from one entity to another for years and years and years and years until it finally came back home to Marvel with this film.

So if you'd like to listen to more, go to www.patreon.com slash whatwentwrong what podcast and sign up for our $5 tier.

But as we said, the first 15 minutes will be spoiler-free and free.

Free.

Okay, so Fantastic Four is based on, excuse me, The Fantastic Four First Steps.

I will have you note the baby does not walk.

I was waiting for that baby to walk to give the name.

Nope.

But no, it's okay.

The Fantastic Four First Steps is a 2025 superhero film based on the Marvel Comics Found Family Superhero Quartet, also sometimes referred to as Marvel's first family, The Fantastic Four.

The film is directed by Marvel Television veteran, Wandavision, for example, Matt Schachman.

Screenplay credit, as with all of these films, is due to these four credited writers, and I'm guessing maybe one or two others, Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer.

It is based on the Fantastic Four characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, produced by Kevin Feige under the Marvel Studios banner, which is being retooled and moved back towards theatrical feature films away from the more saturated television landscape.

It is distributed by Disney, which owns Marvel, of course, and the film stars.

Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, aka Mr.

Fantastic.

Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, aka Invisible Woman.

She was great.

Ivan Mas Bachrak as Ben Grimm slash Thing, as he's ignominiously called.

Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm or the human torch.

Julia Gardner as Shalabal, Silver Surfer.

Ralph Einson as Galactus, and many more, including Paul Walterhauser as Mole Man.

Just, I really think we needed a little bit more of that tone that he brought, and I appreciated it.

Well done, Paul.

As always, the IMDB log line reads, forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, the Fantastic Four must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus and his enigmatic herald, Silver Surfer.

Lizzie, if you had to guess, how many Fantastic Four films had been filmed prior to this one being made?

Prior to this one.

Okay, well, we know at least three

because there was the one that we covered, which was the one from 2015.

And then I believe there were two prior to that that had the...

The Tim Story directed.

Was that the one with Yoan Griffith, Chris Evans, Jessica Alba?

Yep.

Okay.

And the one of those

surfer.

Yes, Michael Chicklis.

Yep.

And character actor Doug, whose name is escaping me.

Doug Jones.

Doug Jones.

Yes.

Thank you.

Who's wonderful?

Yes.

We have both of those.

There was actually a fourth film that was filmed, but it was never released.

We will talk about it a little bit today.

We discussed it briefly in our Hulk episode.

Two of said prior films were modest box office successes, the Tim Story adaptations.

They were not critically particularly well received, but they, I believe, were profitable.

The second film, less so than the first, and then the retool under Josh Trank that we will get to.

And the second film of those was Rise of the Silver Surfer, right?

That's right.

Now,

this franchise has had a really hard time getting to the screen successfully.

There's a filmed film that never saw the light of day or was never supposed to see the light of day.

There were two that, like, like, I would say

it's surprising Chris Evans made it out of those movies and into Captain America in a sense.

Yeah.

Because you could imagine those movies not really working and Marvel saying, you know what?

We'll just find another Chris.

This town's full of him.

And like throwing a different one in there, although he's obviously, he looks like Captain America.

And then the fourth one, the Josh Trank directed Fantastic Four,

I mean, really did kill his career.

I think it really halted Miles Teller's career in a big way.

Michael B.

Jordan had

stopped had Ryan Koogler there.

It's just like, you're good, man.

Come with me.

And they were fine.

I think it hurt Kate Mara.

Out of all of them, I think it probably hurt her the most.

Yeah.

So

it's a challenging franchise.

Hence our comments back in 2020.

I'm not, you know, we weren't sure if this was a movie that could be made.

The fans believed otherwise and have long believed because this comic book was kind of an underdog turnaround story from the beginning.

So, Lizzie, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Fantastic Four's origins, but they debuted in 1961.

So, they were a later addition into the Marvel universe than some of the earlier Stan Lee, Jack Kirby iterations.

And they were the first superhero team created by Stanley and Jack Kirby.

And one thing I've always found funny about them is how close they are to a Captain Planet-style powers representation, or how close Captain Planet is to them.

Like Earth, the thing, or thing, Wind, Sue Storm, Fire, Johnny Storm, and then stretch, Mr.

Fantastic Four.

Reed Richards.

Red Richards, yeah.

The first Fantastic Four is really fun.

And

I read it.

I had actually read it before when we covered Fantastic Four, but I reread it.

And it's fun for two reasons.

One, the story is fun.

And two, the advertisements targeting young teen boys in 1961 are hilarious.

Like door-to-door salesmen,

borderline multi-level marketing schemes for men, just very, and then like a chest of magic tricks.

And those are the ads that you get.

So the first Fantastic Four opens with the four already in possession of their powers going about their daily lives, which is a fun and media-res sort of opening that we more or less get in this film as well.

Reed Richards sends out the signal, which is a smoke signal.

It's a flare that turns into the number four.

And they proceed to make their way to him in the most destructive ways possible to show up their powers.

So Sue Storm, mildly so, right?

She's invisible.

She's kind of freaking people out, including the cab driver who's getting a ghostly, you know, order from the back seat.

And then Thing, who basically like rips up part of the street.

and then lazy rivers through the sewer system to get there and then just bursts back up to the street causing probably tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of of dollars of damage.

And then Johnny Storm, who ends up in the air with a nuclear missile on his tail, which Reed Richards has to use his stretch arms to grab and slingshot into the ocean so it doesn't hurt anybody.

And they all show up and they're like, what's going on, boss?

And he's like, it's not that pressing.

It's very, very funny.

So you basically then flash back to their origin story and it's so economical.

We got to go to space.

Why do we got to go to space?

Because the commies are going to go to space.

Does it have to be now?

It's got to be literally right now.

But we don't even have protocol ready.

Get in the ship.

What about the cosmic rays?

Damn the cosmic rays.

Oh shit.

It's a cosmic storm.

No.

And they just hit it and then they come back home and they're like, we're alive.

And then all of a sudden Sue becomes invisible and then Ben Grimm looks like.

thing and then Reed Richards stretches and then Johnny Storm turns on fire.

Which again, basically what they do in this movie and it works.

Exactly.

Very close.

And then they, so they're born, they come up with their special, they choose their names, I will say, which is

very fun.

And their first foe is the Mole Man.

So the comic comes out in 1961.

And I don't think Stan Lee, from what he said about it, was expecting much to come of it.

It's kind of this like funny family.

They bicker, they squabble, they have good senses of humor.

They're well-drawn characters.

But it's a surprise success.

He starts getting fan mail and he'd been talking about leaving comics, and all of a sudden he can't.

And so they start introducing more characters.

And then, of course, you get their most famous villain, Doctor Doom.

And then eventually you get to Galactus Lizzy.

That's not the early villain.

They start small and then they make their way to this much larger creature, basically.

But you can see, as you pointed out, a lot of elements of Fantastic Four number one, including like the Atomic Age setting, I think a lot of the stylistic choices, the way that they set up the story in this comic book movie, which I do think is a pretty big departure from some of the

ways that comic book movies had been set up in the late 2007, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, where it was like, let's go with the Frank Miller, let's go with the Darker, let's look at Fantastic Four as body horror.

This is very much the opposite.

Right.

Or like, we have to do the origin story.

We have to learn how they got these powers and how it transformed them.

And no, you don't.

Yeah.

So let's talk about a character that was born, not actually in the comic, but in one of the adaptations.

So there's a really cute robot in this movie, Lizzie.

I'm sure you noticed.

Love the robot.

The robot's name is Herbie.

Very rude of you not to remember.

Sorry.

It's okay.

I wouldn't have remembered if I hadn't done this research.

So basically, there was a show in 1967.

Hannah Barbera did a cartoon of the Fantastic Four, 20 episodes.

That's the first adaptation.

And then in the 1970s, we kind of start entering this Byzantine world of character rights.

And so in 78, they're going to do another animated adaptation.

It's called The New Fantastic Four, but one member's missing, and it's Johnny Storm.

Lizzie, any guesses why Johnny Storm might not be available for a TV series at this point in time?

Because he's on fire, and it might be hard.

That was

one theory.

One fun theory is that Johnny Storm was not appropriate for television because children would set themselves on fire to emulate him.

That's an urban legend.

The problem was,

basically, Marvel had licensed the rights to the human torch to Universal, so they wouldn't sell the rights to NBC for the show.

So Herbie is a character who is created for the television series, and then he gets added into the comics.

And that is why we have Herbie in

this feature film.

And it makes sense given the success of Star Wars and R2D2 around that point in time, too.

All right, so we're coming up on the paywall, but I really, really quickly want to give you guys the download on this version of the film that didn't, you know, get to see the light of day.

So,

mid-1980s, German producer Bernd Eichender,

Constantine Film, I'm sure you've seen their name, one of the biggest film production companies out of Germany.

They secure a six-year option from Marvel for the rights to the Fantastic Four for $250,000.

It's like the bargain basement deals, deals, deals days of Marvel licensing their characters.

Constantine had done fantasy films, Neverending Story.

He has the rights to Fantastic Four, Mole Man, Silver Surfer, a few others.

Clock is ticking.

No one wants to make this movie because it's going to be too expensive.

Warner Brothers, Columbia, he gets meetings, he gets nibbles, but everybody knows we cannot afford to make this.

Superman 4 Quest for Peace had just bombed at the box office.

Nothing's going on in comics right now.

Meanwhile, as we head into the early 90s, all of a sudden comics start heating up again, as we've discussed, Lizzie.

James Cameron's going to do a comic book movie.

Wesley, you know, Blade is going to be done.

All of these different versions of the movies that never ended up getting making.

And so Marvel realizes they want their rights back so they can sell them for much more.

So with a ticking clock, Eichinger does something really reckless.

He goes to Roger Corman.

And they say, okay, yeah, we can do this movie for $1 million.

And they rush into production.

And there's a documentary you guys should watch called Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four.

I won't give away too much here, but Lizzie, 21-day shoot.

21 days.

Everybody pours their hearts into it.

People, 21 days on a superhero film, they literally put their own.

That's the same number of days I had on.

the first feature film I did.

No.

Zero action.

It has one action sequence, Chris.

Don't sell yourself short.

That's right.

There are two children who kiss.

Now,

that is the sequence.

That's not the action.

There's skateboarding action.

A kid breaks his arm.

You creep.

They desperately try to finish it.

Marvel and Stanley are disowning it publicly.

And so they set a Mall of America premiere on January 19th, 1994.

Was it premiering next to Pasta Mania?

I think it was.

And that's where they ate their sorrows because Marvel issued a cease and desist.

Producer Avia Rodd bought every copy of the film from Corman just to kill it.

Wow.

Basically, set the film on fire.

It eventually got leaked.

And at a certain point, you know, bootleg copies were going around.

But this was the first instance of people really believing, okay, maybe you just can't adapt this for the big screen.

Well, maybe not in 21 days, but that's okay.

No.

Yeah, exactly.

So then we get to the Tim Story version in the mid-2000s.

This is...

the first comic book renaissance.

We're following Spider-Man, X-Men.

It's not a success at those levels.

It's not a kind of failure at the same way that Hulk was considered to be, although I prefer Hulk by a mile.

But the second film does not light the world on fire.

It falls apart.

And then, of course, we go into the retooling of comic book movies in the darkest, most brooding.

Basically, everyone says, just, can Christopher Nolan do it?

Please, can Christopher Nolan do it?

Just let Christopher Nolan do it.

And Josh Trang was like, I'll do it.

I hate superheroes, but I'll do it.

And then he decided not to do it, and he locked himself in his trailer and decided not to do it.

But long story short, Josh Trank gets hired after directing Chronicle, which is a really fun movie.

That's great.

Which is an angsty teenage superhero movie.

Makes perfect sense to hire him.

It seems like he is very much over his head.

This is a $100-plus million-dollar movie.

Akiva Goldsman's producing, I believe, Simon Kinberg was on the movie at this point as well.

You can listen to our episodes.

There's reshoots.

The director and the studio have dueling cuts.

Everything is falling apart.

There's all of these rumors that like Trank won't leave his trailer, Trank won't leave his house.

The movie comes out and it is probably the worst reviewed movie superhero film of that era.

It's rough.

And then Josh took to the Twitter sphere.

He did.

And I would say destroyed any chance of maybe working with anybody else involved again after that point.

I mean, so basically what happened as I remember it was that he came out and he basically was just like, none of this is my fault.

I had a great version of this movie.

They wouldn't let me release it.

You'll never see it.

And he just fully put his thumb in the eye of the studio.

Yeah.

The problem was that it was the day of the release.

That's right.

And so

it would lead into a bunch of lawsuits.

And it sounds like, honestly, I do actually have a lot of sympathy.

It sounds like a miserable time in his life.

And he was completely over his head and isolated.

That movie loses the studio $100 million.

Kate Mara never saw the movie.

She has said she has not seen it until this day.

My guess was this movie wasn't going to be made again.

But then Disney bought Fox in 2019.

The Wrights finally reverted back to Marvel.

The Wrights come home.

And development began on this Fantastic Four.

So, Lizzie, let's get back to this Fantastic Four.

To hear the rest of this episode, where Chris and Lizzie give their reviews on the Fantastic Four first steps, go ahead and join our Patreon at the $5 tier or above.

Otherwise, we'll see you on Monday for the Shawshank Redemption.

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