Sunday, October 5, 2014

Fantastic Four

2005.  Marvel isn't yet part of the Disney monolith.  Their film rights are scattered among production companies.  Sony, through its Columbia subsidiary, has released Spider Man and its panned sequel.  Fox is in the middle of the first X-Men trilogy.  A film based on Marvel's original heroes, the Fantastic Four, makes perfect sense, and Fox delivers.... something godawful.  The writing is bad, the acting is bad, the plot is horrid and cliché.  Somehow it did well enough to churn out a sequel, but after that the series was canned, and when Fox decided to reboot (set to release in 2015), the negotiations with Disney/Marvel go so badly that Marvel cancels the Fantastic Four comics rather than provide even a little bit of promotion.

One day, the rights will all revert, and Wolverine can be an Avenger, and Spider Man can help Mr. Fantastic.  But not in this generation.  Instead we get dribble like this.

Fantastic Four
2005, 105 minutes, directed by Tim Story