By Drew Dietsch
| Published 28 seconds ago
It’s tough to find a lot of people who are willing to speak fondly about Fantastic Four (2015). Directed and co-written by Josh Trank, this one-and-done outing with Marvel’s First Family is remembered as little more than a punchline these days. It was an infamous failure that is destined for irrelevance, especially after the success of the MCU’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
So, I guess I have to be one of the only idiots out here arguing for it. But, I’m not even doing that. Instead, I recognize that Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four was never going to go over with audiences, but the version that exists is a perversion of what the movie wanted to be.
Cowardly Creative Changes
It’s clear that Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four wanted to take the Marvel comic book concept and filter it through a very specific and bold genre riff: a horror movie. Watching the original trailer hints more at co-writer Jeremy Slater and Trank’s original desire to use the Fantastic Four in a “scientific exploration gone too far” tale in the vein of The Fly or Altered States.
Unfortunately, the studio got cold feet with this take that they had okayed, and they began trying to “fix” the movie with reshoots and cuts. It left Fantastic Four as a broken mess with big tonal shifts and weakened characters. From most accounts, Josh Trank did not have a good relationship with the studio once they kept changing the movie.
In all honesty, I’m on his side. The studio wanted Fantastic Four to take a dark, serious route after seeing the massive success from Nolan’s gritty take on Batman. They staked that horse and backed Josh Trank’s vision, but then decided to stick their cowardly fingers into the pie because they were afraid it was too hot.
Fantastic Fail for the Right Reasons
I wish we could see what the true version of Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four would have been, because the bits that remain in the mangled final version of the film are things that I actually like. I don’t have any sort of fealty to any comic book property as long as the take you come up with feels exciting and interesting on its own. So, when Fantastic Four has Doctor Doom riffing on Scanners by telekinetically exploding some heads? I’m here for it!
But, like I said, I know that kind of take with a big, beloved property like the Fantastic Four was always going to fail for a wide audience. Josh Trank had a cool iteration for someone like me who loves horror movies, David Cronenberg, and doesn’t care about the Fantastic Four. That’s more niche than what the studio wanted, so they bastardized the project in a misguided attempt to put wings on a pig.
So I wish Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four had been the version it wanted to be, releasing in theaters in that form, still assuredly getting rejected by the mainstream, but given a much better chance at being reevaluated and embraced with time. That won’t ever happen because the studio has left us with a malformed patchwork of a panic job that nobody feels strongly enough about to stand up for.
It might not be a popular opinion, but Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four and David Ayer’s Suicide Squad deserved to be the committed takes they set out to be. At least their perceived failures would be honest ones.
