Were the original Fantastic Four films actually good? Michael Chiklis speaks out on the negative reviews that plagued the original duology.
Leading up to the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, there was a surge of nostalgia for the original Fantastic Four films of the early 2000s. While some of the praise was simply used to attack the new film, such as remarking how good Michael Chiklis’ practical suit looked while Marvel was using CGI for Ebon Moss-Bachrach, there seemed to be a genuine resurgence of love for these classic tales of heroism.
The cast of the original Fantastic Four movies have recently begun to speak out about this wave of praise heaped on their films. The latest is The Thing’s actor Michael Chiklis. While speaking to Collider, the actor remarks that he thinks the critics “got it wrong” when it came to the films, and that their box office gross proves that not everyone hated the films.
“There were a lot of people, I think, critically who got it wrong. They really maligned our films, and they were very underrated considering… they were very loved by the audience. It was one of those cases where critics weren’t great to those films, but the audience was, and that still remains.”
“I’ve always sort of quietly gone like, okay, say what you want to say, but the people see it. And now all these years later, people are sort of acknowledging like, hey, these films are family-friendly, fun movies… they got a lot right. They may be imperfect, but they’re really good movies.”
Was Fantastic Four Actually Good?
It’s important to note the context during which the original Fantastic Four came out. The film was placed smack-dab in an era of superhero movies getting darker with projects like Blade, X-Men and even leading up to the original Iron Man. For as good as the performances by actors like Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis were, it was an undeniably cheesy and kid friendly entry in the space.
And for as much as the original Fantastic Four did right, it did a lot of things wrong. Quite a lot of the jokes (especially the infamous Invisible Woman strip scene) didn’t age well, and the writing of Doctor Doom fell flat. So while Michael Chiklis is right in them being films that many look back on fondly, they’re certainly far from perfect on a technical level.
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