The ‘Fantastic Four’ Producer Still Wants a Sequel

We live in a golden age of superhero cinema, but the sad fact of the matter is that they can’t all be winners. Sometimes these movies divide audiences into “love it” and “hate it” camps, like Batman v Superman or Iron Man 3 did, and sometimes we all basically come together as a culture and agree that yes, the 2015 Fantastic Four reboot sucked.

Heck, even the film’s producer, Simon Kinberg, admitted it in an interview this week. 

“We didn’t make a good movie,“ Simon Kinberg told Den of Geek, “and the world voted, and I think they probably voted correctly. And you can’t make a good movie every time out – not everybody does. We actually have a pretty good batting average, all things considered. But I think we made many mistakes when we made that movie – mistakes that we learned from and we wouldn’t repeat.”

Still, Simon Kinberg thinks there is hope for the Fantastic Four franchise, and even with the exact same cast as Josh Trank’s ill-fated reboot. The film featured an acclaimed cast of actors – including Miles Teller (Whiplash), Michael B. Jordan (Creed), Jamie Bell (The Adventures of Tintin) and Kate Mara (House of Cards) – and hardly anybody seems to think that the movie was their fault. Instead, a plodding plot and unnecessarily dark tone were singled out as the problematic factors.

20th Century Fox

Also: Six Reasons Why Roger Corman’s ‘Fantastic Four’ Was Better Than The Reboot

Simon Kinberg seems to be aware of those problems, adding “We’ll try to be truer to the essence of the tone of Fantastic Four, which is completely – well, not completely, but largely – distinct from the X-Men, which is brighter, funner, more optimistic tone. I think we tried to make a darker Fantastic Four movie, which seemed like a radical idea but we were kind of messing with the DNA of the actual comic instead of trusting the DNA of the comic.”

20th Century Fox doesn’t have an impressive history of “trusting the DNA” of their comic book properties. Their first few X-Men movies took major liberties with the comics, from the costumes to the characters, and although there were a lot of things those films did get right, the franchise has been forced to produce multiple prequels in order to finally set up a world that looks more like the comic book series the fans loved in the first place. And although Deadpool became one of the most successful R-rated movies of all time specifically because it adhered closely to the comic book’s tone, the studio refused to make the movie for years for exactly that same reason.

Hopefully the success of Deadpool will remind 20th Century Fox that the comic books are popular for a reason, and that although some changes are always necessary when adapting a story for a different medium, it is hardly ever a good idea to change the fundamental building blocks of the original.

We DO want another Fantastic Four movie. But does this version deserve another chance, or would it be best to let the franchise idle again and give a new filmmaker a clean slate to work with?

We’ll see.

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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Top Photo: 20th Century Fox