Fantastic Failings, The Key to a Successful Fantastic Four is in it's Foundations

Welcome back to another edition of Comic Relief! where I talk about all the goings on in the nerd world!
So the other day I was in a discussion on one of the more controversial topics in the comic book movie industry of the Fox ownership on X men and Fantastic Four, two of the great teams that have defined Marvel history. While pretty much everyone wants to see the rights of these properties return to Marvel or a collaboration to be struck between the two companies for the X franchise, there is not a lot of love for the handling of the Fantastic Four as a franchise. Between the first two films starring a pre Cap Chris Evans and Jessica Alba's body (for she did not do much acting in it), and the most recent one with quite possibly the strongest cast one could hope for (but still bombing horrifically both in the box office and the critics), the world has yet to be blown away by a Fantastic Four film, and frankly it's hard to blame them. So this begs to question: what exactly did the studio do wrong in their approach?

In an era where the super genre is such a powerhouse, why is it so difficult to make a film on the team that made Super heroes cool again (most don't realize this but the revival of super hero books in Marvel was a result of Stan Lee writing the first Fantastic Four book)? Well the biggest problem is that they aren't staying true to the team they are writing. As I said super heroes are this HUGE  box office titan at the moment, and as such the studios want to take that aspect of the team and capitalize it. That's honestly the biggest problem with it though because outside of some individual affiliations to other super hero teams, the Fantastic Four aren't so much super heroes so much as super powered dimensional/space explorers.

Super hero films, even at their best, are rather formulaic. Introduce good guy, show good guy morals, introduce villain, have an initial clash between hero and villain, have hero question his morals, then a final clash that results in the hero overcoming his villain. While there are some minor twists and turns made in these films, that standard outline tends to fit most of them. Confining the Fantastic Four to this formula really hurts them as they are individuals as well as a team. While Avengers managed to make a similar formula mentioned before work, that was only after 5 movies of world building. The Fantastic Four are together from the very start and as such need to have every character equally explored while simultaneously focusing on their team dynamic. Also establishing a villain for the Fantastic Four should not be a one movie ordeal (Dr Doom is a great and iconic villain, but in all honesty using him in the first film is an insult to his character when you should build him and his rivalry to Reed Richards).

Now That The Problem Is Out There, The Question Is Of Course: How Do You Fix It?

Well the first answer to this problem is to eliminate it from the genre of film entirely. A franchise like Fantastic Four with so much depth and source material requires time and care to properly adapt. Instead, they should source a budget for an HBO or Netflix budget series that focuses on the Fantastic Four traversing space, time, and dimensions. If anything you could turn Fantastic Four into a pseudo Doctor Who or Start Trek experience where traversing through reality allows them to explore their own humanity.

This brings me to my next point ultimately, while it is a good to bring in iconic antagonists from their respective universe (Dr Doom, Galactus, Mole Man etc.) fighting "super villains" should not be the focus of the show so much as they make enemies on their travels. The Fantastic Four should be first and foremost explorers, and expanding to new territory has consequences of it's own that don't require and outright villain to embody them. As a reminder to the very first point I made, the Fantastic Four aren't conventional super heroes. Very similar to the first super hero films from the early 00's (X-men, Spider-man, The Punisher) The Fantastic Four was written as a super hero that was afraid to fully embrace the standard super hero archetype (for the reason why read my Stan Lee celebration article), and honestly that's a HUGE part of it's charm.  

Another thing that could help is a simple re-branding too. A few years back, renowned comic writer, Johnathan Hickman, wrote a run called The Future Foundation which is considered to be one of the best Fantastic Four runs ever written. 

Anyways that pretty much lays out everything I have to say on the matter. The Fantastic Four deserves a decent portrayal on film (as does Victor Von Doom... it's okay Victor, I still take you seriously despite how they've treated you). 

This has been another edition of Comic Relief!  Next time I will talk about the first issue of Secret Empire.