7 Things About Fant4stic

1. Ohana Means Family

Vin Diesel took what was a topical retelling of Point Break, swapping surf boards for import tuners, and turned it into a multi-billion dollar franchise with a single word, family. It's cliche, it's trope, and slapped on the front of a smash em up, skimpy dressed girls, and flashy cars movie it's as deep as a Deepak Choprah quote on a plastic lunchbox. But the idea of family pervades the series, and it has elevated it above the rest of the smash em up car chase genre. Fantastic Four should be eyeballs deep in this theme since they are literally a family. Two are married, one is a brother, and the last is a long time friend of the leader.

We instead have antagonistic and abrasive relationships, with characters who are just seemingly introduced to each other and then expected to just rocket off as a family unit. This might be surmountable if the studios were willing to make both Reed and Sue older, instead of looking for hot young attractive starlets to play Sue, and then making them pre-marriage, so that again, Sue is available.

Likewise, Sue and Johnny are siblings, and should get along like siblings. They are more like cousins who meet maybe once a year at the family get together. Fail.

Finally, Reed and Ben Grimm have been friends for years. They have the sort of friendship that can last through school, through marriage, through cosmic disaster, and personal mutation. Reed and Ben should be like Frodo and Samwise. They aren't.

2. Victor von Doom

The fearful hand of the studios and the execs hover closely over Victor von Doom. They are terrified of him, not for what he is or what he can do, but for his background. In the source material, Doom isn't just a genius with hypertech armor and gadgets, he is also a magic user with deals with literal demons and devils. He is charismatic, and has the acumen and competence to run a nation. The studios are terrified of all of these things. So, they make the mistake of tying the villain's hands. He isn't a magic user, he rarely gets to keep his name, and he is more often a tech-psychopath.

We can see that Doom should work. He should be equal parts Tony Stark, Steven Strange, and an Eastern European Frank Underwood. Combine technology, magic, and political deviousness and Victor von Doom should come across as being the originator of the term Doom as a negative, on par with Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot, just way more tech savvy and successful.

3. Villainy

Heroes are a dime a dozen, the Fantastic Four are a trope team of a Brain, a Brawn, a Lancer, and a Token Girl. A good villain defines a hero, and a great villain defines a series. Victor von Doom, as mentioned, routinely fails as he is the go to bad guy, and as mentioned in point 2, the studios are never willing to go all the way to make Doom the villain he needs to be. The Fantastic Four are thus latched to a single villain, one that doesn't thematically deliver, and they never move past that. It would be like if Batman only had one villain in every movie, if he had to fight Riddler over and over, and never advanced past that point.

The Fantastic Four have fought impressive foes, but someone from this roster needs to be drug out and showcased, instead of Doom. Galactus is epic, Devos the Devastator or Kang the Conquerer would give a Guardians of the Galaxy vibe, along with the Kree or the Skrull.

Marvel has succeeded magnificently with this, bringing out such B-List villains as Loki, or the Mandarin.

4. Theme

One of the big areas where DC fails and the MCU has prospered is the effective use of theme. Every movie in the DC cinematic universe is painted with the Batman grimdark brush. Contrast where each of the Avengers comes from a different theme, Cap could be a stand in for a political espionage thriller, Ironman is the genre savvy action hero, Thor is fantastic with alien worlds and alien enemies, and and on down into the nitty gritty of Agents of Shield, and the comic relief of characters like Ant-Man.

Fantastic Four doesn't have a theme other than blue-washed teen angst. It's not an effective theme or filter for a group of heroes known as the Fantastic Four. The previous incarnation of the team looked better, if campy, and weren't washed out. Thus, the Fantastic Four aren't going to hit their own until they find their own theme, and own it. I think that if the franchise ventured towards the actual fantastic it could save them, and that means lurching away from the CW crowd, and towards Dr Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy.

5. Special Effects

Venturing back into theme, the Fantastic Four don't have their own look. The source material was hopelessly generic, with blue spandex bodysuits. Hollywood has shown that it can take godawful comic costumes and fix them, but those people never seem to come close to the franchise. They either cleave to the source material and keep terrible looks, or they work back on that teen angst business, and again, just look terrible. The same goes for the visual effects, with the most important being Thing. One of the most defining images of the Fantastic Four is three norms and Thing, there in the back, dropping the best team photo bomb, pic after pic.

If the franchise could find it's theme, it could easily find it's look.

6. The Marvel Cinematic Universe

The MCU has changed the game for the superhero movies, and ultimately, The Fantastic Four are relics, trapped in the previous generation of superhero flicks. The other unfortunate implication is that as Fox owns the Fantastic Four, and nothing of the existing MCU, the chance of a solid movie coming out are slim to none. The best thing that could happen would be for Fox to sell the rights to the FF back to Marvel/Disney, allowing them to bring the Fantastic Four into the MCU, instead of leaving them forever wedged outside of it.

Reed Richards needs to be rubbing elbows with Stephen Strange and Tony Stark, instead of facing Doom again, and again, and again.

Likewise, the potential of a Doom/Loki/etc team up should be orgasmically evil.

7. Source Material

Finally, the source material should be considered. The Fantastic Four come from a second string comic book series, one that was discontinued in 2015.

For me, that's sort of a mic drop.