Fantastic Four (2015) streaming on Disney+ should have launched the reboot of the series brilliantly. Instead, we ended up looking back at the 2005 film and its sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer in 2007 for the quality we missed. While those two films fared better in reviews and box office, that isn’t saying much. In both cases, the storylines were thin, the acting seemed forced and some of the dialogue was flat.
We understand that any good reboot needs a proper origin story. There must be a balance of development, action, and drama to blend into a film that resonates with the audience. You’ll have detractors no matter how you present it, but you aim for the common denominator. One only needs to look at the success of Captain Marvel (2019) to see how the formula works. True, Fantastic Four was released three years prior, but Marvel was successfully launching origin stories of Iron Man (2008), Thor (2011), and Captain America (2011) before this. Captain Marvel was the first female led film, and it proved, decisively, that even controversial casting, film topics, etc, can become blockbusters with the proper execution of said formula.
This film seemed to miss the superhero film workshop. It is slow. It has so much development going on before the action actually begins that by the time it does, you no longer care. You have a young, engaging cast that can’t liven up dialogue that is flat and meaningless. The entire execution from start to finish lacked anything viable to make this a successful film.
All one has to do in the 2015 reboot is look at the last scene of the film. Ben (Jamie Bell) says “it was Fantastic” and Reed (Miles Teller) immediately jumps on the word for their moniker. It was a throwaway line that summarized exactly what this film became… an opportunity thrown away by lackluster execution.