The Fantastic Four (1994)

Director: Oley Sassone

Cast: Alex Hyde-White, Jay Underwood, Rebecca Staab, Michael Bailey Smith

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Technically, none of us should have seen it, I suppose.

Did I Like It: It’s not great, but the real question is: Was it really bad enough to get buried in the forgotten realms of bootleg videos sold for years at comic book conventions*?

Probably not. It certainly has less of a polish than other superhero films of the era. It wouldn’t measure up against Batman Forever (1995) released only a year later, but then again, anything that might have made The Shadow (1994) look like a classier picture is far from a deal breaker in my book.

This was clearly a b-production, but I never felt it was made with anything less than the best of intentions. It would not have damaged the brand. In fact, it might have been right at home among some second-string genre pictures, especially of a decade earlier. It’s a fair sight better than Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), and in all honesty the movie I kept thinking about as things progressed was Masters of the Universe (1987)**. The Fantastic Four is very much in the same league as that film. Then again, this film is resolute in giving us the best Fantastic Four story available at its budget, and never bothers to cheap out and make large parts of the story about some down-to-earth teens.

So, definitely worthy of release, if not quite demanding of adoration.

It would have made a fine—“fine” will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting in this sentence—pilot for an hour-long FF television series that we really never got to see. That show might have even grown into itself over time.

Although, I really could have gone without Reed (Hyde-White) and Sue (Staab) making googly eyes at each other while the latter was still a child (Mercedes McNab). But that hardly warrants the film going unreleased. It lifts right out, and would still only make it the third most problematic film of 1994, behind Ace Ventura: Pet Detective*** and whatever movie Woody Allen made that year.

*The less said about my dear, departed Batgirl, the better off we’ll all be.

**Boy, The Cannon Group is really taking a beating in this review, especially since they had nothing to do with the film in question.

**Boy, the pre-Friends work of Courtney Cox is really taking a beating in this review.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

Director: Tim Story

Cast: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis

Have I Seen it Before: Considering I only just recently got around to to watching Fantastic Four (2005), it’s a safe bet that I’m only just now coming around to this one.

Did I Like It: This will sound a bit like damning with faint praise, but there is something so refreshing about a superhero movie—especially one of the mid-2000s—that is supremely un bothered by reckoning in any way with whatever is going on in the world at that moment. 9/11 is nowhere in sight. Afghanistan and Iraq are things the film can’t even bring itself to comprehend. The often thwarted* fight for gay rights doesn’t mean anything in a world with at least four verifiable superheroes.

At the time, especially with Nolan, Raimi, and (no judgments, at least in this context) Bryan Singer at the top of this form, it would make the film seem less than ambitious. After nearly two decades of genre films bending over backwards to be somehow relevant, this film just exists. It can just be enjoyed, and the fact that it isn’t weighed down by feeling the need to sell a mind-numbing soundtrack album (I’m looking in your direction, Daredevil (2003)).

Indeed, it’s relatively forgotten in the context of the glut of superhero movies made since X-Men (2000). Fans don’t debate about its relative merits. When the series was rebooted with Fantastic Four (2015), people weren’t bothered by losing this cast. With the characters now folding into the Marvel Cinematic Universe**, this film is unlikely to be celebrated in any kind of 20th anniversary.

It may not be the greatest superhero film ever made, but I’m struggling to think of another film in the genre that I don’t feel obligated to defend, or adore, or be ashamed of.

*And may yet still be. Yikes, what a mess we’ve made of things.

**Don’t look now, but there’s more plot similarities between this film and The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) than I think anyone is ready to talk about. Far more than the similarities one might find between Batman (1989) and The Dark Knight (2008).

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Director: Matt Shakman

Cast: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. I remain sort of ambivalent about the Tim Story-directed films of the mid-aughts, so any degree of comparison to this and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) is largely going to miss me.

Did I Like It: With Lora not going with me, I made the somewhat unusual decision to take in the film in 3D. But not only that, I opted for MX4D, one of these immersive experiences meant to up-charge/save theatrical exhibition and would have absolutely delighted William Castle, were he still with us. I’m not sure how I feel about the experience, getting shot with streaks of air having my chair occasionally punch me in the posterior certainly would keep me awake through most films. Scorsese once complained that the glut of superhero movies are less cinema than theme park rides. It’s entirely possible that this might be the way to take in the film.

As far as the film is concerned, I was bracing myself for an Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) or Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantummania (2023) situation, where I would have to sit patiently through a glut of exposition ahead of next year’s Avengers: Doomsday, but the film does a valiant effort of making the film focus on its own story. I would say there are only two shots specifically looking ahead, and one of them appears in one of the post-credit tags.

The retro-futuristic world on display is a delight. Everyone’s a sexy as the cast of Mad Men and nobody’s racist, and we can travel faster than light? Sign me up. I might want more of this feeling, but there are stray moments where the film delightfully feels like it was made in the 60s.

The cast is good, especially Moss-Bachrach, who never lets the illusion of Ben Grimm stand in the way of a charming performance, and Kirby, who is the beating heart of the film and never once content to “just be the girl on the team.”

The one thing I’m left feeling as the film ended, though, is that the whole affair felt slight, almost to the point of being withholding. Maybe word that the film was re-cut recently (and, indeed, lost an entire performance by John Malkovich in the process) sticks in my mind, but I could have used more time in this world and with these characters. We might complain about these cinematic confections being overloaded with plot and bombast, but it may take me a while to grow re-accustomed with a big-budget entertainment that is content to focus on its own story and telling it to us as fast as we’re able to comprehend.

Fantastic Four (2005)

Director: Tim Story

Cast: loan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis

Have I Seen It Before: The reviews were middling, and there was plenty of other great stuff to watch that summer, so I somehow missed it during its theatrical run.

Theaters five way to DVDs, and I have the oddest, strongest memory of renting this film, watching bout twenty minutes of it, getting distracted by the types of things college kids get distracted by*, and never quite coming back to it until nearly 20 years later.

How in the hell did I watch Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four (2015) before I watched this? The mind boggles.

Did I Like It: I can kind of see where I lost interest in this, though. Where Trank’s effort is perpetual motion machine powered by misbegotten ideas, this film is content to not make anybody mad. In that first large era of superhero movies, that can be absolutely lethal in an attempt to revisit the film. or visit for the first time since. There are pop songs, and quick edits, and enough product placement to virtually guarantee the film was going to get a sequel, even if nobody bothered to show up.

It's the kind of perfunctory effort that reminds one of Daredevil (2003) and less of the resolutely individualistic efforts that helped X-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002) break out from the pack... and inspire every movie studio that can get their hands on an IP to churn out this kind of movie.

With First Steps coming down the pike, I was suddenly inspired to take this one in, but I can"t say I'm particularly inspired to re-watch Trank’s film, or catch the sequel to this one.

Maybe it's finally time for me to watch Corman's version. It was at least created not to fill a studio's obligation for a summer weekend.

*Don't get too excited: I'm mostly talking about going over polling numbers in support of a political party that was all but extinct even then.