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).

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.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Strangely enough, I’ve somehow managed to avoid watching most of the series since starting these reviews. But this last weekend, I’m getting an oil change at one of those lightning fast, don’t-even-leave-your car joints. The guys doing the oil change were talking about superhero movies, and I just joined right in. One of them says this was the best of them all, and I was hard pressed to disagree. So it went near the top of my list to re-watch.

Did I Like It: It’s not hard to say that this is probably the best of the X-Men films*. It manages to weave together many of the elements that made X-Men (2000) and X2: X-Men United (2003) some of the early entries of the superhero boom, and the later films that managed to refresh the series with X-Men: First Class (2011). It even manages to avoid the particularly baffling multiple timelines that weighed down the series as it wore on… Mainly because this is the film that drove the timelines off the tracks.

But then again, as one of America’s fine purveyors of time travel nonsense, I fully approve of even that much.

It also helps that this film largely works. It may not be the bubbly 60s spy movie homage of First Class or the subtle homage to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)** that is X-Men United. It does owe a lot to The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and it may be the fact that at the moment I’m watching the Dirty Harry films, but Hugh Jackman has been spending the last twenty-five years just doing an Eastwood impression? It’s a pretty good one, sure, but… folks. That’s all he’s been doing.

That all reads like I’m picking at nits, but there were things that I found oddly affecting on this re-watch. And it only kind of has to do with the fact that the whole plot focuses on a megalomaniacal titan of the tech industry (Peter Dinklage) yanking a little too hard on the ear of the president (Mark Camacho) to bring us all to our inevitable doom.

All right, maybe it’s a bit more than kind of, but there’s other stuff here. I’m mainly focusing on the lost Charles Xavier as portrayed by McAvoy. He’s selfish and broken in a world where the only rational response would be to be selfish and broken. Who’s the only man in the entire multiverse who can set him right? The older, wiser Xavier as portrayed by Patrick Stewart. Hell, if I can’t have my future self set myself on the right track, I’d take any number of characters played by Patrick Stewart.

*If one ignores Logan (2017). We’re not going crazy here.

**I’ll die on this hill, but I probably won’t elaborate on it, unless I need to beef up the word count of this review.

Daredevil (2003)

Director: Mark Steven Johnson

Cast: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Michael Clarke Duncan, Colin Farrell

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. For reasons I can’t possibly even fathom, I even bought the soundtrack (in those final years when people went out and bought soundtrack albums on disc after seeing a movie). This is why I can karaoke Evanesence’s “My Immortal” without looking at the words*.

I’ve seen it more than a few times, and even went straight from getting a paycheck at Staples once twenty years ago to pick up a copy of the director’s cut—now with 100% more Coolio—but I can’t imagine I would have ever watched the film again, if it weren’t for Jennifer Garner being thoroughly charming in her more-than-a-cameo role in this summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).

Did I Like It: I knew I wasn’t going to like it even before I pressed play. While the moment when the movie came out was when I was most into the Matt Murdock (Affleck) character that I was ever going to be, I remember thinking that the meet-cute/fight scene between Affleck and Garner was one of the most awkwardly staged sequences ever shot.

I had somehow forgotten that almost every other element of the film doesn’t work, either. There are a few moments where the film seems fleetingly interested in depicting the challenges a blind man (regardless of how much he can actually see) might face. Far too many plot lines from decades worth of Daredevil** are included here for this to have any hope of being anything more than an unappetizing mystery loaf of a movie. One gets the sense that the filmmakers tend to agree, hence why leaden voice over narration from Affleck permeates the film like a fart that just won’t dissipate.

Every performer either seems like they want to be almost anywhere else, or trying their best to be a good sport, as this will hopefully lead to some other, better films. The entire affair seems blithely designed to get a reasonable return on the investment at a time when few movies are expected to do well, and to be able to make a few extra bucks on that aforementioned soundtrack album. It accomplished both of those modest goals.

*Okay, fine. You twisted my arm. It’s only partially how I’m able to do that.

**Also, and I can’t imagine I’m going to find a venue to express this deeply held thought anywhere else. Shouldn’t the billionaire, ultimately thrill-seeking man who uses fear as a weapon be called Daredevil - The Man Without Fear, and the blind guy with sonar powers be called Batman? If Affleck is capable of learning lessons—and there is evidence to suggest that he cannot—then maybe he has finally worked this one out.

Blade (1998)

Director: Stephen Norrington

Cast: Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff, Kris Kirstofferson, N’Bushe Wright

Have I Seen it Before: I think so. If I truly have, it largely disappeared from my memory. That can’t be a good sign, right?

Did I Like It: So many people view this as an edgy vanguard of the era of superhero movies that was to follow, and all I’m left with is trying to figure out precisely why. The Daywalker (Snipes) is such an obscure character in the realm of comics, even now. It wasn’t exactly like the mere notion of seeing the character depicted on screen filled us with collective wonder.

The early CGI effects are the stuff of B movies in retrospect so much so to the point that I have a hard time imagining we weren’t watching vampires explode in polygonal eruptions of viscera and thinking that New Line wasn’t particularly interested in the film succeeded.

It’s basically a very average action movie. In fact, I might even venture to say that it is the last of the great, mindless action movies that were king in the 1980s before they inevitably started hiding out exclusively in the direct-to-video marketing.

So from where do all of these positive memories come from? It exists almost solely in Wesley Snipes’ persona. He never broods, even when another movie might be forgiven for defaulting to brooding. If anything, he seems to be of the opinion that he’s in an entirely different movie than the rest of the characters. That sounds like a criticism, but twenty-five years later the crowd with which I saw the film may have lost patience with most of the film over two hours (or at least wish that Guillermo del Toro had directed the entire series), we may have groaned with every attempt at effects (“special” doesn’t really apply), but we all laughed with every quip Snipes had to offer.

Is that enough for an entire movie? Maybe, but just by an inch.

Deadpool (2016)

Director: Tim Miller

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T.J. Miller

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Recently I’ve been trying to get over my physical media absolutism, if for no other reason than digital copies have been included with a lot of the discs I have bought over the years, and I’ve just been letting them languish as flyers in cases for so long. Incidentally? Anything now owned by Disney—including the Fox X-Men films, like Deadpool—will let you redeem your digital codes long after a possible expiration date is listed. Anything owned by Warner Bros. won’t let you even think about it. In fact, if you try to redeem a a GIF of David Zaslav appears on the screen and suggests you have an improper relationship with your mother.

Did I Like It: As I began this re-watch, I was honestly surprised that I haven’t watched this one since starting these reviews. But then I kind of got it. While Wade Wilson is a unique presence in comic book films, his humor works best on initial viewing, and on subsequent re-watches begins to resemble the noises—but not the material—of a Robin Williams stand up routine at best, or the ill-fated “Mr. Monopoly” bit from Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995). Those might be two extremes, but the snesible middle ground may be to describe the whole affair as an attempt to jam a mid-2000s Judd Apatow comedy into the CGI-laden trappings of a superhero movie. Even seven years ago was Judd Apatow still making Judd Apatow comedies?

The film works at its best when it leans less on the merc’s mouth and more on trying to subvert expectations, especially where its awareness that it must be a cheaper version of the X-Men movies that haphazardly inspired it. Luckily, there are more than enough of those moments to make the entire film something more enjoyable than a chore.

Deadpool 2 (2018)

Director: David Leitch

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Zazie Beetz

Have I Seen it Before: Yep.

Did I Like It: Yes. Could have definitely been a drag, but it fires on all cylinders, and even… Well, give me a second on that thought.

Let’s start our discussion with a few questions. How many comedy sequels are just as good as the predecessor? I’ll wait. Like, maybe Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)? Debatable. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)? I’d give a resounding, even combative yes here, but would you even place that series exclusively in the realm of comedy? 

Let’s widen the lens a little bit. How many comedy sequels are even watchable? Ghostbusters 2 (1989)? Some would say no, but I think they’re wrong. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2014)? Again arguable, but it’s hard not to notice the precipitous drop in quality.

For each of these possible answers, there are just as many that are absolute train wrecks. Caddyshack II (1988). Blues Brothers 2000 (1998, for some reason). The Whole Ten Yards (2004). Analyze That (2002). More Fockers than you can shake a tree at.

Okay, now let’s ask the question that seems silly on spec: How many comedy sequels are better than their original?

Yeah, I’m having a hard time coming up with anything. Which makes this follow-up all the more miraculous. While the original Deadpool (2016) was a shock and a surprise, given that mainstream culture had next to no awareness of the character beyond a pale imitation injected into the perfectly forgettable X-Men: Origins: Wolverine (2009). But here, the manic sense of fun pulled directly from the source material is not watered-down and in fact intensified.

The beating, weepy heart of Deadpool/Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds, the sing movie star most in touch with his id) is on full display, miraculously giving him an emotional arc while still managing to keep his edge sharp. He defends abused kids, he loves the people around him fully, and still manages to teabag Josh Brolin in the process.

If the character does end up a casualty of Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, that’d be a shame. A third movie would really be something else.

Dark Phoenix (2019)

Director: Simon Kinberg

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Sophie Turner

Have I Seen it Before: This is usually the part in these reviews where I make a joke about how a film is entirely too much like what came before it for me to label it a truly new experience. It will be incredibly difficult to not make a remark like that here.

Did I Like It: As much as I tried to avoid that above refrain, try as I might, I can’t say I’m 100 percent on board with this.

There should be a moratorium on adapting year-long epic comic book arcs into movies that can not (by studio mandate) run over 180 minutes of screen time. Superman movies have failed over a couple of formats to harness whatever was interesting about the death and rebirth of the Last Son of Krypton. Batman even managed to stumble a little bit trying to mash together Knightfall, No Man’s Land, and The Dark Knight Returns in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). And now the X-Men series have failed twice to capture the Dark Phoenix saga after two tries in less than fifteen years. These stories need longer to breath, which is why, ironically enough the most effective adaptation of the Phoenix saga actually occurs in the sixth season of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer.”

I’m not sure if Dark Phoenix fails as aggressively as X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), but it certainly trips up in new ways. The story is listless, being somewhat about an alien invasion story, and somewhat about the same set of characters we met in X-Men: First Class (2006). Matters are not helped by Hans Zimmer appearing to phone in his score, where 20th Century Fox (and now, presumably, Disney) fully owns the rousing John Ottman scores from the better films in this series.

There are some things to enjoy, here. McAvoy and Fassbender still prove equal to the task of filling the shoes of Stewart and McKellan. To be fair, that’s probably more praise for the team behind the sprightly X-Men: First Class (2011) than the work performed here. Some have indicated that Fassbender looks bored in the role, but I would counter that he’s doing the best he can with a script that doesn’t seem that interested in him anymore. How they got Fassbender (and for that matter, Lawrence) to extend their contracts into this movie is beyond me. Maybe the proceedings looked different before the film became engulfed in the flames of the dread reshoot entity.

Also, the opening moments are kind of sweet, with the X-Men being national heroes for the first time in their own film series. Gone are the days when they hide in the shadow. In fact, the President has a direct line to Xavier’s study. It put me—in the early goings—of thinking of how far this film series has come in nineteen years, now that it’s ending. Gone are the days where this series was trying to be a character drama that needed someone like Bryan Singer to make it at all comprehensible to film audiences, and now we’re fine flying into space and doing combat with cosmic forces. What a long, strange trip it has been.

If only it all came together a bit better. Ah, well. We’ll still have Logan (2017)*. Wait, is this the first X-Men movie to not feature Hugh Jackman at all? Weird. That may have been part of the problem.

*Which, by the way, this movie sort of absent-mindedly pisses all over the admittedly byzantine continuity set by the previous films. Logan can’t be the future of the original timeline established in the first three films in the series. That much is clear. As of the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), it would seem like Logan belongs in that new timeline, extended into X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and concluded here. But this film has Xavier retiring to play Chess with Magneto in France (for reasons, I guess) so I’m not sure how Xavier re-joins the school he built before the deterioration of his mind. And, I’m almost relieved to say, we will never have the opportunity to reconcile these multiple discontinuities. So, the lesson becomes that even when I try to dwell on the brighter moments of this series, this film only suffers all the more.