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).