Fantastic Four (2015) Pitch Meeting — Revisited

As the new adaptation gets nearer than ever, the 2015 Fantastic Four reboot is getting revisited by the latest episode of Screen Rant‘s Pitch Meeting series. Serving as the third major adaptation of the Marvel superhero team, the movie was a critical and commercial disaster on release, with the majority of criticism directed towards the movie’s darker approach to its source material and lackluster pacing, with some feeling it was only made by Fox to retain the rights to the property. The years since have seen many of the creatives involved speak against the movie, namely co-writer/director Josh Trank.

Nearly a decade after the movie came out, the latest episode of Screen Rant‘s Pitch Meeting series is revisiting its original analysis of 2015’s Fantastic Four. The original video poked fun at the studio’s misreading of what audiences wanted from the movie, going for an exposition-heavy structure and failing to deliver much action, while also clearly cutting out large portions of the movie’s script. Host Ryan George also reflects on his delivery in the original video, editing his old script to match his quicker-pacing in more recent videos.

The MCU’s Fantastic Four Reboot Has A Lot To Work Off Of

Trank and co-writer Jeremy Slater have frequently discussed the issues that plagued the 2015 Fantastic Four reboot, indicating that studio interference led to many of the movie’s overall problems. The overall pacing of focusing on building up the team’s individual characters could’ve been an admirable one, should some of its characters and motivations have been better fleshed out. Instead, the focus was overall too scrambled and the script’s chopped-up nature made everyone feel underdeveloped.

With both the 2015 and mid-2000s Fantastic Four adaptations scoring poor critical reviews for different reasons, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s reboot has a lot of lessons to work off of. One of the biggest is how the next movie goes about exploring the team’s origin story. While the 2005 movie wasted no time showing the space-based accident that led to their powers, the 2015 reboot took far longer to do so. In reality, the MCU reboot may work best following in Spider-Man: Homecoming‘s footsteps by not showing this origin, but instead just picking up with the team already in action.

The other major lesson the MCU’s Fantastic Four reboot needs to learn from prior adaptations is figuring out the right tonal balance for the movie. The early movies leaned a little too far in a campy direction for critics and audiences alike, though has since been seen more favorably for staying true to the colorful tone of the comics than the dark and gritty 2015 movie. With the first image of the cast already showing a far more vibrant take on the Marvel team, though, the MCU reboot looks to at least be taking this lesson close to heart.