Could Fantastic Four be the worst Marvel superhero movie ever?
Recently released, the superhero flick scores a very underwhelming 9% on Rotten Tomatoes with the 6% score on Tomatometer for its Top Critics section. To give it some perspective, the movie scores even lower than the other famous stinkers like Elektra (2005) or Howard the Duck (1986). Elektra (2005) scores 10% whereas the duck movie is still quacking higher at 14%. In comparison on genre basis, other Marvel superhero movie like X-Men: Days of Future Past sits at 91% at Rotten Tomatoes and Avengers: Age of Ultron scores 74% respectively. The critical consensus on the site reads, “Dull and downbeat, this Fantastic Four proves a woefully misguided attempt to translate a classic comic series without the humor, joy, or colorful thrills that made it great.”
On Metacritic, the other major movie review site, Fantastic Four landed a 27/100 with only one review out of 37 scoring it above 50.
Then the director, Josh Trank (Chronicle) posted this Tweet:
It has been deleted not long after it is posted. Many fans felt this is just an attempt by the director to salvage something from this steaming wreck, a face saving gesture at best. The main actor, Miles Teller (Whiplash) said this to BBC, “Rarely are films of this size critically well received. This is not a movie we’re going to go on Rotten Tomatoes and it’s going to be at 80 or 90 per cent.”
On the business side, the movie is forecast with a US$50 million weekend debut initially but adjusted to US$40 million quickly after the opening. Then this forecast whittled down further to only US$30 million as more and more negative reviews/reactions soured the movie prospects further. Variety reported that the weekend debut of the movie only manage to make US$26.4 million, a serious blow to the movie’s profitability.
20th Century Fox is planning a sequel (June 2017 release) but looking at things now it is pretty doubtful that it will happen. Right now, the studio is hoping the international market such as China will push the movie to break even – the production of the movie is estimated at US$120 million in total. The fallout might have a drastic effect since Fox is holding the rights to some characters/alien races that Marvel might want to use for storytelling in other movies. For example, there is a real possibility that important characters in Marvel such as Silver Surfer or Galactus will never show up in MCU.
Perhaps it is time for the studio to give up and hand it back to Marvel? Please?
via BBC, Variety, Rotten Tomatoes & Metacritic
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