You’re watching Beyond The Trailer’s review of the NEW Fantastic Four...

Does anyone really care about The Fantastic Four? I mean, yeah, we’re SUPPOSED to because

they’re the first superhero team Stan Lee ever created - Marvel’s so called first

family - but the popularity of the characters has been in decline for years. In fact, I

bet you’re most familiar with Reed Richards, Sue and Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm from their

interactions with other more popular characters - either as guest stars or in one of Marvel’s

epic comic book crossover events. Reed Richards and Sue Storm in Civil War. Reed and Sue’s

son Franklin in Onslaught. Johnny Storm in multiple Spider-Man comics. Etc. Etc. And

while comic book fans were mighty angry to hear that Marvel Comics was discontinuing

the Fantastic Four comic because - supposedly - they didn’t own the film rights, well,

nobody really bothered to buy that last issue either. It came in at number sixty-two for

the month, selling just under forty thousand copies. Maybe Marvel used the whole “first

family” angle to dupe Fox into buying the Fantastic Four film rights in the first place,

as the sale was part of a package deal made when Marvel was in desperate need of cash.

Furthermore, Fox has been reluctant to embrace the family aspects of the Fantastic Four.

While the studio originally considered having Steven Soderbergh direct, with George Clooney

and Charlize Theron starring, they ultimately went the safer route of Barbershop and Taxi’s

Tim Story directing another group of superpowered twenty-somethings - plus TV’s Michael Chiklis.

Fast-forward to today and the Fantastic Four are still very young, although this time that

casting has more merit as the reboot is heavily based on Mark Millar’s Ultimate Fantastic

Four storyline - which also wasn’t a huge seller. Plus interestingly, Millar is Fox’s

chief consultant on their Marvel films, and it looks like (GASP) he recommended his own

material! Chronicle’s Josh Trank was also brought on to give the film that darker edge

which is all the rage these days, yet Trank clashed with Fox to such a degree that the

resulting bad buzz lost him his Star Wars gig... Furthermore, this reboot has had to

deal with some racial tension, as some fans haven’t taken too kindly to Michael B Jordan

being cast as Johnny Storm - which also ties into Star Wars by the way, echoing some anger

over John Boyega being cast as one of that film’s leads. Then it’s important to point

out that there’s also an undercurrent of positivity here, believe it or not, with whispers

that Fox doesn’t seem to realize this is actually a pretty good film. But is “pretty

good” good enough to stand out in an oversaturated marketplace, with characters that were never

that popular to begin with and that have lost the few qualities that made them unique? Perhaps

what’s really at stake here is comic book movies in general, and that the fanboy appetite

for more movies might not match the mainstream appetite?