We haven’t asked everyone in the world, but we would bet a fortune that 2015’s Fantastic Four is no one’s favourite superhero movie. In an attempt to better the two FF movies from the mid-00s, Fox delivered one of the worst reviewed comic book films ever made. Wasting its talented young cast, which included Miles Teller, Kate Mara and Michael B. Jordan, Josh Trank’s reboot was uneven, messy and, worst of all, dull.
While speaking to Los Angeles Times, Fantastic Four‘s Jamie Bell – who played Ben Grimm/The Thing – revealed what he thinks about the movie now that he’s had some time to reflect on it. While he’s as polite as can be, Bell does admit that him and his cast members were left “bitterly disappointed” by the film.
“There were several things on that movie I was clearly not privy to because I’m just an actor and I just do my stuff on set. But with something like that, everything starts with the best of intentions. A production begins with the idea to make something that’s unique and original and with integrity. I think the film really strived towards those goals. I don’t know what happened between the launch of the voyage and the arrival. I think we were all bitterly disappointed with that film. But that’s just the way it goes sometimes.”
Despite the movie’s abject failure, Fox initially stuck to their plan to continue the franchise. Just this year, in fact, producer Simon Kinberg confirmed that the studio are still committed to making a sequel with the same cast. More recently, however, it’s starting to look like the focus will move onto producing spinoffs of the franchise, instead.
One report actually claimed that Fox are planning a kid-friendly movie featuring Franklin and Valeria Richards, the son and daughter of Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman. Noah Hawley, meanwhile, is developing a solo outing for Doctor Doom, which is now starting to take shape.
It’s still unclear where exactly the Fantastic Four themselves are headed from here, but let’s just hope that the next time they appear on screen it’s in a movie that’s a whole lot better than what we got a few years ago.