Ranking the Fantastic Four films

The Fantastic Four are Marvel's first family - 60 years ago, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created this super team and they became the foundations that the House of Ideas was built on.

Over the past six decades, the FF have been used to explore plenty of cosmic ideas, but at their core there has been several key themes, including family, discovery, the weight of greatness, and the cost that comes with trying to build a better tomorrow. With no secret identities to hide behind, the fascinating foursome have proven themselves to be incredibly human and very vulnerable over the years. This has helped them sell upwards of 150 million comics and made them among the most relatable characters in the Marvel canon.

Yet every time Marvel's first family is taken to the big screen, things have gone badly. An MCU-approved reboot is on the cards, but let's look back and laugh/cry/hurl at the mis-steps the FF have made over the years.

And here's a piece about all this that I wrote for the ABC.

1. Fantastic Four (2005) ★★★

Not as bad as you remember thanks to some spirited performances, strong casting, and a couple of cool sequences. Some of the special FX have aged as poorly as the overly sexualised nature of it all, but the general vibe is one of campy fun and half-decent reverence for the material. The characters are fairly comic-accurate (except for Dr Doom), and most of the tweaks work, broadly speaking. The prosthetics of The Thing are pretty great, and Michael Chiklis nails it as Ben Grimm, while Chris Evans has a field day as Johnny Storm. It's worth noting Jessica Alba and Ioan Gruffudd are individually okay but together they're terrible, while Julian McMahon gives it his best shot at an underwritten Dr Doom. As an origin story, it's not bad, and some naff moments aside, it had the potential to launch a strong franchise.

2. Fantastic Four: The Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007) ★★

A scattergun sequel that centres on the Coming of Galactus storyline, but forgets to bring the necessary dread or gravitas. Many comicbook fans lamented were critical of Galactus being rewritten as a giant cloud instead of massive planet-eating dude, but that's not the real problem here. Gruffudd and Alba still have all the chemistry of two bricks, and it's particularly telling when Evans and Alba demonstrate more spark... and they're playing brother and sister. But it's the story that's the main issue. Dr Doom is resurrected with no explanation, and the film doesn't seem entirely sure what to do with him or Silver Surfer. Evans and Chiklis save the day, and there are some good laughs along the way, but the franchise feels tired, two films in.

3. Fantastic Four (2015) ★★

Read my full (and very generous) review here.

Once again, they nail the casting, but the script is a mess, perhaps because the studio was trying to save the film with re-shoots, edits, and no bloody idea. All origin, no story, the film goes nowhere and spends a long time doing it. On the plus side, Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell give their all, and the film at least dares to be different, following the Ultimate Fantastic Four storyline and embracing a certain amount of darkness, most likely in an attempt to differentiate it from the MCU. More of a noble failure than most give it credit for, but it's also a total mess.

The Fantastic Four (1994) ★½

Feel sorry for Alex Hyde-White, the big screen’s best Reed Richards, stuck in a film that has the dubious honour of being so bad it was never released. The truth is far more complex than that, but this is definitely a sub-par B-movie that looks like it was made in 1984, not 1994. Made for the wrong reasons but with a couple of surprisingly good moments, it’s predominantly packed with bad choices, terrible scripting, and laughable performances. A wonderfully hammy Dr Doom makes this kinda fun, as does a too-good-for-this performance by Hyde-White, and a valiant effort from Rebecca Staab in a horribly underwritten role as Sue Storm. The effects are dire, but far worse films have been released, and it's definitely in the so bad-it's-good department.