Earth-616, the official Marvel Comics universe, canonically begins with Fantastic Four #1 from 1961. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby collaborated on over 100 issues of the original FF comics, and then…ehh.
I’m not the world’s biggest Fantastic Four Fan, admittedly. But Marvel’s First Family created the template for what would become the Avengers and The X-Men, and absolutely deserve their spot in the annals of American comic book history.
So, this movie.
There have been four film adaptations of the Fantastic Four. The first was created in 1993 by filmmaker Roger Corman, and never got an official release. It’s not a great movie by today’s standards, and the effects are pretty goofy, even for the early 90s, but it has a lot of heart and charm.
Then came a 2005 adaptation by 20th Century Fox. It was… okay? This was a pre-MCU release, when studios would pay a ton of money for comic book licenses, and then change everything that made the franchise work in the first place.
2007 brought the sequel to THAT movie, Rise of the Silver Surfer. It was also… okay. Not great. And committed one of the biggest comic book movie sins, of changing Galactus, the world-eater, from a giant man in a silly purple hat into a cloud of nanotechnology. Yea, I’m aware that’s the Marvel Ultimate Universe’s interpretation, “Gah Lak Tus,” but it’s stupid there, too.
And then there was 2016’s “Fantastic 4,” where the logo for the movie looked like it said “Fant4stic,” and I didn’t even see that movie because the commercials looked like a movie that I didn’t want to see. And by all accounts, it wasn’t.
But, Marvel Studios has the FF back now. And this one appears to be a period piece, set in 1961, going back to the original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby version of the comic.
It seems to have heart. It seems to embrace the things that made the original comics work.
And there’s HERBIE, the robotic member of the team who was created for the 70s cartoon when the Human Torch was licensed for a movie deal.
And who is that giant man with a silly purple hat at the end…?
Looks like this one could fix a lot of the issues the other movies had.
We’ll find out in July!