The Most Maligned Marvel Movie Is Much Better Than You Think
Modern Marvel outings seem to have fallen from grace when compared to the now-revered Infinity saga, with the Disney-owned studio consistently failing to please fans in the last several years. However, there was a time long before Kevin Feige took the reins and reinvigorated the comic book movie where adaptations of this kind were seen as automatically relegated to the bargain bin. One such film, 1994’s The Fantastic Four, remains formally unreleased and often cited as a failure of comic book filmmaking, though the project has much more to offer audiences in hindsight.
In hindsight, the movie is nowhere as bad as its reputation, as recently discussed in the GenreVision podcast. You can even decide yourself, by watching the entire film below.
For the time the film was made, the special effects, set design, and overall feel of Fantastic Four left a great deal to be desired. The film has been compared to early episodes of Power Rangers due to the overacting leads and cheap costume armor worn by the eponymous superhero quartet. The film was made with a shoestring budget of $1 million, and produced by famed B movie producer Roger Corman, best known for outings like Dinoshark, Death Race 4: Beyond Anarchy, and Sharktopus Vs. Whalewolf.
Needless to say, Corman’s extensive catalog of nearly 500 films mostly encompasses low-budget indie movies rapidly made and shipped off to streamers and television networks for pennies on the dollar. Many of these films contain a great deal of charm and hilarious camp, but they don’t hold a candle to major studios such as Disney or Warner Brothers’ cheapest productions. Apparently, Roger Corman was only given the opportunity to produce the Fantastic Four movie as the result of an impending copyright expiration.
The movie improves with the understanding that the people working on it were doing their best as they unknowingly torched the franchise for the insurance payout.
As the story goes, German filmmaker Bernd Eichinger initially purchased the rights to make a Fantastic Four film through his production company Constantin Film in 1983. Nearly a decade later, he still had not put together the right team to bring his Fantastic Four vision to life, though the film rights would expire if he didn’t begin production.
In a desperate bid to avoid getting bought out by encroaching entities such as Columbia Pictures and Warner Brothers, Eichinger elected to film and complete a lazily-constructed, inexpensive iteration of the film, in order to retain the rights long enough to make the ‘real’ movie.
The first film was essentially an insurance scam, as Eichinger never had any plans to release the Roger Corman Fantastic Four in the first place. Unfortunately, the cast and crew were not aware of the plan, resulting in actors, costumers, hair and makeup teams, and every other wage worker tasked with bringing the film together.
The film has been compared to early episodes of Power Rangers due to the overacting leads and cheap costume armor worn by the eponymous superhero quartet.
Giving it their all, they were left disappointed and disrespected once the movie was inevitably shelved. A world premiere was announced in 1994, only to be abruptly canceled, with each of the main actors receiving cease and desist orders halting any and all promotion for the movie.
The backstory to Fantastic Four is staggeringly prescient in today’s cinema landscape, as Warner Brothers-Discovery has been shelving completed films such as Batgirl and Coyote Vs. Acme at an alarming rate in recent years.
Though the 1994 Fantastic Four is certainly rough around the edges, the film improves with the understanding that the people working on it were doing their best as they unknowingly torched the franchise for the insurance payout.
