Miles Teller Reveals What He Needs To Return As Reed Richards
Miles Teller is happy to tell you what he would need to return to the vaunted role of Reed Richards, but it's no small ask.
The 2015 film reboot of Fantastic Four (or FANT4STIC, if you’re nasty) directed by Josh Trank has become something of a cautionary warning in the world of superhero films. It had everything going for it: a cast of up and coming young stars, one of the more promising young directors, and the opportunity to revive one of Marvel Comics’ most beloved superhero teams. Notoriously, the movie was a huge bomb. It was an enormous flop for 20th Century Fox, it was a dismal 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, and sandbagged Josh Trank’s career. And just recently, that film’s Reed Richards, Miles Teller, told The Digital Fix what he would need in order to be interested to reprise the role. Here’s what Teller said:
The thing that I look at for pretty much every project is scripts. That’s first and foremost. The character, the director, the cast, the cinematographer: all of those things, I think, go into making a decision. So, if I thought all those things were in place, and we had a really good chance to succeed, then yeah, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
So, just to sum up Miles Teller’s answer here: when he looks for in a new film he might want to be associated with is good writing, a good character to play, a good director, a good cinematographer, and good actors in the cast. It feels like Miles Teller could have just said when he looks for a new project, he would like the movie to be good, but everyone speaks in their own words. Sadly, his take on Reed Richards aka Mister Fantastic is generally not considered to be what people call “good.”
However, in all fairness to Miles Teller, it is not like anyone else has ever really given an acclaimed performance as the head of Marvel’s First Family. Immediately prior to Teller’s take on the stretchy genius, Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd played the character in the 2005 Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, both of which are largely referred to as “those Jessica Alba movies.” More infamously, the unreleased 1994 movie The Fantastic Four starred Alex Hyde-White as the character; the film has alleged to have been made by production company Constantin Film as a maneuver to retain rights to the property, with no intention to actually distribute it. And of course, Reed Richards did manage to finally show up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe recently, if only for a very brief window of time.
Miles Teller first came to prominence in the 2014 film Whiplash by Damien Chazelle, in which he played a talented jazz drummer locked in a toxic battle of wills with once and future J. Jonah Jameson, J.K. Simmons. He was originally slated to star in Chazelle’s next film, the musical romance La La Land, but exited after extended contract negotiations and was replaced by Ryan Gosling. Miles Teller also starred in Todd Phillip’s dark crime comedy War Dogs with Jonah Hill, Ana de Armas, and Bradley Cooper.
Next up for Miles Teller is Top Gun: Maverick, the long-awaited, long-delayed sequel to Tom Cruise’s 1986 film Top Gun. In the film, Teller plays a Naval Aviator codenamed Rooster, who is himself the son of Anthony Edwards’ Goose from the first film. Despite (or perhaps because of) the amount of bird-related codenames, Top Gun: Maverick is receiving glowing critical acclaim.
