Fantastic Four: Grade, Review, Discuss, Sequels?...SPOILERS likely

Question: What do Fox need to do to keep the rights? Would a cameo in an X-Men movie be enough?

 

Man I hope you saw the matinee and save a few bucks. At this point I am not even sure I am going to watch it on television or Netflix where it would only cost me pennies to see. I just don't care to waste my time.

 

Nah. If all it took was a cameo, Fox would still have Daredevil (a character they lost solely because the clock ran out - Fox did not volunteer him back to Marvel).

I haven't read the contract language, but I would imagine it's in the vein of trademark law - you likely have to use the title to brand a stand alone work every so many years or you lose it and it's derivative characters. That could explain why the movie was really called "X-men Origins: Wolverine".

There could also be other stipulations such as what characters must be used to meet the qualification (i.e. a Human Torch stand alone movie might be allowed but only a mother ship Fantastic Four movie counts towards the clock). So far there has been a mother ship X-men movie every few years like clockwork, so we can't judge by that.

 

I just stumbled upon this on the social medias

http://comicbook.com/2015/08/10/fox-still-committed-to-fantastic-four-characters-despite-disappo/

Also even if the rights did fall back into marvel's hands, Marvel Studios has their schedule full so we most likely won't be seeing anything on the MCU side of things that hasn't already been announced until after the Inhumans movie anyways.

 

I get why the Internet has turned on Trank and I believe he even partly has done this to himself... but as someone that actually knows a couple sources that were close to the production, trust me when I say Trank honestly tried to make a good movie.

When he says he had a fantastic version of this film a year ago, you should believe him. I'm not saying he's completely not to blame - he should share some of the blame with Fox, but they kinda screwed him over here. They sought him out, hired him because of his vision and then took a pair of scissors to his film in many ways and during multiple occasions, leaving him very frustrated and understandably terse.

It's a little surprising to see such pure vehemence and hatred towards a guy like Trank, but again his tweet didn't help matters. He could've handled this whole situation better but he's a young guy and I think success went to his head a bit. If anything, this has been a huge learning experience for him and I think he will honestly deliver a killer movie next time around - given he doesn't screw that opportunity up.

 

Yeah I heard via Collider Movie Talk podcast that the studio hijacked his film and it definitely showed in that third act. Also right before they went into production they yanked 3 huge action set pieces from the movie. He definitely burned some bridges with that tweet, which could also prevent him from finding work later on.

 

Trank hasn't handled this situation well at all and he will probably suffer for that. This isn't a situation where Trank is completely blame free - he definitely incurred some of this, but he had reason to react the way he did.

As Joe Carnahan said, he's a young director and he's made some mistakes - but who hasn't? In the age of social media, it's a lot harder to just sit back and not say anything, especially when a movie has your name on it is being trashed by almost everyone on the Internet, you can't do anything about it and the studio meddled with something that could've been great.

 

Unfortunately fans didn't like the casting and the look. Who wants to see The Thing AKA Ben Grimm without his trademark shorts? No one I am guessing. Many of the choices that made this film bad or cringe worthy are his fault. He has to take some responsibility here or no other studio will ever hire him again for fear that he will not take blame for a failure.

 

I don't doubt that the studio screwed the movie up quite a bit, but Trank was likely still responsible for the main style and approach of the movie (with it's body horror/car crash victim metaphor), which just seemed completely wrong and misguided from the very start. And not remotely what most people were hoping to see in a new FF movie.

 

Post-mortems I've seen generally ignore common sense and customer feedback, showing a preference for the top management agenda instead, kind of like when cigarette companies pay for studies to prove smoking is healthy. Coca-Cola is in the news today for doing the same thing. And I don't put it past Hollywood studio (mis)management. Post-mortems devolve into briefings and directives from management that ignore real feedback when it disagrees with the agenda. That's why some companies don't appear to learn from mistakes.

Except that earlier posts in this thread lambast even the first five minutes and a weak story throughout.

 

I didn't see anything in the movie to suggest that it was built around a core of directorial or authorial talent or skill. It wasn't so much cliche-ridden as it was an assemblage of bungled cliches.

 

A perfect summary (Cartoon with some language not safe for work):

https://tytempletonart.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ff-in-four-panels.jpg

 

I haven't read a single FF comic or seen any FF movie, but it seems to me that Fox's best bet for the franchise at this point is to maybe wait a few years and then preemptively resign themselves to even more Incredibles comparisons by making a non-origin CG-animated movie set in the 60s...

 

I don't think anyone here believes he tried to make a bad one. I believe most people would think, and do think, he just got in over his head and handled the job extremely poorly.

Yeah, well, I remember when WB was saying they were still committed to a Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern sequel.

So, while its possible Fox is committed to the character, its just as possible the linked statement might be a bit of a face saving move.

 

I don't see how this is different to the RR Green Lantern situation - they are having another go at that character and Fox will have another at these - nowhere do they say they are committed to *this* version.

 

GL was a disappointment to Warners but not a catastrophe for them. It looks like FF is going to cost 20th money.

The Deadpool trailer running with FF has an easy, obvious but very funny joke at the expense of Reynolds' previous turn in skintights.

 

There's no reason to assume that the studio interference didn't improve the end result.

Whatever you think of 'the suits', they wanted the movie finished (which looked unlikely) and to do as well as possible when released. FF bombing doesn't help them either.

 

"Don't make the suit animated!" you mean?

 

"Green or animated."

 

In regards to the studio highjacking the movie, I have to wonder if some of these directors are coming into these movies with the wrong expectations. Now, I've never worked in Hollywood, but I've always been fascinated by movie production and follow alot of them closely, so I know a little bit. The impression I've gotten is that when you go into big studio movie like this you are making their movie, not yours. So if you can work with the studio, and give them what they want then maybe you can put in some of what you want. I don't know for a fact, but I'm getting the impression I'm getting is that a lot of these directors are going into these focused more on what they want, and aren't giving the studios what they want. Sometimes the studios will go after a director because they want that director to make their movie, like James Gunn and Guardians of the Galaxy, but it seems to me that those are not necessarily the standard these days.

The only times directors really get freedom to do whatever they want is when they are financing their own movie, like indie movies, or big name directors Lucas and Speilberg, or if they are so highly respected that nobody is going to say no to them.