There are five Fantastic Four movies, and four of them are fresh starts, including the new MCU entry. So which one is the most fantastic of all?
Remakes, reimaginings, and readaptations have been a part of the movies as long as the medium has existed. With the series Version Control, Jesse Hassenger explores stories with multiple notable incarnations throughout cinema history, to help determine which movie version may be right for your streaming needs.
There are many superhero characters with more movie appearances than the Fantastic Four. But few if any have been rebooted with such clockwork consistency. Roughly every ten years, a Fantastic Four movie emerges (or in one case, fails to emerge) and – with the exception of one that did well enough to spur a sequel – inspires the characters to retreat into hibernation. Now that Marvel’s so-called First Family (consisting of married couple Mr. Fantastic and The Invisible Woman; her brother The Human Torch; and his best friend The Thing) has returned to the Disney-owned parent company, they’re getting yet another shot with The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which introduces the characters into the MCU.
Well, sort of; the movie is set in an alternate universe where the Fantastic Four have been the world’s most beloved (and possibly only) superheroes for several years. It’s a clever way of eliding all of the origin-story business that takes up so much screen time in previous big-screen versions of the super-team. That said, with four different iterations of the team over the past 30 years, there’s also been plenty of overlap between them. So how does the new movie stack up to the previous franchise-starters that didn’t pay off? Does the MCU really know best, or is this a Spider-Man situation, where most of the best movies featuring the character were made outside of Disney’s purview? As always, Version Control is here to help! Here’s a chronological run-through of four Fantastic Four movies, to sort out which version of the team is hottest – er, we mean, best!
The team got off to an inauspicious (or maybe auspicious-in-the-wrong-way) start in the early ’90s, when Constantin Films (which later became known in the U.S. for making the Resident Evil movies) had to act fast on an expiring option and threw together a Fantastic Four movie with the help of low-budget maestro Roger Corman. Various parties have debated over whether this movie was ever intended to be released, made entirely as a rights play, or simply hidden out of embarrassment. Regardless, the movie was pulled off an announced Labor Day 1993 release date, had its early 1994 Mall of America premiere canceled, and never received an official theatrical or video berth. As such, it became an object of fascination over the years, and widely bootlegged; because of the internet, a subpar but watchable copy is now available to anyone who wants to check it out.
Should anyone, though? As fun as it would be to recommend this scrappy enterprise as a hidden gem, there’s not much worthwhile in the First Family’s first try at a movie. Though the cut-rate special effects are likely to get the most negative attention, they’re actually some of the most endearing stuff in the film (and honestly, the Mr. Fantastic stretchiness doesn’t look way worse in subsequent bigger-budget entries).
