Anthony Stokes on The Fantastic Four…
I’ve been a big defender of 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four reboot. And by defender, I mean I’m mildly interest and I’m holding off any judgement on it until I see a trailer, rather than grabbing my pitchfork with the rest of the internet.
In September, I wrote an article titled ‘Why People Need to Stop Complaining About The Fantastic Four Reboot’. It was met with backlash and a lot of people were upset at the notion of being told what they should and shouldn’t be upset by, but that wasn’t the point of the article. I wrote it to say two things really. The first being that nobody really cares about The Fantastic Four. You make think you do, but no you do not. Fantastic Four sold less than 30,000 copies in October. It wasn’t even in the top 100 titles for the month.
People had the audacity to complain that Star-Lord was altered too much from his comic book. Once again outside of the Marvel Movie very few people knew about Star-Lord let alone the Guardians as a team. I seriously doubt any fans prior to the movie announcement actually cared.
The second and true point of the article was to say that you don’t have to see a movie. If literally every bit of news frustrates you to the point that you feel the need to crunch away at your keyboard for hours on threads and message boards, then just stop following that movie. I didn’t like what I saw about Man of Steel so I stopped paying attention and didn’t see it in theaters until somebody literally paid for my ticket. I’m not going to see Interstellar or Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice for the same reason. Why see something that you know won’t interest you?
Now, even I was taken aback by Toby Kebbell’s description of Doctor Doom as a blogger called Victor Domashev. But immediately after I reminded myself that a) it’s The Fantastic Four, which I’m not a fan of, and b) there’s been three traditional Fantastic Four movies that all sucked. I’m still waiting for a trailer to pass judgement on this new one.
To reiterate being concerned about the Fantastic Four reboot is fine. I’d be considered if fans weren’t. But being outraged from day one is something I don’t understand, especially about this franchise in particular. As always, let’s wait and see…
Anthony Stokes is a blogger and independent filmmaker who also hosts the podcast Delusional Losers.
Originally published November 12, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
