It’s a sad state of affairs for a quartet of Marvel’s most iconic characters when you realize that all director Matt Shakman has to do is deliver an entirely average comic book adaptation to guarantee that he’s responsible for the finest Fantastic Four movie ever made.
The 1994 original was made on a shoestring budget to cynically keep hold of the rights and was never intended to be released, while Tim Story’s 2005 blockbuster and sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer have their moments, but they’re too few and far between to elevate either of them above mediocrity.
That leads us neatly onto Josh Trank’s Fant4stic, quite simply the worst feature film based on a Marvel Comics property there’s ever been. A tortured production and a dismal end product effectively nuked the former wunderkind’s mainstream career prospects, while it tanked horrendously at the box office and secured the unwanted status of being the company’s worst-reviewed piece of film or television content ever.
Or at least, it was until the Secret Invasion finale came along, with the sixth and final episode of the already-infamous MCU misfire netting a seven percent Rotten Tomatoes score, the only thing to have fared worse than the nine percent of 2015’s Fantastic Four.
And yet, the notorious dud that failed on every conceivable level has been resurrected on streaming, with FlixPatrol naming it as one of the biggest hits on Disney Plus. Why? It’s hard to comprehend, but maybe Shakman teasing details of his reboot has encouraged audiences to find out just how low the bar was set.