The Worst-Reviewed Marvel Movie Released 11 Years Ago Today After A Notoriously Troubled Production & It Didn’t Even Hit #1 On Opening Weekend

The Fantastic Four are now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, introduced through The Fantastic Four: First Steps and confirmed to play a central role in Avengers: Doomsday this December. Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm), Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm), and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm) gave Marvel’s First Family the best reception the heroes have ever received on screen, breaking a streak of poorly reviewed adaptations that stretched back to 1994. However, 11 years ago, on August 7, 2015, 20th Century Fox released a Fantastic Four reboot that critics and audiences rejected almost unanimously, and that still holds the unfortunate record of the worst-reviewed Marvel movie.

The 2015 Fantastic Four was directed by Josh Trank from a screenplay he wrote with Jeremy Slater and Simon Kinberg. The story followed the origin story of four titular heroes as they gained their powers during a botched trip to an alternate dimension that felt closer to science fiction horror than superhero adventure. Produced on a reported $120 million budget, the film opened to $25.7 million domestically, weak enough that it placed second for the weekend behind the second-week holdover Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Fantastic Four‘s domestic run closed at $56.1 million, and its worldwide total settled around $167.8 million, a gross that left Fox with an estimated loss of $80 million to $100 million once marketing costs were included. Meanwhile, Rotten Tomatoes settled the film at 9% from critics, with Metacritic scoring it 27 out of 100 — that’s even worse than Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider movies. Unsurprisingly, a planned 2017 sequel was immediately cancelled, and Fox would never again attempt to reboot the franchise.

Why Was 2015’s Fantastic Four So Despised By Critics?

Fantastic Four spends its opening act delving deep into the consequences of the accident that gives the heroes their powers, focusing on the medical testing and government containment measures that split the team apart. Since the main appeal of the Fantastic Four is their relationship as a family, it felt weird for the reboot to refuse to unite the titular team until its final stretch. Furthermore, instead of building toward a climax that earns its action set piece, the last twenty minutes of Fantastic Four suddenly introduce Doom’s (Toby Kebbell) full transformation, stage a battle in an unfamiliar alien landscape, and wrap up in a rushed montage, a tonal and structural break so abrupt it feels like two different movies stitched together.

The film also gives Victor Von Doom almost no screen time before he turns into a world-ending threat with a motive that is never explained beyond generalized resentment toward Reed and the U.S. government. That absence of motivation erases the personal rivalry between Reed (Miles Teller) and Doom that has always anchored both characters in comic books. A superhero film can survive a thin villain if the heroes are relatable enough, but Fantastic Four had already spent its runtime keeping those heroes apart from each other, so the climax has neither a compelling antagonist nor an earned team dynamic to support it. Fantastic Four ended its run with a C- CinemaScore and three Golden Raspberry Awards, results that reflected the movie’s troubled development.

Fantastic Four‘s Troubles Began Before Release

Fantastic Four‘s problems started long before the movie hit theaters. Fox reportedly cut $30 million from the budget shortly before principal photography began on May 5, 2014, forcing Trank to scale back the planned action-heavy finale and enter production without a finished ending. Dissatisfied with the results of that complicated shooting, Fox ordered extensive reshoots beginning in January 2015 and continuing through April, bringing in additional writers and a new editor, Stephen Rivkin, while some of the new footage was reportedly overseen by director Drew Goddard rather than Trank. Therefore, it’s safe to say the film’s disjointed final act, visible in the compressed Doom battle and the truncated character arcs, is the byproduct of excessive executive meddling.

On August 6, 2015, the day before release, Trank posted a tweet stating that he had made a different version of the film roughly a year earlier, one he believed would have received strong reviews, and that audiences would likely never see it. The director later deleted the post, but by then it was too late. Co-writer Jeremy Slater posted his own comments around the same time, indicating that little of his original screenplay survived past the film’s opening act. Since then, some fans wonder what the original cut of 2015’s Fantastic Four looks like, and if there will ever be a restoration of Trank’s movie that can clear up exactly how much was changed by Fox’s suits.

Both 2015’s Fantastic Four and the MCU movie The Fantastic Four: First Steps are available on Disney+. Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18th, with Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm confirmed to appear alongside Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom.