Why The Fantastic Four Didn't Wear Their Blue Costumes

You might have noticed that things like "grounded" and "gritty" seem to conflict with a brightly-colored, often wise-cracking series called the Fantastic Four.

That's been a recurring criticism of the Josh Trank-directed reboot, which finally opened this weekend to blistering reviews, for months -- and it's something that many fans doubled down on when it was revealed that the title characters wouldn't wear their traditional superhero costumes but "environment suits" made up of black, grey and silver.

But...why? Why mess with a winning formula, particularly when the existing suits aren't all that ostentatious to begin with?

CinemaBlend got the answer from star Miles Teller (Reed Richards):

"It wouldn't make sense. Because, like, when would they make them? We don't really become a team, for the most part," Teller said. "Like I said, we're a government experiment. And everyone just gets trapped, so you are just like, when would they make these suits? Maybe the last scene of the movie? But at the last scene of the movie, that's when we decide that we're going to be a team. So it's not… It just didn't make sense. And I think it would be odd if we're keeping the tone of this film and everything's a certain way and all of a sudden they're wearing these bright, blue [suits]. But that being said, I would love to put on the blue Fantastic Four uniform."

Honestly...that's not inaccurate. The team isn't even a team until Doom shows up with 15 minutes left in the film, and at no point in the film are they seen doing their superheroing in public.

That said, and as CinemaBlend notes, the real question now is whether they'll ever be seen in costume at all. The movie seems on pace to be a dud at the domestic box office, prompting critics and analysts to wonder whether 2017's planned sequel is even plausible at this point.