Why Fantastic Four’s Reboot Might Be the Comic Book Film Fans Need

Have you heard? There’s a new Fantastic Four movie coming out next week You may have seen some screenshots, or a couple of trailers, or read something horrible and racist about the casting in a comment session on the Internet. People have talked about this movie as if they’d already seen it for months now. As the release finally approaches and the last trailer has hit, showing us more of a family dynamic and rollicking adventure, it’s time to face facts: the new Fantastic Four movie might actually be pretty awesome.

The best franchises aren’t just open to interpretation and reinvention, they welcome it. That’s why myths and masterpieces are so timeless; they can be retold and remade with changes big or small, but remain magical thanks to their core. Hercules always has his 12 trials, Romeo and Juliet are always star-crossed lovers, and Spider-Man always needs responsibility to go hand-in-hand with his power.

The Fantastic Four need four core members, and they need to be a family. They need to learn how to take a horrible accident of fantastic powers and turn it into an opportunity to make the world better. When you look at the latest trailer, these components sure all seem to be in place.

Let’s run through them one-by-one:

Four Core Members

  

Obviously, check. It’s Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben. Sue and Johnny are brother and sister (as we’ve learned, through adoption in this case – which makes their sibling relationship exactly 0% less valid than one by birth). Their powers are all intact, too, with Reed’s stretchiness, Sue’s invisibility (and force fields), Johnny’s flaming on, and Ben’s superstrength and durability thanks to his giant orange rock body. The very basics are all in play (though they were in a couple of other famous adaptations that didn’t do so well).

Family

  

Movies (like comics) are visual media. As such, Fantastic Four needs to show, not tell, its audience that this is a family. Saying “I’m a flying cat with magical powers that let me shoot rainbows out of my ears” sadly doesn’t make it so; you’d need me to demonstrate that (however, until I do, you can’t prove it isn’t true!). I digress: while we won’t know what the family dynamic is like until we see the actual movie, especially since a vast majority of the trailers have centered on the characters in individual moments so far, there were two key lines in the final full trailer that indicated this essential piece of the puzzle is there. “We’re Family,” and “He’s stronger than any of us. He’s not stronger than all of us” (when referring to Doctor Doom) both show a sense that this isn’t just a team. They’re known as comics’ first family, and that absolutely has to be present in order to show what makes this team special. Many fans have called The Incredibles the “best Fantastic Four movie” because of how it captures that dynamic. Hopefully those lines are an early indicator of its presence.

Spinning the Negative Accident into A Positive Opportunity

  

Again, looking at the (very well done) final trailer, when their powers are first presented, they don’t look so good. Reed is passed out and stretched out. Johnny is randomly flaming on in his sleep. Sue is simply disappearing, and Ben is a raging beast of a man. Reed even says, “I just want to fix my friends.” But as the team progresses, they work on control, and even show some smiles and quips indicating that yeah, they might just enjoy this a bit.

So, all the core factors are there. That does not a good movie make, but it does give you a baseline. What, then, makes me so optimistic that this film could be the cure to Fantastic Four film fan fears? There’s some level of downright hope and faith. As fans of the characters, we should want them to have good stories, in any mediums, right? We should go in hoping to see something good and exciting, with a story worth telling that fits those characters in particular.

The Cast

  

Another is faith in the actors playing these roles, with two in particular. Miles Teller, who plays Reed Richards, has proven his acting chops. While his rude and overly self-assured character in the Divergent series on its surface wouldn’t make him look like a candidate for Reed, if you look at the older FF stories by Stan and Jack, or the Ultimate version of the character (and this film seems to be pulling other elements from the Ultimate universe), you’ll see that’s actually fairly spot-on. His real acting acumen, however, was demonstrated in Whiplash, where he showed a level of determination and resolve that is essential to a superhero, and to this character in specific.

Michael B. Jordan faced far more than his fair share of scrutiny just for having the audacity of being cast in a role. Yes, Johnny Storm was white when originally conceived in the comic books. It was 1961. There was virtually no such thing as a mixed-race family in the U.S. at the time, and nearly every character created for the first, oh, 50 years of popular comics was white. Ultimately, Jordan is the most decorated and accomplished of any actor in the film. He’s shown very Johnny Storm-like qualities on Friday Night Lights, his affinity for superheroics in Chronicle and The Flashpoint Paradox, and his nuance and flair for the dramatic in Parenthood and Fruitvale Station, for which he won many awards. This is an actor you want in your movie, period.

The Director

  

The biggest wild card is Josh Trank. While Chronicle was hailed for its originality and excitement, it’s obviously a different animal than Fantastic Four. Trank’s relative secrecy and apparent aloofness in the face of questions and rumors only increases the worry of skeptics. But if we go only by track record, right now Trank is one for one.

And Finally…

  

Ultimately, while the core elements of a comic should be in place when adapting it to another medium, you also must adapt to the medium. Film and comic books share elements in visual storytelling, but they’re also very different. What works in a serialized story told over six months or a year, or fifty years, might not work, especially the same way, in a two hour film on the big screen. This is the main thing people fail to realize when looking at adaptations, and it has to be kept in mind. It’s also one of the key reasons that a film with such obvious changes from the comic, might just be the comic book adaptation fans really need.