When it comes to comic book movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe typically delivers. However, before the MCU, there were plenty of Marvel misses over the years. One team that has never quite been captured correctly in live-action is the Fantastic Four. Fans notoriously disliked the movies from 2005 and 2007, and hopes were high when the story was rebooted in 2015 with a new cast. Unfortunately, the movie starring Miles Teller (Reed Richards), Michael B. Jordan (Johnny Storm), Kate Mara (Sue Storm), Jamie Bell (Ben Grimm), and Toby Kebbell (Doctor Doom) got even worse reviews than the movies that came before. Currently, the Josh Trank-directed film is up on Rotten Tomatoes with a 9% critics score and an 18% audience score. Recently, Kebbell spoke with Forbes and talked about why the movie didn’t work.
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“You know, I’ll be entirely honest… I don’t think we were a victim of timing, I think we were a victim of bad leadership and organization. I actually thought people in charge —— I mean in charge, in charge, not people creating and working on set —— I think there were opportunities, there were conversations had, there were script differences, there was like, ‘Hey, you know, Simon [Kinberg], this is actually factually true, this is important information…’ He’s like, ‘No, no, no. That’s not what this is,’” Kebbell shared.
He added, “So there were unfortunate things. In Hollywood, you can’t ever speak ill and I’m not doing that, I’m just saying while I was there, there was a lot more that could have been done to make that a better thing. There’s fans for it. I truly believe it. I think Doom… I love the Joker, I love so many bad guys, my performance as Koba (Planet of the Apes), there are bad guys that live in my heart … So I truly believe Doom is an awesome villain, he’s an excellent villain and they kind of always just do something goofy with it. It’s a shame, it’s a shame. I honestly feel that way. I wouldn’t have gone into it thinking, ‘Ah, this is going to be another terrible movie.’ I thought they had that.”
Thankfully, the Fantastic Four are getting another chance on the big screen with the MCU. Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts will be telling the story of Marvel’s original team, which is expected to be his next film. When ComicBook.com‘s Brandon Davis asked Kevin Feige what fans could expect from the cast, the producer suggested it would likely be a mixture of A-list Hollywood stars and newcomers.
“I think the MCU is a beautiful combination of both (established actors and new faces),” Feige said last year. “I think you look no further than Simu in Shang-Chi, like Chris Hemsworth, like Tom Hiddleston, like Tom Holland, an actor that hadn’t been seen by a tremendous amount of people before, or you have a Benedict stepping into Doctor Strange or Christian Bale stepping into Gor in our Thor film. It is always a beautiful combination of both, and it really is about the search for the best actor for the job whether that actor is known to the world yet or not.”
The MCU’s Fantastic Four does not yet have a release date.
