The fantastic story of the worst superhero movie… | Little White Lies

The fan­tas­tic sto­ry of the worst super­hero movie ever made

08 Sep 2016

Words by Tom Bond

Muscular man with rocky, scaly skin and a fierce expression flexing his arms.
Muscular man with rocky, scaly skin and a fierce expression flexing his arms.
Roger Corman’s unre­leased 1994 film The Fan­tas­tic Four was doomed from the start.

Remem­ber the worst super­hero film of all time? That was the tag that Josh Trank’s Fan­tas­tic Four was stuck with after it bombed beyond belief in 2015. If you’ve watched the film you may well feel its rep­u­ta­tion is ful­ly deserved, but here’s the thing: it’s not even the worst Fan­tas­tic Four film. Not even close. That hon­our belongs to Roger Corman’s doomed 1994 adap­ta­tion, which nev­er even made it into theatres.

Falling in the super­hero no-man’s‑land that was the mid-’90s, with only Bat­man & Robin and Bat­man For­ev­er around for com­pa­ny, The Fan­tas­tic Four faced an uphill bat­tle from day one. Super­hero films had noth­ing like the built-in glob­al audi­ences of today, and none of the faux pres­tige that pitched them as high-class block­busters. Back then they were larg­er-than-life, schlocky fun – a tone that arguably hasn’t real­ly changed all that much – and as such vet­er­an B‑movie pro­duc­er Roger Cor­man seemed like the per­fect fit for Marvel’s peren­ni­al misfits.

Of course, qual­i­ty super­hero films weren’t unheard of at the time. Richard Donner’s Super­man and Tim Burton’s Bat­man had already made sure of that. But this was an entire­ly dif­fer­ent prospect. The film was rushed into pro­duc­tion by pro­duc­er Bernd Eichinger and nev­er actu­al­ly intend­ed to be released, hence its mea­gre $1.5m bud­get. The sim­ple rea­son for such an odd deci­sion was the labyrinthine rights war, which has defined so much of the super­hero movie genre’s boom peri­od. If Eichinger didn’t enter pro­duc­tion on a Fan­tas­tic Four film by a cer­tain date, he would lose the rights.

Speak­ing to Los Ange­les Magazine’s Robert Ito in 2005, Stan Lee reaf­firmed that The Fan­tas­tic Four was a phan­tom film, designed first and fore­most to secure Eichinger’s option on the prop­er­ty. The tragedy is that none of the cast or crew, apart from Eichinger him­self, were aware of this plan. He’d always had a grand vision for a prop­er’ big-bud­get Fan­tas­tic Four movie, which he even­tu­al­ly realised with the mid­dling 2005 ver­sion star­ring Jes­si­ca Alba and Chris Evans. Essen­tial­ly, Eichinger was just buy­ing him­self more time to make the film he real­ly wanted.

Eichinger was play­ing the sys­tem, but he was also play­ing with the careers of every­one involved in mak­ing the film. It may have been an after­thought to him, but for many of the cast and crew this was a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty – the chance to make a hit movie and ulti­mate­ly make it big in Hol­ly­wood. In the words of Alex Hyde-White aka Dr Reed Richards aka Mis­ter Fan­tas­tic, It was my shot at becom­ing an action star.”

In the end it seems Eichinger sim­ply didn’t expect any­one to care much about the project, which is why he nev­er felt the need to be up front about his plans to can it before release. We had all worked our ass­es off on this thing,” said direc­tor Oley Sas­sone. Frankly, I think they [Cor­man and Eichinger] thought it was just going to be this piece of shit… so it kind of unnerved them when it wasn’t.” It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic that Eichinger assumed almost no emo­tion­al invest­ment on his team’s behalf, con­sid­er­ing that he was the one obses­sive­ly pur­su­ing the per­fect pro­duc­tion of The Fan­tas­tic Four.

Eichinger has long since denied any such sub­terfuge, claim­ing that he always want­ed to release the movie. For his part, Cor­man backed this up, cit­ing the film’s respectable adver­tis­ing bud­get as evi­dence that they intend­ed to sup­port it all the way through to cin­e­mas. Why burn mon­ey on bill­boards if it’s a dead film walk­ing? The break­ing point came when Eichinger was made an offer he couldn’t refuse by super­hero supre­mo Avi Arad, pro­duc­er of the X‑Men, Spi­der-Man and the lat­er Fan­tas­tic Four films. Arad bought the film to ensure it didn’t tar­nish the Mar­vel brand he lat­er tried and even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed to revi­talise. That Eichinger was will­ing to sell the film for what is rumoured to be cost price says every­thing you need to know about his true inten­tions for the film.

With Doomed!, a 2015 doc­u­men­tary chron­i­cling the whole sor­ry affair set for release this year, it seems like the orig­i­nal Fan­tas­tic Four film won’t be for­got­ten any time soon. Indeed, it may even have made less of an impact had it been released at the time. Lost films nev­er stay lost for long, and these days it’s easy enough to watch the com­plet­ed orig­i­nal film online. So is The Fan­tas­tic Four real­ly the worst super­hero film of all time? Despite Eichinger and Arad’s best efforts, you can final­ly judge for yourself.

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