Here’s the thing about superhero movies: they’re for children. I understand that Marvel and DC are targeting a much broader audience than just children, but the stories and characters come from comic books which, again, may be hoping for as wide a market as possible, but are still designed for kids. “Good guys” in colorful leotards fighting “bad guys” for control of the universe is pretty silly.
If people need to be reminded of this fact, I suggest they watch The Fantastic Four from 1994. Only a child could enjoy this film. A child with a profound head injury. When you see Roger Corman’s name in the opening credits, you know nothing good can follow. He has a knack for finding the worst of the worst, and Fantastic Four is pretty worst. Worst enough that it was never actually released.
The history of how and why Fantastic Four was made is far more interesting than the film itself. When asked, Stan Lee, the creator of the original Marvel comic book version of Fantastic Four, said that the 1994 low-budget film version, "was never supposed to be shown to anybody.” He even claimed that the actors were not informed that the film they were acting in would never be seen.
Why make a film that will never be seen? German producer Bernd Eichinger bought the option to make Fantastic Four in 1983 for an estimated $250,000. He shopped it around, but couldn’t find a studio stupid enough to back him. With his option running out, he decided to team up with schlockmeister Corman to make a quick low-budget version that would secure Eichinger’s rights to the film.
Corman and Eichinger claim that none of this is true, but whatever happened behind the scenes, the premiere was canceled. Just before release, a Marvel executive named Avi Arad, later the CEO of Marvel, bought the film and ordered all the prints destroyed. Unfortunately for everyone, they didn’t manage to destroy every copy.
Some maniac found a print of it and passed it around from pirate to pirate until it became an underground sensation. As someone who sat through the film, I can say, unequivocally, that pirating films is not a victimless crime. In 2003, director Marty Langford made a documentary about the whole saga called Doomed!: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's Fantastic Four, but I have already wasted one hour, thirty minutes, and seven seconds of my life on this crap. I don’t think I’m up for anymore.
As a producer, Eichinger has a very strange filmography. There’s the family favorite The NeverEnding Story, indie favorite Last Exit to Brooklyn, creepy incest drama The Cement Garden, the horrendous abomination that must be stricken from the consciousness of humanity forever The House of the Spirits, and the horror “classic” based on a video game Resident Evil.
There are good reasons why so many people fought to keep Fantastic Four under wraps. You can take your pick between the cheap special effects, the terrible acting (I’m looking at you Jay Underwood), the 4th grade-level dialogue, or a script that makes absolutely no sense. The bad guy is Dr. Doom, and if I have to sit through another aristocratic villain with a maniacal laugh, I may need to go on my own crusade of death and destruction to free the world from this tired, tired, oh so very tired cliché.
There is, however, a second villain in the film. At the same time that Fantastic Four movie was being shot, Leprechaun 2 was also in production. I don’t know if Warwick Davis needed more work, or maybe some make-up got in his eyes, but it seems like he wandered off the set of Leprechaun 2 and somehow found himself on the set of Fantastic Four,because the bad guy in Fantastic Four looks an awful lot like that nasty, little Leprechaun.
I’m not going to recount the pathetic plot, but there is one aspect of the premise that I do find particularly humorous. If you are familiar with Stan Lee’s Fantastic Four, you will know that there are three men and one woman. There’s Mr. Fantastic, who can stretch and bend into any shape, The Thing, who is made out of impenetrable rock and is super strong, The Human Torch, who can burst into flame and fly through the sky, and the last one is the woman, Sue Storm. What is her superpower? She can be invisible. Please join me in a worldwide feminist facepalm. Oh! and she sews the uniforms too.
The whole film is surprisingly sentimental. There is a lot of mushy stuff. The Thing falls in love with a blind sculptress named Alicia, and Mr. Fantastic falls for Sue Storm. With Mr. Fantastic being so stretchy and Sue being see-through, they could make a very “interesting” sex tape that no one would want to watch. We see the tender side of everyone, even the villain Dr. Doom. It’s a strange writing choice, but it fills screen time.
Fantastic Four was directed by Oley Sassone, who was given a $1 million budget. The result may have been horrible, but it accomplished its aim. It secured the rights so that Eichinger could make a $90 million version for 20th Century Fox in 2005, and a $130 million sequel in 2007. Eventually, Disney bought Twentieth Century Fox, as well as Marvel, so now Mickey owns the rights. Disney has announced plans to reboot the franchise in 2025. By then, they will have bought the rights to our brains and will just adjust our skulls to stream movies directly into our brains. There’ll be pauses for commercials, and shock treatments, of course, but then we will all return to our usually scheduled programming.
