Over 30 Years Later, ‘The Fantastic Four’ Desperately Deserves to be Released
Marvel did not have a hit film until the release of Blade in 1998, and did not kick off the superhero movie boom until X-Men in 2000, but they started bringing their characters to live-action long before that. They began with television movies in the late 1970s — The Incredible Hulk, The Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America and Doctor Strange — all of which were meant to launch their own TV series, only two of which actually did. By 1990, Marvel had produced three live-action feature films: Howard the Duck, The Punisher, and Captain America again. The latter two were released straight-to-video, while Howard the Duck remains one of the most infamous box office flops in cinema history.
The 1990s marked a fascinating transitional point for Marvel adaptations. They had huge success on the small screen with the likes of the X-Men and Spider-Man animated series, and several other cartoons of varying quality. Marvel movies were being set up at major studios, but languished in development hell for the entire decade. Films like X-Men and Spider-Man, the two blockbusters that truly kicked off the Marvel movie as we know it now, were stuck in development hell for at least ten years before finally reaching that monumental finish line.
In many ways, The Fantastic Four is perfectly representative of this era. In a decade where studios were sitting on major Marvel properties, the only live-action representations of these characters came in the form of direct-to-video or TV movies. And here, almost perfectly placed in the middle of the decade, the story of Marvel’s first family — and once its flagship franchise — never even officially released.
I don’t want to rehash the absolutely wild behind-the-scenes story of this movie, that’s been done very well, particularly in the Doomed! documentary. In short: the film was produced by the late B-Movie legend Roger Corman and made for a drastically low budget for what it was. It was never actually intended for release, it was made so that producer Bernd Eischinger could hold onto the rights to the Fantastic Four title while they prepped a big-budget “real” movie. Some people knew this, many did not. Hearing no word on what was going on with the release, the cast took it upon themselves to promote it. And it was promoted. The leaked version, which has been easy to see for years, thankfully, is not even the finished product. There’s a reason the CGI on Johnny Storm’s full Human Torch transformation looks like a Windows 95 screensaver: it was a placeholder. They didn’t get to finish. What we have is simply the closest approximation.
Even still, the end result is an almost shockingly faithful adaptation, one that is genuinely charming and fun, with costumes and sets that look torn directly from a comic book page. Knowing how little they had to work with and what they were up against, 1994’s Fantastic Four is a monumental feat on an invisible budget.
The story begins with Reed Richards and his friend Ben Grimm in college. Reed befriends Victor Von Doom and the two begin working together on a project to harness the energy of a passing comet named Colossus. The project fails, leaving Victor believed dead. Ten years later, Reed and Ben — along with Susan and Johnny Storm — head a mission to pilot a rocket to repeat the experiment, which again goes awry, leaving them with superpowers. Victor has of course survived and has become the monarch Dr. Doom, who kidnaps the heroes to learn more about their new abilities. They escape, Doom threatens to destroy New York City unless they surrender themselves to him, and they team up to stop him, becoming the Fantastic Four in the process.
With a few notable liberties for narrative purposes, the film is incredibly faithful to the source material — maybe even too much, at times. Reed first meets Sue when she is a child (played by Buffy and Angel star Mercedes McNab) who has an enormous crush on him while he is a college student, and they meet again and form a relationship when she is an adult. True to the original source material, but a change would certainly have been welcome.
But like I said, there are changes. This is the first of several adaptations to make Victor a part of the experiment, at least, sort of. Rather than giving Doom powers at the same time like the 2005 and 2015 films, this holds a little closer to some interpretations of his origin in the comics by making it a lab accident during his time working with Reed in college. The mission that causes the birth of the Fantastic Four is a repeat of that original experiment, which shows restraint compared to the later adaptations, and allows for Doom to have the time to reasonably amass his power and his role as Latverian monarch in that ten year gap in which he was presumed dead.
Above all, my favorite thing about The Fantastic Four is something that absolutely could not have been replicated in a bigger budget movie: it authentically looks and feels like a lost 1950s or 1960s adventure film that could have been made when Fantastic Four was brand new. It’s great to see the new film take on a 1960s aesthetic, but this movie legitimately looks like it’s from that era at times. The miniature models, the lighting, the set design, particularly the design of the rocket and Dr. Doom’s lair, these things completely appear to hail from the same era as Fantastic Voyage or The Time Machine or Henry Levin’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. There are obvious comparisons to Flash Gordon, both old and (at the time) new. The miniature of Doom’s silhouetted castle atop a rocky mountainside with lightning flashing behind it so easily looks like it could be the opening credits of a Hammer film.
Doom’s throne room is another gorgeous matte painting that not only feels like a perfect embodiment of that character’s environment, but also takes clear inspiration from Flash Gordon’s Ming the Merciless. It looks like the distilled essence of the villain’s lair in a classic adventure serial. It also brings to mind Frank Langella’s Skeletor and his throne room as seen in the 1987 Masters of the Universe film, which was also a low-budget adaptation of a hugely popular, beloved children’s hero property. Unlike this one, though, that movie got released.
Of course, this wasn’t the only movie being made in the ’90s with decidedly old-school sensibilities. Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment was using stop-motion and rear-projection techniques in many if not most of their direct-to-video horror and sci-fi exploits. Band was heavily influenced by early Marvel comics and by 1993 and 1994 had started making full-blown superhero movies with a Full Moon edge, like Mandroid, Invisible: The Chronicles of Benjamin Knight, Dark Angel: The Ascent and Doctor Mordrid, which reportedly started as an adaptation of Marvel’s Doctor Strange before losing the rights.
Full Moon had even launched their family-friendly film label Moonbeam, and in a perfect world, this movie could have been the face of that label. Although, admittedly, it has a pretty hard edge at times. Still the point remains, while it is far from the blockbuster fans would have wanted in a post-Batman landscape, there was a comfortable video store niche awaiting this movie, and it would have found its audience had it been officially released.
I’m not by any stretch saying there aren’t rough patches in this movie. There are. Lines like “Hi, can Sue and Johnny come to outer space with us?” Stick out like a sore thumb. Some effects work really well considering the budget, others don’t work at all, particularly Reed’s stretching effects in which his long arms appear to be held up with fishing line. For every joke that lands, there are maybe just as many others that hit with a wet thud. The Jeweler is such an odd secondary villain, kind of a take on Mole-Man, but in a world where Leprechaun had just come out and been a huge video success.
But then you see The Thing in his amazingly detailed practical monster suit, or Dr. Doom’s totally comic accurate appearance, and it’s hard not to feel like a little kid. This is a monarch true to his most comic-ish comic book roots. There’s a lot of physical acting going into that performance, too, given that Victor is completely hidden behind the armor by the time he becomes Dr. Doom.
There’s also an interesting approach to the characters in this film, revealing that their powers are so specific because they’re externalized manifestations of their own internal struggles. Reed stretches himself thin trying to solve everyone’s problems, Sue feels like she isn’t seen, Johnny is obviously a hothead and Ben’s impenetrable exterior literally turned his body into rock. It’s an interesting and introspective approach that tries to give the film an earnest emotional weight.
What we have is messy, yes, but it is still a movie that succeeds expectations simply in terms of capturing the essence of that comic and, above all, the time in which it first made its debut. This is a movie that feels out of time, and is also lost to time. At the very least, it deserves an official release so that people could stop watching thirty year old bootlegs they pretend they’ve never heard of, and finally have the chance to see it the way it was meant to be seen.
