Screen Rant breaks down what went wrong in the pitch meeting for 2015's Fantastic Four, directed by Josh Trank. Marvel has never been able to pull off a successful live-action Fantastic Four franchise. The 2015 adaptation was widely hated, making it the worst-reviewed film in Marvel history. While the movie's own cast and crew were quick to point fingers and place blame for the Fantastic Four's box office failures. Shortly before the 2015 adaptation's debut, Fox erased any trace of the 2005 Fantastic Four films from their digital stores in an attempt to prevent confusion, but maybe removing confusion from the film's plot would have been a better idea.

With all the back and forth, finger-pointing, and non-stop blaming, we may never know just what went wrong with Fantastic Four, but we can certainly explore the comedic possibilities in Screen Rant's Pitch Meeting series.

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Fantastic Four had an opportunity to present the audience with a lot of body horror, a topic most superhero films don't necessarily cover, but with the popularity of films like Contraction and Ben Grimm's famous struggle to deal with becoming a giant, orange rock monster, this uniquely dark point of view could have set the 2015 adaptation apart from its predecessor. Instead, we receive a transition screen propelling the plot a year into the future, well after the heroes' new abilities have been fully navigated.

But this was before the epic successes of Wonder Woman and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Audiences were tired of origin stories, right? While we didn't get to see Ben's slide into self-hate and depression thanks to his horrific new powers, we did get to see him and Reed Richards fail a class project and then drunkenly steal dangerously unguarded space technology. All while ignoring plot holes and glaring lapses in logic along the way.

Not only did the time jump deprive us of what could have been some of the most compelling scenes in the film, it rushed the arrival of the movie's villain, who seemingly chooses not to use his head-popping powers on his nemeses, which is certainly convenient. Even with this lucky advantage, the Fantastic Four failed to take down the evil Victor and were only able to save the day by talking about being a team, basically. They just said, "Yay, teamwork," and went back to doing what they were already doing.

And finally, in what must have been an attempt to completely and totally avoid the vibe of 2005's Fantastic Four, the 2015 adaptation removes any and all comedy or fun, which also removed the majority of the fight scenes, minus the confusing final fight. The entire film is dramatic and serious, without really making any sense.

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Source: Screen Rant