So I actually saw Fan4stic...

[Blondbraid]

I wound up seeing Fan4stic in it's entirety on tv because nothing else was on, and what struck me with how the movie became so bad (like 90% is just people doing technobabble in a dark room and there is a super cliche fight against a villain using a blue sky beam to destroy the world in the last 15 minutes, it makes Batman versus Superman look like freaking Star Wars in comparison) is when I realized that they were trying to make Fantastic Four into some sort of high-concept sci-fi thriller akin to Arrival. The big problem is that a high-concept sci-fi thriller like that movie actually needs a great deal of buildup and exposition in order to explain a new and different concept and a big part of what makes the story worth watching is not knowing how it will end. To compare to Arrival again, the movie centers on a scientist desperately trying to learn to communicate with a group of aliens who's language are completely different from any human language, and there is a big plot twist that makes the viewer see all the previous scenes and interactions in an entirely different light.

Meanwhile, Fan4stic is about four people with superpowers who use said superpowers to defeat an evil supervillain literally named "Dr Doom" and shout catchphrases. They are not exactly complicated characters and there is no point in trying to hide the team-members powers just to try and present them as this big surprising plot twist when literally everyone already saw all the marketing of the other Fantastic Four movie a decade earlier, unless they were either too young to see Fan4stic, or were some form of cave-dwelling hermits who only emerge from their hole in the ground once a decade.

Seriously, what's the deal with these reboots? No one would dream about making a remake of Schindler's list reimagined as a "zany" comedy where Seth Rogen accidentally saves the Jewish ghetto while falling on his butt and having a supermodel be inexplicably attracted to him, so why are so many movie executives trying to turn whimsical cartoon characters into sad grey tragic dramas that are simultaneously also supposed to be "scientific" takes on superheroes?

[Gilbert]

As far as I remember, that movie was sort of an ashcan copy, in which the movie company(Fox) needed to make a movie based on the franchase and release it on time to retain their rights to make even more movies, otherwise they will lose the rights back to Marvel, because, some literal rules in the contract.
So, even though they knew they didn't have the resources and time, and that it definitely would suck, they had to make it.

The irony was that soon afterwards Disney announced they would acquire Fox, which probably would make the F4 movie rights revert to Marvel, so releasing that movie became pointless.

Movie reboots to (especially comic) franchases were very commonly done because they couldn't continue with the original series but wanted to retain the rights. One good example was, after the Spiderman trilogy, Sony rebooted it as 'Amazing~' to retain their rights, without much hope that it would do well, but that became a hit, so they made 'Amazing~ 2' which... sucked... and then they rebooted it once again...

For F4 (again), there was one quickly made movie in the early '90s, which was never released (but somehow made its way into Youtube). This is a textbook case for an ashcan copy movie.

[Blondbraid]

Do you mean this version?

I remember seeing video clips of it and the only thing I remembered was that the special effects on the Thing looked like shit. And not in the metaphorical sense. 

[Gilbert]

Yep. It was shot as a real movie but was never supposed to be released.

[morganw]

Yep. It was shot as a real movie but was never supposed to be released.

I've watched it and thought it wasn't too bad. It was made quickly and cheaply, but I'd say the result is probably better than the modern versions (I've not seen them all).

[Gilbert]

As far as I remember though it was cheap and cheesy, at least it was more faithful to the source material.

[Mandle]

a "zany" comedy where Seth Rogen accidentally saves the Jewish ghetto while falling on his butt and having a supermodel be inexplicably attracted to him

Ahhh, I see you have the misfortune of having witnessed the soul-sucking dread that is "A Million Ways To Die In The West"...

To be fair though, "Holmes And Watson" makes even that look like the most sophisticated comedy ever made.

[Blondbraid]

Yep. It was shot as a real movie but was never supposed to be released.

I've watched it and thought it wasn't too bad. It was made quickly and cheaply, but I'd say the result is probably better than the modern versions (I've not seen them all).

In that case, maybe I'll give it a watch. It can't be worse than the 2005 or 2015 versions at any rate. For while the 2005 version may have had marginally more action,
it also was littered with either sexist or just embarrassing frat-bro jokes which was mercifully gone from the 2015 version, but both versions depicted the heroes as useless berks
more concerned with bickering among each other than, you know, actually using their powers for something good.

a "zany" comedy where Seth Rogen accidentally saves the Jewish ghetto while falling on his butt and having a supermodel be inexplicably attracted to him

Ahhh, I see you have the misfortune of having witnessed the soul-sucking dread that is "A Million Ways To Die In The West"...

To be fair though, "Holmes And Watson" makes even that look like the most sophisticated comedy ever made.

Yeah, the entirety of "A Million Ways To Die In The West" could probably be summed up by saying it's a movie where every time Seth McFarlane tells a joke, he has to spend several minutes pointing out that it was a joke and jokes are supposed to be funny. They couldn't just have a scene where they visit a market and a bunch of people get killed by the attractions as a fun background gag, McFarlane has to have a super long obnoxious monologue about "people in the 1800's get killed, like all the time! It's totally crazy man!". And that's not even the worst thing he's done, I could probably rant forever on how Seth MacFarlane embodies everything wrong with American comedy. 

And I didn't even bother with Holmes and Watson, I've seen others review it and every single joke I've seen from that movie either had exactly the same problem as "A Million Ways To Die In The West", or it was just gross, it or was both at the same time.

[eri0o]

I have nothing to say except it's weird you chose to watch fantastic 4 and to think it is some sort of significant movie about super heroes in a day and age where we had the Nolan Batman trilogy, the avengers movies, all the other marvel movies like Captain America and the Captain Marvel, the wonder woman movie, the Logan movie (which it's really really good)... Even the Watchmen's movie which is a little old by now. There are some seriously good super hero movies. If I would complain a little was that would like people spending good amount of money in non super hero movies too.

[Blondbraid]

I have nothing to say except it's weird you chose to watch fantastic 4

Well, as I stated in my first comment, I only wound up seeing it out of boredom because the only other thing on TV at that time was reality shows, which are the one thing on earth that manages to be even more boring than Fan4stic. 

[Buckethead]

I'm glad you saw the movie and complained about it here, but actually explain why it is bad. I've seen lots of people online saying Fan4stic was awfull but never really say why. I thought it looked ok enough but I can see what's bad about it now. Thanks for saving me some time.

[Blondbraid]

I'm glad you saw the movie and complained about it here, but actually explain why it is bad. I've seen lots of people online saying Fan4stic was awfull but never really say why. I thought it looked ok enough but I can see what's bad about it now. Thanks for saving me some time.

Thanks, I'm glad all the time I spent studying film at university proved useful!

[Danvzare]

to defeat an evil supervillain literally named "Dr Doom"

Ah Dr Doom. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the comics (at least from what I gleaned from the ones I read) he became the dictator of Latveria, and turned a third world country into a prosperous first world country, and is beloved by his people.
Dr Doom also helped save the remaining population in the Marvel Zombie universe, while Mr Fantastic purposefully infected the rest of his team.
He also got horribly disfigured when a lab experiment blew up in his face. Mr Fantastic tried to warn him that his formula was off and that it would happen, but apparently due to his hubris, Dr Doom didn't believe him and as such now believes that Mr Fantastic tampered with the lab experiment somehow. Something tells me Dr Doom is right, and Mr Fantastic did tamper with it.

Dr Doom is the perfect example of a good guy that became a villain because he was villainized. And I think it would be brilliant if they made a film about that. Especially since his last name is literally "Doom".

[Blondbraid]

to defeat an evil supervillain literally named "Dr Doom"

Ah Dr Doom. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the comics (at least from what I gleaned from the ones I read) he became the dictator of Latveria, and turned a third world country into a prosperous first world country, and is beloved by his people.
Dr Doom also helped save the remaining population in the Marvel Zombie universe, while Mr Fantastic purposefully infected the rest of his team.
He also got horribly disfigured when a lab experiment blew up in his face. Mr Fantastic tried to warn him that his formula was off and that it would happen, but apparently due to his hubris, Dr Doom didn't believe him and as such now believes that Mr Fantastic tampered with the lab experiment somehow. Something tells me Dr Doom is right, and Mr Fantastic did tamper with it.

Dr Doom is the perfect example of a good guy that became a villain because he was villainized. And I think it would be brilliant if they made a film about that. Especially since his last name is literally "Doom".

Yeah, and I'd especially want to see the whole "beloved dictator" bit, since I don't know any other superhero movie that did that with their villain, instead of just making him a generic evil scientist like in the existing movies.

Though the best super villain origin of all time must probably go to Lex Luthor, for turning evil because he blamed Superman for his baldness!

[Mandle]

Well, to be fair, Lex is blaming Superboy for ruining his experiment. The baldness he mentions incidentally.

Not much of a scientist though if he didn't keep notes on his method. Maybe the fumes melt hair and paper?

[morganw]

It does look like he is putting out a fire in a completely different (white) building. And if not, this is a waist high window on the ground floor... Presuambly the bottle was somehow glued to the table.