Roger Ebert believed ‘Fantastic Four’ should be “ashamed” to show itself
Superhero movies occupy a complicated space in the film industry. While they are incredibly profitable – usually causing fans to flock to the theatre and earning millions, maybe billions, as a result – the genre has generated plenty of conversations regarding their critical merit.
That’s not to say all superhero movies are bad, after all, The Dark Knight is widely praised for being one of the best films of the 21st century, but the superhero genre all too often relies on stale tropes and a lack of complex characterisation, leaving movie lovers divided.
Film critic Roger Ebert wasn’t against the superhero genre as a whole, but there was one title that emerged in the mid-2000s – just a few years before the Marvel boom – that he thought was absolutely awful. Fantastic Four, released in 2005, was the subject of his written attack, with the critic slating nearly every aspect of the movie. While he highlighted the superhero movies he did like, such as 1978’s Superman and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, he stated that Fantastic Four “should almost be ashamed to show itself in the same theaters.”
Fantastic Four was the kind of stereotypical superhero fodder that served no purpose other than raking in ticket sales. It grossed a whopping $333.5 million at the box office, so the plan evidently worked, but the film has hardly endured as a good piece of cinema in the 20 years since its release.
After reeling off the actors, their characters, and their superpowers, Ebert wrote, “By this point in the review, are you growing a little restless? What am I gonna do, list names and actors and superpowers and nicknames forever? That’s how the movie feels.” The monotony of the movie drove Ebert to pure boredom, and he couldn’t understand how a movie designed to be action-packed could be so mind-numbing.
“It’s all setup and demonstration, and naming and discussing and demonstrating,” he continued. “and it never digests the complications of the Fantastic Four and gets on to telling a compelling story. Sure, there’s a nice sequence where the Thing keeps a fire truck from falling off a bridge, but you see one fire truck saved from falling off a bridge, you’ve seen them all”.
Directed by Tim Story, the film starred the likes of Chris Evans, Jessica Alba, Ioan Gruffudd, Kerry Washington, and Michael Chiklis, but Ebert was not impressed with their performances, finding the lack of character development uninteresting. He called the Fantastic Four “underwhelming,” explaining that he wasn’t watching the film to “study it, but to be entertained by it, but how could I be amazed by a movie that makes its own characters so indifferent about themselves?”
While Fantastic Four was a critical flop, a reboot as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, is set for release in summer 2025. It seems as though superhero films are emerging more rapidly than ever – we can thank the multi-billion dollar success of the Avengers movies for that – even though they hardly ever win critics over.
