Generally speaking, when a film series is no longer available for shooting, or the story is very complete, or it has to be terminated due to some external problems, if you want to shoot again, must restart the series.
However, restarting a movie series is actually very risky. If the series itself is very successful, but the filming is not good after the restart, it will easily attract countless abuses. If the series itself fails, restarting the film will have to bear this "innate Disadvantages".
Looking at Hollywood's movie restart series, there are not many successes, and they are quite common, but there are also some that are worse as they restart.
For example, the "Fantastic Four 2015" we are going to talk about today can be said to be an unprecedented failed restart.
One step wrong, wrong step
In the 1990s, Marvel sold the copyright of its hero team because it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Among them, Fox acquired the X-Men and Fantastic Four hero organizations.
One of Marvel’s agreements to sell the copyright of heroes at that time was to stipulate that Fox must shoot hero-related film and television works within X years, otherwise the copyright will automatically reclaim . Therefore, after entering the 21st century, Fox began to develop "X-Men "And "Fantastic Four" (hereinafter referred to as F4) movies.
is different from "X-Men", which continuously releases new films. After the second part of the F4 series, Fox temporarily suspended development. Why is
? Because the two F4 movies are too ordinary in terms of box office and word of mouth.
However, from Zhuge Liang's perspective, Fox's move can be said to be a daze.
First of all, although the box office of the two F4s is mediocre, but because of the low cost, they are still profitable rather than loss. Although the word-of-mouth is mediocre, it has not seriously affected the sequel.
In other words, , from the perspective of the project itself, the F4 movie has not been exhausted, and it does not necessarily have to be terminated.
Secondly, because of the original agreement with Marvel, F4 must release new film and television works within a certain period of time, otherwise the copyright will return. Of course, according to Fox’s plan, I probably want to shoot at low cost when the copyright is about to return. Just a short film to keep the copyright.
After all, this kind of thing actually happened in the last century. At that time, the copyright of the Fantastic Four was still in the hands of Constantine Pictures, and in order to keep the copyright, Constantine made a niche film at a low cost.
However, with the development of the Marvel universe, Fox began to see the sweetness of the heroic movie universe, so they changed their minds and invested a full $155 million budget when the F4 copyright was about to expire, and restarted Movie project.
Fox plans at this time, in addition to maintaining the copyright, also hopes to integrate the worldview of F4 with the worldview of X-Men through this restart.
But in such a tight timeframe, how easy is it to make a good movie? What's more, this movie is still restarted, and it needs to be connected to the X-Men worldview.
It can be said that because Fox took the first step wrong, the failure of the movie "Fantastic Four 2015" was almost predictable at the beginning of the project.
A magical director
Although time is tight, F4 is a big project after all, and there are still many directors eager to try.
and Fox chose a young director named Josh Trunk .
Fox liked him mainly for two reasons.
First, although Trunk has only directed one "Out of Control" before, this film won a box office of US$127 million at a cost of US$12 million, and the results are quite good.
Second, Trunk is just a small director, who is better in control.
However, as the film began to shoot, the situation began to get out of Fox's control. The director of
Trank is extremely withdrawn and . When filming, he often puts up a black tent and is far away from the crew. is very temperamental when he is on the set, almost like a gunpowder keg.
Of course, the reason why Trunk isThe same reason cannot be separated from Fox, because Fox has intervened in film projects. For example, the role of the invisible girl Fox designated Kate Mara to play, and Kate was not an ideal candidate for Trunk, but Fox publicly disclosed Kate. It was chosen by the director, and then cut the original budget of US$155 million to US$120 million. After
, Trunk vented all his resentment towards Fox on the crew. had a bad attitude towards the staff and was very indifferent to the four leading actors, especially for the face Kate.
Finally, once, Miles Taylor, who plays Mr. Fantastic, couldn't help but quarreled with Trunk, and almost started to move, and was finally persuaded by the staff.
After this incident, the entire crew of was in a mess. The actors and other staff basically wanted to finish the work quickly and get rid of this super-tempered director.
In addition, Trunk himself never reported the shooting results to Fox’s producer. At most, he only talked about the progress. As a result, after the initial completion of the film, Fox said that he was not satisfied when he saw the film. I was afraid that it would cost me nothing when it was released, so a large-scale remake and remake were carried out.
At this time, the time has come to 2015, only half a year from the movie release schedule.
I have to say that Trunk may not have figured out his position, because he is only a small director. It is expected that Fox will not fully delegate power , does he think that Fox asked him to have such a shallow resume? Will the director delegate everything to him?
Secondly, what Trunk shouldn't do is to vent his grievances on the crew members , especially Miles Taylor, who almost had a fight with him, or he personally selected him into the crew.
was originally short on time, and it was not possible to shoot well at the time of filming, which caused the whole crew to be up and down. How could it be possible to make a good movie?
, a bad century film
, of course, the last film party finished the film before it was released.
Before it was released, Trunk triumphantly said on Twitter: "This "New Fantastic Four" I made will be better than 99% of superhero movies. "
However, there is one The crew replied to him via an email: "I don't think so." And this person who confronts Trunk is generally considered to be the starring Miles Taylor. After the results of
, everyone knows that after the release of "Fantastic Four 2015", the box office was horribly low. With a cost of 120 million US dollars, the final box office was only 167 million. According to the box office three times the cost, it can be paid back. In popular terms, how much is a loss?
is not only the case, this film has the lowest score of on all rating websites at home and abroad. Many viewers think this is probably the worst superhero movie in the new century.
Of course, the quality of the movie itself is really incomparable. The story is inexplicable, the character is equal to the air, and the special effects are similar to fifty cents. It is very difficult to find an advantage in this movie.
And just after the failure of "The New Fantastic Four", Trunk hurriedly claimed on social media that the version he had originally shot was perfect, but after being filmed on a large scale by Fox, he became "unhuman", This expresses dissatisfaction.
Of course, he deleted this tweet soon.
However, 's move completely angered the Fox executives. originally participated in a "Star Wars" project at the time, but after Fox used the relationship, he lost this job.
In fact, judging from the tweet that Trunk sent before the release, even if it is the version after the Fox reshoot, himself is very confident, and can't see any dissatisfaction at all.
and waiting for the movie's results to quickly shake the pot is also uncontrollable. No wonder Fox wants to sanction it.
Reactions from all parties
After the release of this movie, which can definitely be "famed in history", the reactions of all parties are quite interesting.
Fox originally planned to plan a sequel, and if possible, will be linked with the X-Men, but immediately after the movie resultsSaid: "Fantastic Four and X-Men are two different worlds." The follow-up episode of is also cancelled.
Kate Mara, who plays the Invisible Girl, laughed and said in an interview, "This is the most successful F4 movie." Full of ridicule, but I want to come, when it was filming, Trunk was the most targeted at her, and it is not there yet. Revenge? A related crew member of
said that Fox is also very responsible for the failure of the film, because they want to keep the copyright, but the time is rushed, so the focus is all on the progress, and the quality of the film is almost indifferent during shooting. .
As for Marvel, it’s even more interesting. The guest star Stan Lee knew of Turk’s hot temper when the movie was still filming. He knew that the set was quite chaotic and he didn’t even mean to go there, so This film is also one of the few Marvel movies in which he has no cameo.
and Marvel’s family is obviously quite dissatisfied with Fox’s abuse of the Fantastic Four. , because Marvel had actually discussed the copyright with Fox earlier, it hopes to extend the copyright of Daredevil (this hero copyright is also in Fox’s hands) in exchange for it. After the return of the Fantastic Four, he tried to terminate the comic series of the Fantastic Four.
However, Fox doesn't accept everything from hard and soft, so he made such a movie.
Therefore, in the 12th issue of the Punisher comics, Marvel deliberately created a few characters that looked exactly like movie actors, and even showed the names of the director and actors, and killed them all.
As for Trunk, after this time, almost no Hollywood film company has looked for him again. Later, he had to admit on Twitter that he hoped to delete the movie "The New Fantastic Four" from the world forever.
It can be said that Fox and Josh Trunk are inseparable from the failure of the movie "Fantastic Four 2015", but the protagonist and the staff are indeed a bit miserable, not only have to be angry on the set, but also for this. A bad film was sold out, and when it was released, many people laughed after dinner. Of course, fortunately, this film did not end their actor career, otherwise it would be too wrong.
Today's Fox has been acquired by Disney, and the copyright of the Fantastic Four has returned to Marvel. After all,
is his own son. Marvel Pictures will certainly not treat the Fantastic Four like Fox. Now that the original Avengers have retired, the Fantastic Four will definitely become the backbone of the Marvel universe in the future, wait and see.
