The Fantastic Four (1994)

Recap:

The movie starts with Reed and Victor trying to capture the energy of the Colossus comet. Though Ben tries to save him, Victor dies in an accident. Only that he doesn’t die but is saved by his latverian henchmen. Ten years later Reed wants to use a giant diamond to repeat the experiment, but the diamond is replaced by the Jeweler (who resembles the Mole Man a little) with a replica to impress Alicia, so it all goes awry again.

This movie was done on an abysmal budget and never released. The official explanation is that Bernd Eichinger had to shoot it to keep a hold on the movie rights and never planned to show it in the first place. In the documentary linked below we learn about two alternative stories: maybe Fox bought the Fantastic Four as a toy for their new Wunderkind Chris Columbus, or maybe Avi Arrad is the megalomanic supervillain who made this movie vanish to make room for his own big movie plans.

Who knows? Who cares? The second movie and first reboot is clearly my favorite because it has what a superhero movie needs: action, comedy, romance, drama, a budget and special effects. But everybody knows what happened then. The third movie was so incredibly bad that the fourth one had to be the the second reboot, carefully throwing every story element in the trash can except for the characters names and superpowers, which of course didn’t work so that the fifth movie will be the third reboot. And seeing how incompently Micky Mouse treats his purchases, I have very little hope for the future of the F4.

So I’ll say that this #1 is much better than #3 and #4. It’s also better than, say, Daredevil or Elektra or Spiderman 5 (Rise Of Electro). What it’s not: it’s not the magic supermovie that many nostalgics claim it to be. It’s nice, it’s entertaining, and it’s charming because this lowbudget underdog is better than so many blockbuster wannabes. Oh, and since it’s no longer a lost medium it has its fanbase simply because we are suckers for lost treasures.

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