How you handle your failures is just as critical as how you handle your successes. Actor Jamie Bell has seen success in films like Billy Elliot and Rocketman but he has one glaring failure in his filmography and that’s 2015’s Fantastic Four. Just about everyone involved with the misfire has called it a disaster and now Bell himself is looking back on the film to reaffirm that it is as bad as everyone has said.
During a chat with Andy Cohen on his Sirius XM show Radio Andy, Bell touched on the film briefly during their talk. He talked about the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score (a scathing 9% rotten) and he called the movie “ill-fated” and a “disaster.” Cohen tried to put a positive spin on Bell’s comments by saying the stars of the film have risen considerably since the movie’s release and that it might be deserving of a rewatch. Bell, hilariously, warned him against it by saying, “No, I don’t think [it deserves a second look.] Save your money, save your time.”
Bell played Ben Grimm aka The Thing in the 2015 film and was joined by Miles Teller as Reed Richards, Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, and Kate Mara as Susan Storm. The hope was that the film would be an improvement over the 2005 adaptation that starred Ioan Gruffudd, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans, and Jessica Alba. The movie made enough money to warrant a sequel but fans and critics weren’t entirely enthused with the adaptation. After Rise of the Silver Surfer, a complete re-do seemed like a good idea and it really did on paper. The new cast was solid and the director, Josh Trank, was coming off the critical and financial hit, Chronicle. As we know now, the production was a disaster, the post-production was tragic, and the release was a trainwreck. In addition to its poor critical response, the film only made $167.8 million worldwide which barely recouped its $120 million budget.
The stars of the film survived the disaster relatively unscathed. Miles Teller is having a good year starring in the finally soon-to-be-released Top Gun: Maverick and the behind-the-scenes of The Godfather series, The Offer. Kate Mara has found solid success on TV with roles in Pose and A Teacher. Michael B. Jordan pulled something that Chris Evans did after he played Johnny Storm. Both actors played the role in their respective films and Evans eventually found greater Marvel success playing Captain America while Jordan did the same thing when he played Killmonger in Black Panther. As for Bell, he went on to marry his Fantastic Four co-star Kate Mara and he’s currently in pre-production on a biopic that has him playing Fred Astaire opposite Margaret Qualley’s Ginger Rogers. Director Josh Trank hasn’t really recovered from the Fantastic Four debacle but that’s a tale for another day.
Do YOU think that 2015’s Fantastic Four deserves a rewatch?