The Fantastic Flop: First Fools to Make Less Money Than Superman

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Two bombs. Nothing can kill Jurassic World Rebirth.

Maybe now they’ll get rid of the insufferable Pedro Pascal.

Variety posts first reactions to the film from some entertainment journalists and others. These are limited reactions because full reviews cannot be posted until this Tuesday.

One of the more interesting consistent themes of the reactions is that the visuals and effects appear to be stunning.

[quote] FantasticFour First Steps is visually one of the best things Marvel has ever made. Parts feel like (Christopher Nolan's) Interstellar & demand IMAX.

Pedro Pascal haters will have to hope that Tuesday they'll get blinding red hate for him from reviewers. (The Critical Drinker, perhaps?) But for now:

[quote] “Pedro Pascal nails it as Mr. Fantastic. Vanessa Kirby stands out as Sue Storm – she’s a shooting star.”

[quote] "Pedro Pascal is the perfect Reed, but the entire cast shines and does right by these characters. It’s funny, moving, gorgeous to look at, and non-stop FANTASTIC. This is MarvelStudios at its brilliant best.”

More positive reactions at link. Again, Tuesday is the day for hundreds of actual reviews on Rottentomatoes.com.

Deadline’s review is also glowing.

Post-COVID, movies just don’t make a billion dollars anymore — unless they attract millennial parents and their brats (Minecraft and Lilo and Stitch, this year).

Marvel’s multiverse phase and its Disney+ oversaturation damaged the brand irreparably.

I haven't seen it, but Johnny Storm is supposed to be hot. I will give Pedro a chance and admit if I'm wrong to question his casting.

R5, that hardly sounds like a glowing review.

The public is tired of Pedro Pascal. This makes 3 bombs in a row for him this summer. Not to mention the disappointing performance of The Last of Us.

[Quote] That would make three straight bombs in this year alone for the struggling Marvel Studios.

So there are no homosexuals in these movies?

Aw, he’s for sure overexposed and kind of annoying… but the Last of Us wasn’t his fault. It was his early demise and the “I’m going to be a dad” line.

BTW, this thread is brought to you by the same queen who posted a love letter thread to the 2006 Superman.

I still can’t believe that people think $600 million worldwide for Superman is a good thing. Especially considering that Man of Steel made $670 million 12 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, it’s around $900 million, meaning about 33% less people will see Superman in theaters than saw Man of Steel in theaters.

r11: I don't think you've made that point yet in the "Rosie's Fight with Barbara Walters" thread.

[quote] This makes 3 bombs in a row for him this summer.

What were the other two bombs?

The casting was horrible. Pedro Pascal is not Reed Richards. He's a big name actor, but he was cast to check off the Latino casting box. Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm is insane. Heads should roll for casting him. Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer was a huge miss. A hunky male actor cast in the role could have been a big draw.

Regardless of whatever plot there is, who beyond complete losers would want to see this cast together in a movie?

It will do well enough if the film is good.

[Quote] (The Critical Drinker, perhaps?)

Fuck that cunt. He tries to couch his reviews as flaming of Hollywood pretensions, but all he does is affirm the prejudices of his Andrew Tate-esque audience. Anytime anyone other than a straight white male is a lead in an action movie, he considers that to be a DEI hire.

[Quote] meaning about 33% less people will see Superman in theaters than saw Man of Steel in theaters.

Fewer, not less.

And please, not this stupid argument again. Yes, let’s just pretend that Covid didn’t dramatically change moviegoing in America.

The definition of success in Hollywood seems as elusive as the definition of the word in evaluating one's life.

Who the fuck keeps wanting endless superhero movies?

Jesus, they're all pretty much the same idea, no?

The movie premiered tonight. Here's a reaction from a movie channel Youtuber who just saw the film.

"The visuals are stunning..."

"Galactus is terrifying...."

"I was very surprised by how much I really enjoyed this film..."

He saw it under the best conditions in that he doesn't care for and is not emotionally invested in The Fantastic Four, and he expected nothing from the movie. It's easier to impress someone with a good or decent movie in that situation.

[quote]The Fantastic Flop: First Fools to Make Less Money Than Superman

Hardly surprising, since Superman has been running a couple of weeks and Fantastic Four hasn't opened yet. It's a tough call to make money on 0 screens.

Do we have a Flop Troll?.

r13 Capt America and the Thunderbolts were both box office dissapointments.

[quote]Hardly surprising, since Superman has been running a couple of weeks and Fantastic Four hasn't opened yet. It's a tough call to make money on 0 screens.

Are you retarded? Do you not know what tracking is?

[quote]The movie premiered tonight.

No, it did not.

Superman has already grossed more money domestically in two weeks than Tammy's Mission Impossible -The Final Reckoning has in two months.

We do, R32, we have many.

Money = winning!

Popularity in numbers = best in quality

R23, that poster meant for Pedro Pascal, not Marvel. His two other movies were Materialists and Eddington, and he isn’t the star of either. Materialists did decent money for what it was, and Eddington is an Ari Aster movie, so audiences were bound to dislike it.

Pascal might not be a box office draw, but neither of those movies is proof of that.

[quote]The movie premiered tonight. Here's a reaction from a movie channel Youtuber who just saw the film.

Uh, no he did not just see it as it is not playing anywhere tonight.

[quote] Who the fuck keeps wanting endless superhero movies?

No one outside of the US it seems.

Disney's now got less than a week for the international market to start liking the US and its products again.

Thanks Trump.

[quote] Uh, no he did not just see it as it is not playing anywhere tonight.

Fantastic Four had its world premiere in LA, Monday, July 21st (tonight).

Having, not had. They’re watching the movie right this second. That YouTube guy was not at the premiere.

I'm now seeing more Youtube out-of-the-theater reactions from people who reference an earlier advance press screening for the movie. They were not at the world premiere.

They saw the movie last week and there was an embargo on reactions until today.

The embargo on social reactions (POZ only) lifts today, The embargo on reviews lifts Wednesday.

Does every Fantastic 4 film flop. Even the first one underperformed. Yet they keep trying to make it happen. It just doesn’t work. Make it a series.

[Quote] I still can’t believe that people think $600 million worldwide for Superman is a good thing. - R11

I still can’t believe that dickheads think making $600 million equals a box office flop.

This may be the front runner for Best Picture at the Oscars.

Not a disastrous flop, but the old rule is a film needs to make 2.5x its budget to turn a profit. Superman cost a reported $225M (not even including marketing).

$225M x 2.5 =$562M.

And studios have to split about half the ticket sales with theaters, even more in foreign markets.

*I meant break even, not turn a profit.

I keep telling yall marketing is from an auxiliary budget outside the cost of the film that they expect these expensive action flicks to eat up. It’s a pool of money.

Pascal bears a heavy burden as the first out gay man to carry the lead in a superhero picture.

But does it count if the public doesn’t know that?

[quote]Are you retarded? Do you not know what tracking is?

I know it's inaccurate compared with the performance of many movies once they actually open. And that you have no manners.

[quote] This may be the front runner for Best Picture at the Oscars.

🤣

[quote] I still can’t believe that dickheads think making $600 million equals a box office flop.

It is. The film cost that much to make. You time its budget x 2.5. Theaters keep half the profits. It doesn’t make a cent until it hits that mark.

Movie execs don't understand the problem. Spiderman, solo hero, solo story to tell. Thor, Ironman, Hulk, Capt America all solo movies, solo stories to tell. Avengers comes along people are invested most of the heroes, Hawkeye, Blackwidow, nice to add on secon tier characters FF? Four people from the jump, we need to invest in four stories, and while each are compelling characters in the comics, that is only through decades of story telling. To compress that down to two hours is impossible. To get butts in seats you need people to know who they are, or want to know. When your biggest star is Pedro Pascal who has never carried a movie, you know you are in trouble. The only tie in was at the post credit scene in Thunderrbolts and a ton of secrecy around the whole moive.

R11, can we start a GoFundMe so you can buy a billboard with that screed on it? I think there might be 4 or 5 people left in the world who missed your 9,000,000 identical posts in every other thread on DL. The world needs to know that 68 more people saw Man of Steel's opening weekend 7 years before an unprecedented global pandemic than saw Superman 3 years after it. This is valuable information and we can't chance someone missing it.

[quote] Four people from the jump, we need to invest in four stories, and while each are compelling characters in the comics, that is only through decades of story telling. To compress that down to two hours is impossible.

Exactly! They need to do four solo movie before teaming them up in an Avengers style teamup movie. DC made the same mistake when they tried to rush into making Justice Gang when the Flash, Cyborg, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Batman solos haven’t even cum out yet.

The X-Men disprove your theory, R48. Launching a franchise from a superhero team debut in the first film is possible and has been done before.

Maybe it's just this superhero team? The Fantastic Four ain't the X-Men, that's for sure.

The X-Men haven’t been successfully launched yet.

The problem is the public simply doesn’t want superhero movies. Thru want REAL movies. Not CGI crapfests to sell merch.

This movie doesn’t have CGI.

They've had almost a dozen movies in under 25 years, R52. I don't know what you consider "successfully launched" but film studios don't keep making movies decade after decade if a franchise isn't successful.

I have never seen a good X-men movie. Ever. Hugh Jackman is the breakout as he really emodied wolverine and why he got solo movies. Look at Days of Future Past - the most interesting character was Raven, who is not an X-man, was never a hero in the comics. X-men is the worst example as they have never told any story correctly - with execs embellishing or just flat out creating bad story and characters. Apocalypse in the movies was a piece of shit.

Except Raven has been a member of the x-men in the comics and has played the role of hero at times.

r57 to an extent but she has always been self serving, even with Rogue. There was a comic where she pays Arcade to train her to kill the X-men and she kills then all. Even Rogue, but she cannot kill Nightcrawler, her biological son. It was all just robots, but that is the nature of Mystique. She can be your firend and kill you the next day,

A compilation of every time Pedro Pascal was acting like a flaming cunt on the press tour. Says he’s a daddy with a capital D and Vanessa has cunty snatch face.

Feige should walk away now or make a top to bottom change in his leadership team. F4 is such a mid disconnected lead up to their make or break Avengers film that there's not going to be any audience left interested enough to go see it.

Superman is a superior movie in every area.

Except in making money, r60.

Superman still hasn’t broke even.

Superman is still making money. This mid turd is going to drop like cement after opening weekend word of mouth.

Did the MCU casting director have a stroke that we didn't know about? Disney must have been pushing side deals to bring this group together. I'll never be convinced this was the best group they could have put together.

88% at Rotten Tomatoes.

With apologies, I saw FF today, and though I posted my opinion of the film on the thread bitching about the casting of Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, I’m cutting and pasting it here too, where it seems as (or more) appropriate.

I saw “Fantastic Four” this afternoon. It was entertaining, I liked it okay. I thought the tone was all over the place — starts off as fairly warm and comedic and becomes a sci-fi action/adventure movie. And for me it wasn’t entirely successful at world building. It’s set in an ‘alternate’ earth. The time period is a kind of retro-1960s New York City but a swoopy, ‘futuristic’ ‘60s that people of that period might have thought the ‘future’ would be like.

I decided I liked the eccentric, not-obvious casting, like Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer (because why not?) Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby are excellent, their ‘realistic’ acting grounds the film even when it seems at odds with some of the comic book goings-on. But ultimately the plot hinges on a family’s love for their new baby, so the naturalistic acting helps there.

Joseph Quinn was cast in the same spirit of ‘why not?’ He struck me as slightly old for this part, I did like the way they dressed him — white jeans show what he’s got up front rather nicely but he doesn’t have the kind of “America’s Ass” bubble butt we’ve lusted after from Chris Evans. Quinn is no pretty boy, has a strong character actor’s face and the blond caesar cut doesn’t really work for him. I will say he has a very sexy mouth. But his performance overall is too glum.

The crew that gave us “Superman” did a much better job at finding the right tone and style for their reboot. But I would revisit this world again, even if it did seem shaky and indefinite. I was intrigued and bemused if not seduced