[Patreon Preview] The Fantastic Four: First Steps Review

WHAT WENT WRONG

Sad Boom Media

Hollywood, Acting, Directing, Blockbuster, Movie, Flop, Film, Disaster, History, Tv & Film

4.9 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Can ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ revive one of superhero cinema’s most troubled franchises? Find out what Chris and Lizzie think of the film - including a theory about Pedro Pascal’s performance - and why 4 prior iterations failed to do Marvel’s first family justice.

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*CORRECTIONS: The Fantastic Four premiered before many Marvel staples, including Thor, Hulk, Iron Man and more, and are synonymous with the launch of the Marvel Era in 1961.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following audio was recorded by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer on June 6th, 2020,
0:06.9	when covering 2015's Fantastic Four, directed by Josh Trank.
0:11.6	I don't know why they rebooted this.
0:13.8	I have a weird backhanded compliment for the film on what went right,
0:18.1	which is I find the Fantastic Four to be a completely uncompelling
0:22.8	group of superheroes. It doesn't seem like a particularly appealing story. I'm kind of fine with the
0:29.2	fact that this movie seems to have buried them for good. It feels almost exactly like X-Men
0:35.5	First Class. And I don't think we need another fantastic four movie.
0:39.4	As far as I can tell, it's like the Kirkland brand versions of all of the regular superheroes.
0:45.2	I do think that in a weird way, Josh Trank may have proven that, like, there isn't a great way to make these characters work.
0:52.3	Like, they couldn't make it work in a hokey way, and then it seems like they couldn't make
0:55.4	it work in a gritty way.
0:56.9	So maybe these guys just aren't adaptable at the end of the day.
1:00.2	They work in comic book form, but they don't seem to work on film.
1:05.6	No, I know they're going to do one at some point.
1:09.9	Well, hello, and welcome back to what went wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so
1:15.3	happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make one, let alone a good one,
1:20.3	let alone one that we did, or rather a franchise that we did quite a lot of trash talking on
1:26.1	about five years ago. If you remember
1:29.2	our old episode on 2015's The Fantastic Four, it was fascinating. Chris did a great job presenting
1:35.8	it. I just re-listened to it. But that was a bit of a bit of a dumpstifier. And today,
1:43.6	we are talking about the Fantastic Four First Steps, which I believe
	...

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