The Fantastic Four Movie That Gave Its Heroes Nothing to Do

Tim Story’s Fantastic Four arrived in July 2005 with a tagline that promised scale and a runtime of 106 minutes that could not deliver it. The film stars Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards, Jessica Alba as Sue Storm, Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm, Julian McMahon as Victor Von Doom, and Kerry Washington as Alicia Masters. It grossed $333.5 million worldwide. It also earned generally negative reviews, and a fair look at what is actually on screen shows why the money and the notices split so far apart.

Trailer, via HD Retro Trailers.

Reed Richards and the Space Station

The plot is an origin story, and it moves fast. Reed and his friend Ben Grimm convince Victor von Doom, CEO of Von Doom Industries, to give them access to his space station. The goal is to test how clouds of cosmic energy affect biological samples. Victor agrees. He recruits his chief genetics researcher, Susan Storm, who is also Reed’s ex-girlfriend, and her reckless brother Johnny.

The mission goes wrong almost at once. The cosmic clouds arrive ahead of schedule. Ben is outside on a spacewalk placing the samples. Reed, Susan and Johnny leave the shielded station to rescue him. Victor closes the shields behind them to protect himself. The storm breaks through the station and strikes the four. They return home and begin to develop strange powers.

Reed can stretch like rubber. Susan can become invisible and create force fields. Johnny can engulf himself in fire. Ben becomes a large, rock-based creature with superhuman strength and durability. Victor, meanwhile, faces backlash from his stockholders over publicity surrounding the failed mission.

The Brooklyn Bridge Pile-Up

The film’s best sequence is not a fight. It is an accident. On the Brooklyn Bridge, Ben stops a man from committing suicide, and in doing so causes a traffic pile-up. The four use their powers to contain the damage and save lives. The public cheers them.

That scene works because the powers are treated as a problem before they are treated as a gift. Ben’s strength breaks the thing he is trying to fix. The rescue is messy. It is the stretch of Fantastic Four where the team feels most like four people in a bad situation rather than four costumes waiting for a franchise.

Then Debbie, Ben’s fiancée, arrives to silently end their engagement. She cannot accept his condition. Reed vows to a heartbroken Ben that he will reverse the effects. The media dubs them “The Fantastic Four.” Victor exploits the news story to his stockholders, but they decide to pull out of Von Doom Industries.

Baxter Building and the Cure

The four move into Reed’s lab in the Baxter Building to study their abilities and work on finding a cure. Victor offers his support but blames Reed for the mission’s failure. Everything about this middle act is functional. The team bickers, the team trains, the team learns to work together. It is the shape a superhero origin is supposed to take, and the film hits every beat on schedule.

That is the problem. The beats are on schedule and nothing else is. Chiklis, buried under rock, gives Ben the performance with the most weight. Evans gets the best lines as Johnny, because Johnny is written as the one character allowed to enjoy himself. Gruffudd plays Reed as a man doing math in his head while a room full of people need him to speak. Alba has the least to do of the four, which is a waste of the film’s most recognizable name.

McMahon’s Victor is the weakest link. He is a CEO with a grudge before he is a villain with a plan, and the film never decides which one it wants. His turn to Dr. Doom should be the moment the movie snaps into gear. It is instead the moment it starts checking boxes.

Stan Lee and the Wolverine Cameo

The supporting cast is a set of small pleasures. Stan Lee appears as Willie Lumpkin, the postal worker who greets the team on the way to the Baxter Building elevator. It is the customary cameo, and it lands. Kerry Washington plays Alicia Masters. Laurie Holden plays Debbie McIlvane. Hamish Linklater plays Leonard.

The most interesting footnote is not in the theatrical cut. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as Logan, also known as Wolverine, from the X-Men film series. In the scene, Reed Richards changes his face to resemble Jackman’s Wolverine in an attempt to woo Susan Storm. The scene was cut from the theatrical release and restored in the “Extended Cut.”

4 times the action. 4 times the adventure. 4 times the fantastic.

That is the tagline. It is also the whole argument the movie makes for itself, and it is a promise the film cannot keep. Four times the fantastic would require one time the fantastic first.

A Sequel, a Reboot, and a Second Reboot

Fantastic Four was the second live-action Fantastic Four film to be produced. A previous attempt, titled The Fantastic Four, was a B movie produced by Roger Corman that went unreleased. This one came out in the United States on July 8, 2005, from 20th Century Fox. A sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, followed in 2007. A reboot arrived in 2015. Another, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, arrived in 2025.

Chris Evans, who later played Captain America in the MCU, returned to the role of Johnny Storm in Deadpool & Wolverine in 2024. That is the strangest fact in the film’s long afterlife. The actor who started as Johnny Storm later became the anchor of the MCU, and then came back to the character he started with.

Here is what matters, ranked by how much it tells you about the film:

1. The Brooklyn Bridge sequence, because it is the scene where the powers cost something.
2. Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm, because he is the performer playing a person instead of a premise.
3. The cosmic ray origin, because it is efficient and gets the team assembled in under an hour.
4. Victor Von Doom, because the villain is the film’s central failure.
5. The tagline, because it is the clearest statement of what the movie thinks it is.

What the $333.5 Million Actually Says

Fantastic Four grossed $333.5 million worldwide against generally negative reviews. That gap is not a mystery. The film runs 106 minutes, and it moves. It was based on a team created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and the recognition was there on the poster. The MCU did not exist in 2005, so the film faced no competition from a shared universe of its own kind. That is observation, not excuse.

The re-evaluation the film has gone through since is real. Chiklis and Evans hold up better than the film around them. The action does not, and neither does Doom. A movie can survive a thin plot. It cannot survive a villain with nothing to want.

A sequel and two reboots followed. Each one tried to solve the same problem: how to make a family of superheroes feel like a family. The 2005 version had the family and not much else. That is not nothing. It is also not enough to carry 106 minutes.

Chris Evans · Fantastic Four · Marvel · movie review · superhero films · Tim Story