The new movie, Fantastic Four: First Steps, was pretty fantastic. Disney attempted to create a film for the Marvel franchise that would bring people back to the level of the first Avengers movie and the Iron Man film that preceded it. Fantastic Four was wonderfully not woke, and the characters were all well done. The acting was top-notch, with significant special effects, music, and story that was all good; it was a lot of fun. So it is a shame that people are not rushing to the theaters to watch it. The movie is set in a kind of idealistic 60s art style set into an unknown future, and it had a cool vibe to it. And it had a great point. I think the sacrifice of the baby plotline to save humanity is one of those key issues in the human race that should resonate much more than it has at the box office. But we are talking about trust here, and Disney has lost it. Marvel has lost it. After the movie, The Eternals, which features homosexual lifestyles and men kissing in it, Marvel sealed its doom. Hollywood, in general, was politically way off base and divided the movie-going public from their products, sealing their doom in the process. I was able to see The Fantastic Four with my grandchildren. They were interested in it because of the video game Marvel Rivals, so we agreed to take them. The movie turned out to be a fantastic family film, full of excellent ideas and old-fashioned filmmaking. And the Fantastic Four family itself was one that audiences could all like. I would recommend the movie and give some credit to Disney for listening and stepping away from their woke agenda as much as possible in this environment. However, there are some lessons to take away here that might improve things in the future if Disney is willing to listen. I think it’s too late for them; their audiences are never coming back, which is why Fantastic Four is underperforming at the box office. But it’s always worth trying.
One of the things that is hurting these Marvel movies is that they are too comic bookish for most audiences. Most people lack a strong interest in quantum physics and the concept of multiple universes. Comic writers, and now all entertainment writers, have found that the multiverse concept gives them a great deal of creative liberty, allowing them to set their stories within any known historical timeframe. For instance, this Fantastic Four movie does not take place in a timeline and universe that overlaps with the original Avengers. Technically, they don’t know about each other, leaving the audience to not invest in the characters. The story might be neat and fun. But does it matter to their belief in the reality of the previous storyline? And I think for most people, the multiverse storylines are just too much for them to invest in emotionally. Like a dream, people might have them, but they wake up from them never to remember them again, and they become meaningless in waking life. And that is the problem with the Fantastic Four it doesn’t take place in a world people can relate to. It’s just far enough out of reality to become prohibitive. In the original Marvel movies, such as Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the Avengers, people could accept the superpowers as long as the universe itself was part of a narrative world built around a historical timeline, allowing them to invest emotionally in the characters. For instance, in Captain America, his story takes place during World War II, a conflict that people have a grounding in. And it was patriotic and gave people what they wanted, a defender of American ideas, which the world is very interested in.
However, Disney and Marvel in general have been pushing for a post-American world of the global citizen, and that element was certainly present throughout the Fantastic Four. They essentially have a world where the United Nations is in charge of everything, and Sue Storm from the Fantastic Four is in charge of the United Nations. In many ways, the Fantastic Four was in charge of the world as a government power, which runs counter to the trend of individual lives being self-governing. That is an idea that people will reject at the ballot box, and they will certainly reject it with their entertainment dollars. People do not want to be told what to do, especially from the Fantastic Four. That’s why it’s dangerous to let these Santa Monica types write these movies from the pier, talking to their friends at a bar. That lefty political view of existence might be fashionable among 20 to 30-year-olds in sanitized settings, such as in the hip Santa Monica region. However, the world doesn’t like that idea and will reject it completely, and it has. They did everything they could with this movie to make it as enjoyable as possible, and it’s fun. People don’t want the Fantastic Four to govern over them as gods. That is a rejected premise in the world, and it certainly hurts the emotional investment that people are willing to give to these characters. The movie doesn’t take place in our universe; it’s an alternative universe to the other Marvel stories. And it doesn’t have a message that people enjoy; it assumes that movie audiences want to be saved by superheroes. Not that the audiences want to be superheroes themselves. So that is a fatal flaw.
However, the biggest mistake was when the villain, Galactus, who was the size of Godzilla, came to New York to retrieve the baby born to the Fantastic Four, and he looked at the Statue of Liberty with some disdain. Just saying, nobody is going to get away with that kind of thing these days. The world wants to believe in the light of liberty coming from a free America. And that is represented by the Statue of Liberty. Having a massive villain that eats planets come to the Statue of Liberty as if to say that there are much bigger things in the universe than the idea of America is a bad move. It might be the view of radical, Santa Monica lefties, but it’s not what the world wants to hear. They want someone who likes America fighting bad guys. Not something bigger than America looking down on our country as if to say that the scale of the fight is beyond the political whims of nation-building. That’s a line that people won’t cross, and they have rejected it at the voting booth and the box office receipts. It was a dumb scene. Galactus didn’t try to smash the Statue of Liberty. He just gave it a look that was demeaning but did not provide commentary. Yet, audiences picked up on it; the liberal writers of these movies aren’t going to get away with that kind of thing. People will see another film. And that is what they have been doing. The Fantastic Four is a great movie, but people have better things to do, and if the story is not aligned with the politics of our day, it’s unlikely to do well. The fantasy that artists can rule the world through liberal politics behind commercial films is a thing of the past. It was never a good idea, but now there are just too many entertainment options. People tend to overlook things that do not align with their values. And that is why The Fantastic Four is not doing well, despite being an excellent movie. It’s too far outside the known world for people to invest emotionally in. And that’s a shame.
Rich Hoffman
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