The Fantastic Four (1994)

Superhero origin stories have become a staple of action cinema. As more superheroes are introduced to the big screen, more people want to know their backstories. What drove them to be so heroic? Where did they get their powers? Things like that. We’ve all seen enough Spider-Man to know that Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and became a hero after the death of his uncle Ben. With great power comes great responsibility and all that jazz. It’s engrained in our collective conscience.

There’s one constantly rebooted franchise that comes close to Spider-Man in terms of seeing the same origin play out over and over again. In fact, it might be the worst offender because it changes even less of the origin story every time it is told. I’m not talking about a singular superhero this time. I’m talking about a team of superheroes. I’m talking about a team of four superheroes who could be considered a family. Marvel’s first family. This is about the Fantastic Four.

The Fantastic Four have made four movie appearances, five if you count a single-character cameo in one of the newer MCU movies. Only one of those appearances was a sequel, with the other three being origin stories for the characters. Each time, the origin story was basically the same. The four characters went on a space trip. They encountered something bad. That something bad mutated them, and they ended up with superpowers. One of them could stretch, while one of them could turn invisible. One of them was rock, while the other became fire. Ta-da! Now you know how they became the Fantastic Four.

Things go a little deeper than that, though. Let’s take the unreleased 1994 flick, The Fantastic Four. Reed Richards (Alex Hyde-White) and Ben Grimm (Michael Bailey Smith) headed a space exploration team. They were joined by Susan Storm (Rebecca Staab) and her brother Johnny (Jay Underwood). After disaster struck their mission, the four friends and colleagues discovered they had received superpowers. Reed could stretch any part of his body to any length. Susan could turn invisible. Johnny could light himself on fire and Ben became a tough rock man. While learning why they had these powers and how to use them, the new superhero family had to fight off the mysterious Dr. Doom (Joseph Culp).

As you can see, the standard origin story was there. Four people came together on a space mission. Their mission in the unreleased The Fantastic Four was to investigate a comet that Reed Richards had tried to research ten years earlier. They used a diamond component to protect them from the radiation, only to discover the diamond was a fake. The radiation got to them and provided each member of the space crew with superpowers.

This was essentially the same sort of origin that happened in every film adaptation of the Fantastic Four. The 2005 adaptation saw the quartet, joined by Victor Von Doom, on a trip to investigate a cloud of cosmic energy. The energy, much like the radiation from the comet, left the astronauts with mutations that caused superpowers to emerge. In Fant4stic, the group travelled to an alternate dimension through some sort of quantum gate. An accident in that dimension, as well as a malfunction with the gate, caused the quartet to gain superhuman abilities. Every time, it was a group of curious explorers leaving Earth, only to suffer side-effects from the unexplored environment.

The origin of the superpowers wasn’t the only thing that made these different adaptations all feel the same, however. Most superhero reboots will at least take the initiative to use a different villain in the conflict. Every time Spider-Man has been re-adapted for the big screen, he has first faced off against a different villain. The Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire franchise began with Spider-Man battling it out with the Green Goblin. The Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield movies pitted Spidey against the Lizard. Then there was the MCU incarnation with Tom Holland, which kicked off with Spider-Man fighting Vulture. You could even include Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, where Miles Morales went toe-to-toe with… Well, Green Goblin was there again, but it was mostly Kingpin and Prowler who were the villains. Every movie used a different villain to bring the origin story to life.

Most superheroes don’t have the massive rogues’ gallery sort of thing that Spider-Man has, though. They don’t have the same number of semi-famous villains, even if the comics they are based on have been going strong for decades. Fantastic Four are that kind of superhero. There aren’t even a handful of villains that the average person could name. The Fantastic Four have had one, maybe two, possibly even three major villains that people might recognize, but the safe bet is that there’s only the one. And that’s because that villain’s past has been intrinsically tied to their origin in every film adaptation, as well as in the comic books they were based on.

Dr. Doom is typically seen as the arch-nemesis of the Fantastic Four. He was introduced in the fifth issue of the long running comic series. His background would soon be elaborated on, with connections to Reed Richards and Ben Grimm from their college years. This college connection meant that Dr. Doom, known as Victor Von Doom at the time, was on filmmakers’ minds when they were adapting the origin story of Marvel’s first family. Since their first encounter with whatever would give them superpowers involved Victor Von Doom, it only made sense that Dr. Doom would be the villain of each origin story movie. That and the name recognition he came with.

1994’s The Fantastic Four opened with Reed Richards researching the comet with Victor before an accident caused Victor’s death. Or so everyone thought. Victor was waiting in the shadows for his time to strike as the supervillain he had become. He donned his iron mask and threatened New York City with a diamond-powered laser beam. It was some James Bond style villainy, which I guess could also be comic book villainy. Anyway, Victor was back from the past as Dr. Doom and it was up to the Fantastic Four to stop him and save New York City.

The other two feature length origin stories were essentially the same thing, with some details changed. Victor joined them on the mission in 2005’s Fantastic Four, only to lock himself in a space shuttle while everyone else was exposed to the cosmic energy. This choice destroyed his company (he lost his livelihood instead of his life), and it didn’t help anyway. He started to mutate into electrically charged metal. Fant4stic had Victor join them on their inter-dimensional mission, only to cause the accident and seemingly die as they fled. In both cases, he would return as Dr. Doom and the Fantastic Four would have to stop him from causing problems that would be catastrophic to New York or Earth.

Not only were the film origin stories of how the Fantastic Four got their superpowers a bunch of variations on the same thing, but their first fight against a villain was also against the same villain. They kept going on some sort of exploration mission where there was an accident that caused them to gain superpowers. A guy who was connected to their exploration mission donned a metal mask and became known as Dr. Doom, and they had to stop him from destroying a major civilian population. Both the origin and the villain in the origin story were the same every time the Fantastic Four story was retold.

There were a few other, smaller, things that were also present through multiple retellings of the origin story. The idea that Ben Grimm struck out on his own because he hated his new body was something present in The Fantastic Four as well as Fantastic Four. Those same two adaptations also featured a blind love interest for Ben Grimm, who would love him for who he was on the inside instead of what he looked like on the outside. All three movies featured the Fantastic Four studying themselves to try and figure out how the superpowers manifested. In the 1994 version, they determined that the radiation brought out a part of their personalities in physical form. And then, of course, there as always the budding relationship between Reed Richards and Susan Storm.

All these elements, big and small, combined to make every Fantastic Four origin story feel like a copy of the last one. There were some slight changes, but the essentials were there. How they got their powers was the same, though the exact source might have been changed. How they reacted was the same, though Fant4stic got much more militarized. The research was there. The villain was the same. His history with the team was always there. The love story even made its way into every entry. These are the reasons why the Fantastic Four origin story has felt staler on the big screen than other superhero origin story reboots over the past few decades.

Perhaps this is why many superhero movies are shying away from the standard origin story. Some superheroes are being introduced having already been heroes for a while. There’s no need to see how a superhero got their powers, just like there’s no need to see how John McClane or Martin Riggs became police officers. Especially when the origin story of the superhero has been told many, many times. People already got the origin they wanted. If the story is about fighting a villain, the origin story doesn’t need to be there for the audience to be interested in the conflict. Maybe once we move completely past origin stories, things will feel a little less samey.

Now, to make the post feel samey, here are some notes:

• First off, I should link to the post for Fant4stic (week 172).
• George Gaynes made his fifth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in The Fantastic Four. His other four appearances were in the first four Police Academy (week 400) movies.
• Carl Ciarfalio was in The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk Returns (week 335), and 3 Musketeers (week 384).
• The Fantastic Four saw the return of Patrick Richwood to Sunday “Bad” Movies, after he first popped up in Jingle All the Way (week 160).
• Alex Hyde-White was in Ishtar (week 192) before appearing in The Fantastic Four.
• Finally, both The Fantastic Four and Ice (week 365) featured Michael Bailey Smith.
• Have you seen The Fantastic Four? Have you seen any adaptation of Fantastic Four? What did you think? What do you think of origin stories? Let me know in the comments or find me on Twitter to share your thoughts.
• Did you have a movie you wanted to suggest for me to watch in the future? Feel free to do so on Twitter or in the comments. I like and appreciate all suggestions.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram, and I promise I’m going to start using it more again.
• Next week is a franchise week. I’m using it to hit Christmas a little early. That’s only because I feel like this trilogy is perfect fodder for this blog and I don’t want to wait until a December franchise week comes around again. I’ll be taking a look at The Princess Switch and its two sequels. If that gets you interested, then be sure to stop by next week for that post.