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Kim Hollis: Where does Fantastic Four rank on the list of failed Marvel projects?

Ben Gruchow: There are two categories of failed Marvel projects for me: grievous miscalculations of tone and talent (to which this movie belongs), and projects with the right attitude and ethic that, for various reasons, ended up being less than the sum of their parts. The latter includes the final "Blade" film and the following TV series, the 2003 Daredevil, the first two Fantastic Four movies, and Spider-Man 3. It's way more fun to just make a list from best to worst of the first category and slot Fantastic Four 2015 in where it belongs, so that's what I'm gonna do:

5. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
4. Fantastic Four 2015
3. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
2. Ghost Rider
1. Elektra

That's a shorter list than I thought it was going to be. Still, I'd rather watch the 2015 Fantastic Four again than any of the three below it, and I'd rather watch Origins again than any of the others. And there's still a bright side: As bad as these five movies are, they're all handily better than Catwoman.

Felix Quinonez: For me, Fantastic Four is probably the most disappointing. I genuinely liked this movie whereas most of the other failures I thought were bad movies. Now I'm not going to try to defend the last act, in which things all but fall apart. But for at least an hour, the movie was not only very good but actually different. It seemed to be taking inspirations from the sci-fi and horror genres, which fit the tone of the Ultimate Fantastic Four series this was based on. But also, I think the Josh Trank's career will most likely be really hurt.

Ryan Kyle: I will take this question from a business standpoint. For a brand with nearly 40 theatrical releases, Marvel has an awfully strong track record of success. While D.C. is hit-or-miss, Marvel really nails it consistently. Budget to box office wise, I'd call this their biggest flop by far. While Elektra, The Punisher 1-2, and Ghost Rider 2 didn't make much, their budgets ranged from an easier to swallow $35 million to $57 million. Fantastic Four 2015 costs more comparatively to the top tier Marvel movies than a B-list ones, making the sting worse. Also, it will be one of the very few Marvel movies that (we can assume) doesn't earn a sequel. The aforementioned flop films I mentioned were all sequels or spin-offs to an original.

Edwin Davies: I feel like it's wrong to describe it as a failure for Marvel, seeing as they were not the driving force behind the film. Sure, it's based on one of their properties, but the people who made the MCU one of the dominant forces in modern filmmaking were not behind this. That would be like describing the Carrie remake as a Stephen King failure.

This is a Fox failure that just happened to involve a Marvel property, and in that respect, I think it actually ranks lower than Elektra, even though it will almost certainly make more money than that debacle did, since it had more advantages. It has stronger name recognition and is coming out at a time when most superhero movies seem to do okay regardless of content, yet it still failed completely.

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