With the recent box office success of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, it seems that Marvel’s first family may have finally broken its cinematic curse. Despite being one of the medium’s most beloved stories and a crucial part of Marvel Comics history, the adventures of Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben have been painfully misrepresented on the big screen. The buried Roger Corman production was the stuff of pop culture lore for decades before anyone saw it. Tim Story’s two titles from the 2000s were critical disappointments and poor representations of some of the comics’ most iconic arcs (but did give us pre-Captain America Chris Evans on fire, so there’s that). The nadir for the characters came a decade ago when a rising director assembled a strong cast with a massive budget and promised to reveal a dark side to these beloved creations. It resulted in one of the most lambasted superhero movies ever made.
