Superhero Movies

[RottingCorpse]

The reviews are so, so bad, I actually want to see it.

[RottingCorpse]

The story behind what happened to Fantastic Four is turning out to be better than the movie itself.

It should be noted that director Trank "stepped down" from directing a Star Wars spinoff earlier this summer.

http://screenrant.com/fantastic-four-reboot-josh-trank-fox/

‘Fantastic Four': What We Know About What Went Wrong

Twentieth Century Fox’s reboot of Fantastic Four isn’t the best-reviewed superhero movie of 2015 and isn’t going to be the highest-grossing superhero movie of 2015, but it looks like it might win the dubious accolade of being the most talked-about superhero movie of 2015.

Fantastic Four was controversial almost from its inception, but despite the comic book fan outcry over changes like Johnny Storm’s race and Doctor Doom’s name, it appears that far more troubling things were going on behind the scenes. In the wake of Fantastic Four‘s release, it has become the worst-reviewed Marvel Comics-based movie of all time, with a dismal 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Trank responded to the early bad buzz with a since-deleted tweet that said, “A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve recieved [sic] great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though.”

So, what exactly happened to Trank’s “fantastic” version of Fantastic Four, and why will audiences never see it? Is there any truth to the troubling rumors that were floating around during the film’s production? Moreover, what of the new rumors that have begun to emerge in the wake of its release?

We’ve rounded up the various accounts of what went wrong with Fantastic Four – old and new – in an effort to try and figure out exactly what spun this movie off the tracks.

JOSH TRANK’S BEHAVIOR

Long before Fantastic Four was released, there were early signs of trouble when stories arose describing Trank’s conduct during the movie’s production. A poster on a Louisiana-based board called TigerDroppings passed on a description of the director’s erratic behavior from a friend who had worked on the movie.

“A buddy of mine was on the crew. Trank showed up to set late or so high he couldn’t speak almost everyday. Some days he didn’t show up at all. He treated crew terribly. He trashed the house the production company rented for him. From what I’m told he did a couple hundred grand worth of damage… Trank did so much damage to the house that [Fox CEO] Jim Gianopulos came to Baton Rouge and personally apologized to the owners.”

Another user said that they had heard similar stories from a friend about Trank’s behavior on set, though they couldn’t confirm the rumor about the production house. That same user said that they “heard [Trank] was fired after wrapping and others are working on it [in] post production.” At the time all this was unconfirmed rumor from anonymous sources, but following the movie’s release, the emerging narrative seems to indicate that these early claims were at least partially true.

A new report by EW includes accounts from several different sources close to the production, who were spoken to independently and offered versions of the story that match in some places, and conflict in others. According to EW, some sources described the “combative behavior Trank demonstrated toward the crew, producers, studio and even the stars.” They also said that Trank’s off-set disputes and incidents, like the alleged damage to the production house, “manifested on set as hostility and frustration.”

If true, this stressful on-set atmosphere may have been a key factor in preventing the best possible version of the script from making it to the screen. The Telegraph‘s review notes, of the main cast, that “no one looks like they’re having any fun,” and it sounds like this may have been exactly the case. When cast and crew members enjoy the process of making a film and believe wholeheartedly in the project, that enthusiasm has a tendency to shine through in the end result.

STUDIO INTERFERENCE

The first half of the story doesn’t make much sense by itself; it seems unlikely that Trank would just suddenly go off the deep end for no reason and sabotage his first big break. Now that Fantastic Four has hit theaters, critics and audiences alike have noticed that the movie feels disjointed, with many pointing out a distinct tonal shift in the third act.

According to the other rumors that have begun to emerge about the movie’s troubled production, Fantastic Four was the victim of some very poor decision-making and interference on Fox’s behalf. The EW article goes on to reveal that some sources painted a very unfavorable picture of the studio’s actions.

“Some who worked on the film say Trank was driven to the breaking point by the studio, which delayed casting and script approvals, slashed the budget by tens of millions from what was originally promised, and tried to force last-minute changes to the film just as principal photography was beginning, creating confusion and stress from the get-go that often boiled over among department heads trying to put together pieces of a movie that was still in flux.”

Collider‘s latest Movie Talk podcast outlines a similar picture, with host John Campea relaying accounts from multiple sources close to production who said that Fox essentially agreed to make a certain version of Fantastic Four with Trank – one that included three major action set pieces – and forcibly changed those plans at the last minute.

“Days before production began, Fox came in and made him pull three main action sequences out of the film. I was also told that the ending of the film was not even Josh Trank’s… that at some point they hijacked the editing bay from him to the point where the edit of the film was done without him…

“Yesterday both Kristian [Harloff] and I spoke with another source – this is a second source – that confirmed everything we had heard from my first source… [Fox] had essentially put out a film that was not the film that they had originally sat down to make…

“I made some calls to some friends of mine, filmmakers, who had done business with Fox, and I just ran some of the facts by them that I had been hearing and said, ‘Does this sound consistent with your experience with Fox?’ And they said, ‘You have no idea.’ And then they proceeded to tell me a lot more stuff. I feel confident enough that I’ve heard this from enough places – enough reputable places – to tell you this: the film that we saw, in Fantastic Four, was not the film they were supposed to make. It was not the film that Josh Trank made.”

While technically all of this is still rumor, it would take a pretty vast conspiracy for so many different sources to all deliver matching versions of the same story when quizzed independently. Movie Talk co-host Jon Schnepp, who had his own sources, also revealed another interesting claim: that Fox had hired an Oscar-winning “special effects guy” to work on the film, and subsequently fired him without telling him and also without telling Trank. That would certainly help explain the criticisms of Fantastic Four‘s special effects.

THE IMPLICATIONS

Just because various sources are now confirming Trank’s implication that Fox took control of the movie away from him, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Trank’s version of Fantastic Four really was “fantastic” and “would’ve received great reviews.” The film has also been criticized for its lack of humor, its muted aesthetic, and the decision to take a gritty approach to one of Marvel’s kitschier superhero teams. Ultimately Trank did direct Fantastic Four, and has to shoulder the responsibility for a lot of what ended up on the screen.

It’s important to note that we don’t have the full picture just yet, and it’s very likely that more details will continue to emerge over time. For the moment, however, we can speculate about how things went down, based on the information available.

It seems that Fox created the first ripples of disruption right before the start of production by demanding sudden changes to essential pieces of the movie. Faced with that kind of stress, Trank – a fairly young director who had enjoyed relative creative freedom while making his first feature – appears to have dealt with the situation poorly by lashing out at the cast and crew. In response, Fox took away creative control altogether as soon as the film went into post-production. Essentially, it sounds like a domino effect of bad decisions.

Some are speculating that Fantastic Four‘s reviews, the projected box office results and Trank’s brief outburst will make Fantastic Four the movie that ends his filmmaking career, altogether – but it’s really too early to say that for sure. Given the stories of studio interference that are now emerging, it’s possible that Trank will come out the other side as a sympathetic party – though that doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone’s going to trust him with another big-budget blockbuster any time soon.

We’ll keep you updated on this story as more details become available.

[nacho]

Yeah...been following and lazy about posting. It's amazing.

[RottingCorpse]

Meanwhile, I can't get enough of this story. I was going to shell out the $10 to see this trainwreck last night, but Missus RC says that's like enabling a heroin addict.

http://news.yahoo.com/it-was-chaos-the-behind-the-scenes-story-of-080501966.html

"It Was Chaos": The Behind-the-Scenes Story of What Went Wrong with 'Fantastic Four'

Days before Fantastic Four opened, director Josh Trank sent an email to some members of the cast and crew to say he was proud of the film, which, he wrote, was “better than 99 percent of the comic-book movies ever made.”

“I don’t think so,” responded one cast member.

Maybe if Trank had left it at that, Hollywood insiders and fan websites could have played their own parlor games as to who was at fault for the film’s colossal failure and Fantastic Four would have faded into the history books as did John Carter and other bombs before it. (The $122 million-budgeted film opened to just $25.7 million in the U.S. and $34 million abroad, far below even the most cautious predictions.)

But Trank, 31, could not resist tweeting on Aug. 6, as the movie was hitting theaters, that he had made “a fantastic version” of the film that audiences would “probably never see.” Though Trank quickly deleted the tweet, his public disavowal of the film at such a key moment enraged 20th Century Fox executives and stirred a pot that had begun to bubble when the director was dropped by Lucasfilm from a Star Wars standalone film at the end of April, prompting THR to report that one of the causes was his erratic behavior on Fantastic Four. Now, insiders on the film say the situation was worse than previously revealed, and Trank has enlisted pit-bull lawyer Marty Singer to advocate on his behalf. And so the game of blame has gotten underway.

Fantastic Four is not the only big studio film to go flying off the rails, ostensibly because a director is in over his head. Sometimes a studio can salvage the project, as Paramount did when it shut down World War Z amid crew complaints about director Marc Forster and commissioned a rewrite of the third act. The film went on to gross $540 million worldwide.

Universal intervened to save the original The Bourne Identity when director Doug Liman seemed unable to pull that film together. It launched a franchise but producer Frank Marshall — brought in to rescue the movie — said later that he had taken unprecedented measures to get the movie done. “I’ve always had a respect for the line between a producer and a director,” Marshall told me in 2005. “And I had to step over that line into something that I feel is the director’s responsibility.”

Liman moved on to his next project, Mr. & Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, only to run into similar problems. Akiva Goldsman, who wrote and was a producer on that film, called him “a madman,” and Liman filed a grievance with the Directors Guild saying his prerogatives as director had been compromised. But the film grossed $478 million worldwide, and Liman’s reputation suffered no serious damage.

In Trank’s case, multiple sources associated with the project say the director did not produce material that would have opened the way to a salvageable film. And by several accounts, he resisted help. “He holed up in a tent and cut himself off from everybody,” says one high-level source. And literally there was a tent on the Louisiana set. A crew member says: “He built a black tent around his monitor. He was extremely withdrawn.” Between set-ups, this person adds, “he would go to his trailer and he wouldn’t interact with anybody.”

Sources say Fox believed in what one executive calls a “grounded, gritty version of Fantastic Four that was almost the opposite of previous versions” — and initially thought Trank could deliver that. Several sources say Fox stood by Trank as he pushed a gloomy tone on young stars Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell. “During takes, he would be telling [cast members] when to blink and when to breathe,” one person says. “He kept pushing them to make the performance as flat as possible.”

There were worrying personal issues as well. As THR reported in May, Trank and his dogs allegedly caused more than $100,000 worth of damage to a rented house in Baton Rouge that he and his wife occupied while the film was shooting there. Sources say now that after landlord Martin Padial moved to evict Trank, photographs of the landlord’s family that were in the house were defaced. Padial made a complaint to the local sheriff’s department and filed a civil suit in Louisiana that is sealed. Padial’s attorney, Michael Bienvenu, declined to comment on the matter. The sheriff’s department says the case was “closed as a civil matter between landlord and tenant.”

Neither Trank nor Singer would comment.

A crew member acknowledges that Trank bears much of the fault for the film’s problems but also says the Fox studio should not escape blame. The movie was “ill-conceived, made for the wrong reasons and there was no vision behind the property,” this person says. “Say what you will about Marvel but they have a vision.”

As Fox hurried to put the project into production before rights to the material reverted to Marvel, the studio was scrambling with multiple rewrites and delays in starting the film. They “were afraid of losing the rights so they pressed forward and didn’t surround [Trank] with help or fire him. They buried their heads in the sand.” Fox declined to comment.

Another source says the notion of firing Trank came up even before the cameras started to roll. But Fox put its faith in him because he had directed the studio’s 2012 found-footage hero movie Chronicle, which grossed $127 million worldwide on a $12 million budget. Based on that, insiders say Fox executives thought they had found an “in-house director,” a young talent who could become another J.J. Abrams. And the studio was trying to shake off its reputation for micro-managing filmmakers. So executives were reluctant to interfere on Fantastic Four despite warnings of trouble.

When the seriousness of the problems could no longer be ignored, says a key source on the project, it was too late to fire the director. “How do you ask someone to take over half of a movie shot by someone else?” he says. “You either hire somebody desperate for work or you [start over], write off pretty much the whole budget and lose the cast.”

As filming wound toward an unhappy close, the studio and producers Simon Kinberg and Hutch Parker engaged in a last-minute scramble to come up with an ending. With some of the cast not fully available at that point and Kinberg juggling X-Men: Apocalypse and Star Wars, a lot of material was shot with doubles and the production moved to Los Angeles to film scenes with Teller against a green screen. “It was chaos,” says a crew member, adding that Trank was still in attendance “but was neutralized by a committee.” Another source says instead the studio pulled together “a dream team,” including writer and World War Z veteran Drew Goddard, to rescue the movie. Whether the final version of the film is better or worse than what Trank put together is a matter of opinion, of course, but the consensus, clearly, is that neither was good.

One central player on the film says the process of making big films often is messy but in many cases, the studio can fight its way out of difficulties. A Fantastic Four crew member concurs but says that doesn’t relieve the studio of its responsibility for what went wrong with this film. “To me, it is a classic indictment of the entire system,” he says. “Give Josh Trank a $20 million movie. Groom him. But they don’t make those movies any more… Nobody should escape scrutiny on this one. Everyone should take a good look in the mirror, myself included. Even I probably did the movie for the wrong reasons.”

[nacho]

Came here to post this. Man, it's awesome, isn't it? There's a book somewhere in here... The Cautionary Tale of the Fantastic Four.

[RottingCorpse]

The director has lawyered up. It's getting ugly.

[monkey!]

2018's Sundance Docu-film.

[RottingCorpse]

2018's Sundance Docu-film.

You're probably right on the nose.

[nacho]

Wow... Age of Ultron is almost unwatchable. What a mess.

[nacho]

Fantastic Four time!

[nacho]

Fantastic Four time!

Wait...is this a coming of age teen angst movie? Did I download the wrong movie? What the fuck am I watching?

[nacho]

Are they...stealing the technology (and explanation of it) from Quantum Leap?!

[nacho]

This movie is inexplicably and insanely bad. Like, not even good-bad. Bizarrely bad. I don't know how to describe it. I don't know what to say. There's only an hour left and all we've seen is lots and lots of teen angst, Fast& Furious style drag racing, and lines lifted from the Quantum Leap pilot episode. I don't know or understand who any of these people are and I can't follow their relationships or why they're even engaging with each other.

[nacho]

"It's time to involve NASA."

"What? Why not send us?"

"We're going to need help, support..."

"Oh, fine! Why not send the CIA, the army, our political prisoners so we can waterboard them in another dimension!"

Um...what? So NASA is evil? That's the movie's message here?

Also -- 40 minutes in and NOTHING HAS HAPPENED!!!!!!

[nacho]

So, because NASA is evil, they decide to steal the tech and go through the "quantum gate" themselves. And a grown man's reply to this is, "My dad's going to kill me."