'Fantastic Four' and an Alternate Marvel Universe

0:04Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, a Vanity Fair's podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers. I'm David Canfield. I'm Richard Lawson. And I'm Rebecca Ford.

0:15So it's not summer without a Marvel movie and Fantastic Four First Steps made a big splash at the box office in its opening weekend. Maybe not quite as big as some projections had indicated. Today we're going to talk a little bit about that film and then play a game called What If Marvel Never Existed, which we will explain later on. And then we'll finish up the episode with a few more film festival updates and answer a listener question about said festivals. By the way, speaking of listener questions, we're going to try to answer more of them at the end of each episode for a while, certainly through the rest of the summer.

0:45So if you've got them, please send them our way. The email is littlegoldman at vf.com. And they can be about anything. Go far afield. Not about our personal lives or whatever, but it doesn't have to be specifically movie awards or Emmys or whatever. And some already do, so just keep them coming. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about Fantastic Four. The movie made$118 million domestically. That was a little below Superman's$125 million opening weekend. Those two movies were definitely seen as comps kind of rebooting Marvel and DC respectively and coming out pretty close to each other. Richard, what did you think of Fantastic Four?

1:26Let's start with you. Yeah, I mean, I wrote something about it that's on the site now. I wanted to wait to see how it did at the box office before I kind of weighed in. And I think Superman over at DC really does feel like a pretty sizable reinvention. It's far afield of the Zack Snyder, dark, brooding, serious Batman and Superman stuff. And I think it really works because it feels like something fresh. Whereas I think Fantastic Four, minus a few things, it really feels like just another middle-of-the-road Marvel movie that could have come out 10 years ago. And that kind of was surprising to me that they didn't make more of an effort to really, really change the style or the tempo or the tone of the movies.

2:06Because they kind of do have the opportunity to. The last few haven't worked quite as well as hoped. There were some real duds in there in past years. This marked some kind of inflection point where they could have done something a bit more bold, and they just didn't. And I thought that was really disappointing. Yeah, I had the same feeling where I went in, you know, we had all heard this is really the film that is trying to sort of reset Marvel and start them off on a fresh foot, I guess. And I was pretty disappointed. I found it very standard and they had some really exciting actors in there and I didn't think any of them had enough to do.

2:44And yeah, I felt like the plot was quite predictable and I struggled with the villains. So yeah, I mean, this is not my genre of movie and I'm not coming at this as being like a huge fan or having a ton of knowledge of Marvel. But I have enjoyed several past Marvel films at this point years ago. But it did feel like there wasn't enough to be excited about in this film, unfortunately. Man, I did not like this movie. I don't know why my hopes were as high as they were and the reviews were okay they weren't as strong as for Superman but I feel like this movie got quite a pass I'm not quite sure why for me it really was it did come down to the way that the actors were used and the characterizations of the four everyone just fell so flat to me and these are actors I all really like and have certainly really liked in past projects.

3:43And it just felt like there was nowhere for them to go and nobody could make an impression. I thought, you know, Vanessa Kirby probably gives the best performance of the group, but it feels in some ways like she has the least to do also. And beyond that, there was so little interest in them. And so I found little chemistry between them that it just completely fell flat for me. I mean, if you're going to say that this is something of a creative reset and we're going to do new interesting things having the one female hero of the bunch her arc being like fierce mom protects baby it's like oh i think i've seen that many many times before there is a way to tell that story in a novel way but it just felt so boilerplate like a bunch of guys were like i don't know what does a woman care about um and that was a really missed opportunity because kirby can be such an interesting wily actor that i think they're You can have the kid plotline, but make it unique.

4:40I just thought in general with the characters, this movie felt like a sequel to a movie that never existed. It assumed we cared about these people and thus didn't have to flesh them out more. And I felt that that was a real detriment to the project. I get what they were thinking. We've seen the origin story for Fantastic Four twice on screen in the last 20 or so years. We don't need to do it again. But I don't know, I think maybe they kind of did need to introduce us to these people in a more like we've never met them before way. I was sitting there and I was like, all right, I am not the target audience here as a woman and a mother of two.

5:15But then when this baby shows up, I'm like, oh, I should care about this movie. And then I just was like, every time somebody's holding that baby, it's such a CG baby. It's just so distracted. And I was like, that baby wouldn't be that big. It was just born. I was like, I don't care if it's a baby with magic powers. I just could not get past a lot of that. And I realize many people seeing this movie will not have that problem, but some of them will. And it just felt like a bunch of guys made this movie about this mom and motherhood. I do think you're identifying something important here, though, which is that in some ways, this is a movie very intended to be a kind of departure for what the MCU has become.

5:55You know, you have this really interesting, I think, ambitious production design and visual palette that director Matt Shackman brings. He directed WandaVision, which I think is one of the more accomplished MCU productions, certainly over the last decade. But then it's all kind of drowned out eventually by that usual CGI slop that had come to overwhelm a lot of Marvel. And then you also have, to what Richard was saying, a kind of disconnect from the increasingly interconnected Byzantine MCU structure. It could just kind of stand on its own. There's not a ton of lore that you need to know going in.

6:36but then it also leaves you with a kind of weightlessness of, why do we care about these people? Why do we care about any of this? It doesn't have anything to hold on to. It doesn't leave you with anything to hold on to. And so I just found, as much as it was trying to be a different kind of Marvel movie, it morphed into the same thing, but almost in a more frustrating way, because the ingredients were there, the actors were there, the sense of a fresh start was there for it not to do that, and it just did in the end. I mean it's almost to the point where like okay they're just trying to pad out the cast of characters for Avengers Doomsday which is coming in a few years.

7:14I think he could have just skipped straight to Doomsday and we could have met the Fantastic Four there. You know like I don't think we needed this whole movie. It didn't give me enough to care about that you know a brief introduction in the next Avengers movie wouldn't have done. It just you know this is more money to make obviously this way but yeah it just felt like more wheel spinning. and by the end with the post-credits scene, you know, where we're getting set up for the next big thing, I was like, all right, well, I guess we're just doing this again. And yeah, it just doesn't feel exciting.

7:45What do we make of the performance at the box office? As I mentioned, it grossed$118 million domestically. Projections had a floor really of 120 and most expected it to go higher than that in the same way that Superman beat out its projections. It seemed like it was very front-loaded. interest kind of tapered over the weekend. I don't know where that leaves it, but, you know, bias because I don't like the movie, it didn't surprise me that the word of mouth wasn't spectacular. I think it did enough to get those headlines it needed that said it was a success. Yes, emphasis on headlines. Yes, yes.

8:19So I think for what, you know, Marvel needed to do here, that was successful. But yeah, I think they are struggling because a lot of the articles do compare it to Superman, and I think we'll just have to kind of wait and see how it does, you know, in the coming weeks, because I wonder if there might be more of a drop than they had anticipated. I guess there's not much in its way for the rest of the summer, you know, so if people do want the big air-conditioned blockbuster who've already seen Superman, they could go to that. But yeah, I could see it dropping off. And I think that's obviously the sort of the number that any release studio who's trying to do big franchises like this has to look at where it's like even Superman, it's like it, you know, it did really well in its first weekend.

9:02It's held on okay, but, you know, it, I don't know, it starts to seem like it's just a first weekend thing, and that does not, you know, a billion-plus dollar franchise make. Yeah, Jurassic has held on better than most of the summer blockbusters, actually. It seemed to have legged out to be a pretty significant success, given that it was another reboot of that franchise with the new cast. Superman has not held on quite as well, and my guess, just based on the way that the weekend went, is that it's not going to be great news for this movie. going forward. Is there some kind of dino man in the Marvel lore that they could introduce?

9:36Because clearly dinosaurs are just impervious to any market or audience change. It's also the international, right? Yes. Those movies just play so well abroad. Yeah, I think China being a big factor there too. My mother-in-law was recently in town and we saw Jurassic while she was in town and she did tell me, you know, this is what people want to see in the summer. They want to see dinosaurs and I think she's really speaking for the people there. She's on to something. Although the funny thing being that the Jurassic movie imagines a world where people don't care about dinosaurs anymore. And it couldn't be further from the truth here in the real world.

10:14Well, maybe critics could agree with the sentiment. Is there anything we want to say about this cast beyond just the fact that they were wasted? you have in this grouping people who feel kind of red hot in the industry in various ways. Pedro Pascal obviously has been kind of the man of the summer box office even as I don't think he's gotten to show what he can do in movies like Eddington and Materialist. He's a very, very charismatic, funny, charming guy who has played guys who are not exactly that. We talked about Vanessa Kirby and Eben and then you have Joseph Quinn who's this rising star big with Gen Z and the Stranger Things crowd.

10:59I wonder, like, what is the cachet of taking a Marvel role at this point for a group like this? Cash. Cold, hard cash. Yeah. No, I mean, I thought Joseph Quinn is quite good. A human torch, Johnny Storm, is like the most fun character in any of these movies. He gets to, I think, have the most fun. And there are moments where I really enjoyed watching him. But, yeah, I think it makes it harder when you know that these are four very talented, and even Julia Garner, who's playing Silver Surfer, these are very talented actors who just don't have enough to do. They don't get to be weird enough. They don't get to have enough fun.

11:36That's hard. But I think career-wise, it's a very strategic move because it makes them box office bankable in a way that maybe they can get other projects off the ground they couldn't before as sort of a lead or lending their name to things. So, you know, we'll talk a little bit more about past Marvel actors and how that's worked for them. But I think strategically, it's not a bad choice for any of them. I mean, hats off to whoever tailored Johnny Storm's clothes. They're very well cut, I will say. And I think that Joseph Quinn should keep them and just wear them in everyday life. Maybe not the actual superhero suit, but everything else.

12:13Yeah, I mean, I think a big paycheck is obviously a huge incentive. I mean, you look at what Eben Moss-Bacharack is doing in this and you can't see him. I'm sure that it's somehow mapped onto his face and we're getting some version of his facial expressions. But the thing is really like barely human looking. And so I don't know that it advances his image much. And he's kind of playing a similar sort of like mook that he does on the bear. And, you know, it just felt a little samey, samey. I know when they have him like cook, I was like, oh, it's a nice bear tie in there. Yeah, yeah. And then in Pedro Pascal's case, It's like a lot of what Mr.

12:53Fantastic does, which is, you know, his arms stretch out and his neck stretches and all that stuff. That's not Pedro Pascal doing much physical acting, I wouldn't imagine. I think they just graft his face onto digital imagery and just do whatever they want. And so we don't actually, and we don't really see much of that anyway in the movie. But elsewhere, he's just kind of like doing his experiments and worrying about his kid. And, you know, it all felt very muted in a way that I think that that's sort of animated all of Pascal's big film projects this summer, whereas he's been just a little bit withdrawn by the demands of the film.

13:26And we haven't really got to see him be, you know, that great Game of Thrones character, that energy. We haven't seen that in a few years now. Yeah. And the performance feels so much more dynamic on a press tour. You know, there's maybe a disconnect. the one other thing I'll say about Superman is it really did give those actors room I mean David Cornswit I thought fit that role very well but Rachel Brosnahan and Nicholas Holt they got to give really vivid performances and make an impression and I do think at their best that's what these movies can do they can allow actors to get as you said Rebecca weird and fun and go big and that was my big disappointment here is the whole design of this movie felt kind of tailor-made for something like that, especially with the cast that they got, and they just didn't go there.

14:11Yeah, I heard on some podcasts, and I don't know how true it is, but that like James Gunn had said in some interview that he didn't really get any notes from the powers that be. It helps that he is one of those powers that be at DC. Whereas this just feels like, yet again, just a movie made by committee, and, you know, just really too scared to do anything too outside the box, and, you know, held up just a couple weeks apart in comparison. I mean, Fantastic Four just looks so, you know, factory issue. And that's not a creative position that Marvel wants to be in because it didn't used to be. Well, it does sound like we're all feeling a little fatigued with Marvel.

14:49So as a thought experiment, after the break, we're going to enter another dimension, one where Marvel does not exist. We'll explain all about that in a moment. So stay with us.

15:13Welcome back to Little Goldman from Vanity Fair. We just spoke a little bit about Fantastic Four First Steps, which is a hit, or as much of a hit as Marvel can seem to churn out these days. It's hard to imagine the film industry at this point without the massive influence of Marvel Studios, for better or for worse. So as a fun exercise, we've decided today we're going to play a round of what if Marvel never existed? And Richard, this was your idea, so I wonder if you want to talk about it a little bit. Yeah, well, I had the whole weekend to think about how to make this more concrete. But I think basically, I think we should say just upfront that we all understand that certain actors we're going to talk about, that they wouldn't get to make smaller projects maybe without the bump that Marvel gave them.

15:56So we are maybe finding ourselves in a bit of a catch-22. But in general, just the idea being what would have happened to various actors' careers over the last, I guess it was, gosh, 17 years ago that the real Marvel engine churned into motion. What would maybe other franchise filmmaking look like? Would there be franchise filming to this extent? So we're just, it's kind of a thought experiment about like what could have been. We're not saying we, you know, we're not wishing Marvel away. We're not trying to undo the past. It's just sort of like we're at this weird crux point for the studio that it's fun to think about.

16:28Yeah, I mean, you think about the way that the studio revived Robert Downey Jr.'s career. He has an Oscar in large right because of the profile that came roaring back after Iron Man. I think about Scarlett Johansson. When I wrote the cover story for Vanity Fair on her earlier this summer, a big theme was she had grown really dissatisfied with the industry, the roles being offered to her. And then in kind of the same period, she wins a Tony Award and she gets sucked into the Marvel machine and becomes a huge star. And that, to me, I wonder if we should start with her, because that, to me, is such a fascinating dichotomy to Rhodes in some ways.

17:10And she did stay on the Marvel track, understandably. She became the highest paid grossing actress in the industry. But there was another path that was just seemingly starting to open up for her. Yeah, I could definitely see, you know, this is not always the case. When an actor from film and TV kind of, you know, carpetbags into the world of theater, and wins a Tony, that does not always mean that they're going to come back. But I think that Johansson, you know, she's a New Yorker. I think she's committed to the art form, even though she hasn't really done much of it since View from the Bridge, which is what she won for.

17:44But I think she would have come back for that. I think she would have built up a steady, you know, resume there. Let's not forget, Scarlett Johansson can sing. And so I could have seen, you know, like, maybe it's not Michelle Williams or Emma Stone in the Cabaret revival, and it's Scarlett Johansson instead, or whatever kind of other thing you could think of in that space. And with that kind of esteem comes maybe not huge paycheck roles for big studio movies, but interesting indie scripts start crossing her agent's desk. And this is all a long way of saying, I think that had Marvel not happened, I think there's a good chance Scarlett Johansson would have an Oscar by now.

18:21Hmm, interesting. I also wonder if she, I mean, I know her directorial debut, Eleanor the Great is very good. I think she's a very good director. There are a million reasons it's an uphill battle for especially a woman to get that opportunity. But I do wonder if there maybe would have been a different path where she was directing earlier or doing some sort of scrappy indie directing and that became a career for her earlier, which I think would have also been really interesting. But obviously I know that a part of the reason she probably got the financial backing for that movie is because she is the biggest box office female star out there.

19:00But it's interesting to think if she would have already told more stories as a director by now if so much of her time hadn't been spent in the Marvel world. Yeah, that's a very good example because we think of her now as somebody who has the cachet to get a project like that off the ground. The star of that movie is June Squibb, who is in her 90s. It's a small movie. It's a character-driven movie. and it has a studio behind it in Sony Pictures Classics. I don't know that that would happen if she did not have the Marvel profile, you know, the profile that comes with that kind of franchise work over many, many years, many films.

19:39Because before Marvel, she did not. She was in a different space just as an actor, as a movie star. It was a lot smaller scale. And it's easy to take that for granted with the way that Marvel changed things. One actor I wonder about, who I think is a very, very good actor, and who I think has not had the most success defining his post-Marvel career so far, is Chris Hemsworth, also known as Thor, and may forever be known as Thor. But even in something like Furiosa, I feel like he's just, he's dynamite. Yeah, he's really good. And I think he's been, you know, there's been some projects that have not been quite as popular that I think he's actually really good in, like Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea, Michael Mann's Black Hat.

20:25I think he's really good in Bad Times at the El Royale. You know, none of those movies are very good on their own, but he is really good in them. And he's someone I think that monetarily, his career certainly benefited from being in Marvel. And I don't know that he, an actor of his, you know, looks and stature, the way he kind of slots into our vision of movie star, I don't know that he would have been offered little indies or interesting dramatic roles without Marvel. And that's where it differs with Scarlett Johansson. Although, you know, Scarlett Johansson, it said, got under the skin, the fascinating Jonathan Glaser film because of Marvel.

21:01Because it was a way for that movie to get financed. So it's maybe a fool's errand to imagine a Johansson career without it. But yeah, Chris Hemsworth, I would still love to see him build on the Furiosa thing where it's like, oh, you would be really good in Shakespeare, speaking of doing stuff on stage. he's got a sort of classical heft to him that I guess you see in fits and starts as Thor, but Furiosa really showed, I think, a different side of him. Yeah, I feel like he has one of the biggest challenges of like shaking off the expectations after playing Thor. You know, like people see him as this one character and that's such a challenge for any of these actors.

21:39And I think they probably know that going into it, but it would have been interesting to see how else it could have gone for him. So once Marvel, of course, takes off, it becomes much more attractive to people who are either reaching a peak in their careers or, you know, are, say, Paul Rudd and have already done quite well for themselves. one person I wonder about is Brie Larson she just won an Oscar for Room and then suddenly is Captain Marvel a movie that did very well on its own but got trailed by so much ugly sexist backlash and general sort of rejection from a certain corner of the community and then you get strikes and delays and the MCU starts falling apart at the box office and the Marvels comes out as kind of the ultimate dud.

22:29It is often pointed to as like the symbol, the example of where the MCU went wrong. She's certainly climbed out of that just fine. She was just nominated for an Emmy for Lessons in Chemistry. She just did Elektra on the stage over in the UK. But still, it's a fascinating trajectory for her given where she started in Marvel. Yeah, I think the tricky thing with her is that you watch her in, you know, her most defining indie film, Short Term 12, which she's incredible in. And she's such a natural actor. She's a very, like, contemporary, lo-fi, you know, indie kind of... That's her sort of acting style, at least in that film.

23:13And that style is an odd fit for Captain Marvel. That movie is interesting, and it obviously did very well. But she... And it's no fault of her own. It's just a weird style match. and she just it always felt a little bit itchy you know something about her presence there and i think it kind of cast her into this new echelon of movie star she obviously won an oscar for room which was a similar bit of um more naturalistic acting that i think is really successful and i just think that maybe that was the realm where she would have flourished more and now she's kind of got all these weird asterisks next to her name where she is a marvel star and she is an Oscar winner, but how do you reconcile those two very, very, very different styles of filmmaking?

24:00Or do you get caught somewhere in the middle? Or do you go to TV and then have success there? I don't know. But I think my hunch is that, you know, she would have just continued on with the trajectory that Short Trend 12 started, that Room, you know, certainly solidified and, you know, made more interesting indie films had Captain Marvel not come calling. I was feeling similarly about Elizabeth Olsen, who was so incredible in Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene, and then jumped into the Marvel world. And she's very good in it, but she's openly said that those movies aren't aligning with her tastes. And she's been very purposeful in picking other films outside of that.

24:41I liked Ingrid Goes West a lot, and she was in His Three Daughters recently. And she is one of the more vocal about, I think, the struggle of being in a Marvel film. And I'm more excited to see where she goes next. But I think once you've been in the Marvel, it's a lot harder to kind of sort of go back to doing little indies. And I think those decisions become a lot harder to make. Yeah. And I think that Brie Larson had said that when she won her Oscar, she like barely had any money in her bank account because she'd been doing tiny indies. And her one show, United States of Terror, had ended a while ago.

25:14And so I don't blame anyone for seeing all those zeros on a Marvel paycheck and being like, all right, I have to just for, you know, this is a job in addition to a creative calling. But yeah, it's a tricky decision to have to make because it really does put you down an entirely different path. Elizabeth Olsen, you know, has tried to find her way out of that. I think Chris Evans tried to way earlier in the Marvel run. He was pretty vocal in interviews around the time of Avengers, I want to say, about not really liking what he was doing in the Marvel. He seems to have changed his mind at some point and then doubled down and did more Captain America movies and did more Avengers stuff.