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Miles Teller has reflected on the critical failure of the 2015 superhero movie Fantastic Four, saying he had concerns as soon as he saw the final cut.
The 38-year-old starred alongside Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell in the 20th Century Fox movie based on the Marvel Comics superheroes.
Speaking to Andy Cohen on his SiriusXM podcast, Teller recalled: “When I first saw the movie, I remember talking to one of the studio heads and said, ‘I think we’re in trouble.’”
Teller added that he’d felt pressured to take on a superhero movie, saying: “As a young actor at that time, it’s like, ‘Alright, if you want to be taken seriously as a leading man, you got to get on this superhero train.’ That was our chance, and the casting, I thought, was spectacular. I love all those actors.”
The actor, who went on to star in Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, laid the blame on an unnamed figure involved in the production, saying: “It’s unfortunate for that, because so many people worked so hard on that movie.
Kate Mara, Miles Teller and Michael B Jordan in ‘Fantastic Four’ (Fox)
“And honestly, maybe there was one really important person who kind of f***ed it all up.”
In a 2015 review, The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab wrote that the plot of Fantastic Four was “full of black holes.”
“The film is short compared to Marvel Studios’ output, at barely more than 90 minutes,” observed Macnab. “An ‘origin story’, it feels more like an overture than a full opera. Its obvious purpose is to kickstart a new franchise and to establish characters who will return at full throttle in later movies – providing this one is successful enough.”
After the film was dismissed by critics and failed at the box office, it failed to spark the expected franchise. After Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019, the rights to the Fantastic Four characters were returned to Marvel.
The roles were all recast when the characters were rebooted once again earlier this year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe film The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The new film performed much better at the box office, banking over $520 million compared to the 2015 film’s $168 million.
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However, critics still weren’t convinced. In a three-star review, The Independent critic Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “There’s an oddly binary attitude here, where we can do plot or character, but never both at the same time. If we’re dealing with the former, in particular, the dialogue seems to disintegrate largely into unfunny banter between Ben and Johnny. It’s ironic that Ben’s so reluctant to deploy his catchphrase, ‘it’s clobberin’ time’, considering everything else he’s saying is basically ‘Marvel Quip 101’.”
