Josh Trank‘s Fantastic Four (20th Century Fox, 8.7) is a franchise reboot and the first grade-A film based on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby‘s 54 year-old Marvel comic book. Are Marvel superhero flicks about anything other than the making of money? Anything at all? Do they contain any echoes or metaphors about some aspect of 21st Century life, which the X-Men films had before Brett Ratner came along? Two reasons for concern: (a) one of the producers is Matthew Vaughn, which indicates that the film might have the same tone of cheap, candy-realm escapism as Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service; and (b) Fantastic Four was shot in Louisiana, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll have that craven “shot on a budget in Louisiana” vibe…but it might.
