Read the Full StoryThe Fantastic Four now in theaters is a movie set largely in hallways and big labs, a film with a long build up to a very rushed final battle. It’s a movie that is full of promise in the first half, promise that is totally squandered in the back half. But this wasn’t always the movie. Fantastic Four has gone through a lot of iterations – many of them just in the past few months, as massive reshoots reshaped the film – but also going back years.
In 2014 Simon Kinberg delivered a rewrite of the script Jeremy Slater had turned in; Slater and director Josh Trank had been hired together by Fox in 2012 and Slater has a final credit on the film. The movie that is in theaters now resembles Slater’s draft only in the broadest strokes, and most of the elements that the two versions share are from Slater’s first act – which is stretched out in the final film to create about 2/3rds of the movie.
