Every 'Fantastic Four' Movie Ranked (Including First Steps)
It says a lot about the Fantastic Four movies that John Krasinski’s minute-or-so of screen time as Reed Richards in the recent Dr Strange and The Multiverse of Madness was, until the summer of ‘25, probably most fans’ favourite big-screen incarnation of the character. It’s true, few would argue that it’s been a smooth ride to Fantastic Four: First Steps, Matt Shakman’s excellent newer take, but some of those earlier efforts did have their moments—at least enough to warrant a quick look back.
For our ranking of every Fantastic Four movie to date below, we’ve focused on the standalone movies. So, don’t expect Dr Strange to feature. Same goes for that Thunderbolts* teaser—as things stand, we still can’t even be sure who’s on that rocket….
Honourable Mention: Fantastic Four (1994)
Roger Corman really did do everything. The legendary filmmaker had 490 producer credits to his name on IMDb when he passed away at the ripe age of 98. One that’s still there, despite never being officially released, is his mythical 1994 take on Marvel’s first family. If you can get your hands on it, and you like the fun and pastiche of stuff like Adam West’s Batman, or are just interested in the production story, it’s well worth a look.
The story goes that German producer Bernd Eichinger hired Corman to make a movie for $1M so as not to lose the rights to the FF IP—think of it as a kind of precursor to what Sony is speculated to be doing with movies like Madame Web. Despite the cast being told it was real, even going so far as to attend comic book conventions, there was never any plan for Fantastic Four (1994) to see the light of day.
This hasn’t stopped the movie from gaining a cult following (most fans seem to appreciate the movie’s fateful take on the characters) or stopped bootlegged versions from appearing online. Just keep your eyes peeled: word has it that the stars all have cameos in Shakman’s First Steps.
Let’s be honest, every Fantastic Four movie before First Steps had problems. The originals are guilty of an over-reliance on digital effects, but the 2015 reboot was its own kind of dumpster fire.
Before the shoot, it all seemed to be falling into place quite nicely. Despite some awful online trolling of Michael B. Jordan, the casting looked fresh, and Trank was coming in hot off the success of Chronicle, his found footage superhero movie. It felt like we might be getting a younger, X-Men First Class-style reboot, but then 20th Century Fox lost their nerve. Trank’s ending was rewritten during production, and the studio was soon calling for reshoots.
The patched-together final product—in which the foursome travel to another dimension and come back with their powers—went on to receive the worst reviews of basically any Marvel movie and left theatres without turning a profit. Yet, as a pure demented curiosity, it’s kind of worth a look (especially if you’re a big fan of Chronicle), if only to see how bad things can go. Flame very much off.
There isn’t really much of a story to this one. Rise of the Silver Surfer is, for better and worse, probably the least well remembered of any Fantastic Four feature—but if you’re a fan of the 2005 original and that Alba/Evans generation, you’ll probably get into it.
There are two things people usually recall about it: the Silver Surfer looked pretty good for the time, in that liquidy, T1000 kinda way; and that Galactus looked like a big cloud. The movie—which brings back Von Doom as the Surfer heralding the end of the Earth—hasn’t aged too badly; it just happened to land a year before The Dark Knight and Iron Man came along to blow everything else out of the water.
From a difficult time for superhero movies, Tim Story’s likably earnest Fantastic Four—an unadventurous retelling of the origin story, set in the present day, but one that has retained the kind of nostalgic energy that fans of Fox’s early X-Men movies will appreciate—stands out as the best of a bad bunch. This is especially true if you, like me, admire mid-00s Chris Evans—rocking that smarmy, pre-Cap energy and those boot cut jeans. Hey, even the CGI holds up pretty well!
The first wave of modern superhero movies really peaked at the start of the ‘00s with the release of Blade II, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies and Bryan Singer’s X2. The drop in quality that followed probably had as much to do with a drop in standards as it did with the paradigm-shifting arrival of Cristopher Nolan’s Batman movies, but Story’s movie won’t be forgotten.
Two decades after Tim Story, and one since Josh Trank, Marvel finally got it right with Fantastic Four: First Steps—a movie worthy of its title and capable of rekindling some of the magic of the MCU. You could say that Matt Shakman’s First Steps owes a lot to The Incredibles (and if you’re a fan of those movies, you’ll probably love it), but that’s a bit like saying that Casino Royale owed something to Bourne—say what you want about Brad Bird’s retro-futurism, Jack Kirby got there first.
It’s telling how much Shakman has talked about Kirby’s influence in interviews in the lead-up. His film not only brings back the originals’ ‘60s style, but also some of that era’s hopes and anxieties. None of which would be possible without the movie’s remarkable cast and gorgeous production design. To quote Anthony Lane’s Incredibles 2 review (not that part), the movie lets us “imagine, for a couple of hours, what it would feel like to live inside an Alexander Calder mobile.” Damn true.
