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Fantastic Four: First Steps<\/em> made a cool $218 million globally this weekend\u2014a happy haul for a film that means a great deal to Marvel. After disappointing returns for the lifeless Captain America: Brave New World<\/em><\/a> and the charming but underwhelming<\/a> Thunderbolts*<\/em> earlier this year, the studio was staring down what had once been unthinkable: the end of its empire. If Fantastic Four<\/em> failed, that would surely spell bad things for the upcoming mega-movie Avengers: Doomsday,<\/em> which began shooting this spring.<\/p>\n So Marvel is, no doubt, breathing a slight sigh of relief now that early audiences have connected with the Fantastic Four\u2014undaunted by crummy past attempts<\/a> to put the characters onscreen\u2014and are ostensibly interested in the continuation of the Marvel saga. How the film holds over the next few weeks will probably be the more telling indicator, though; if all the diehards got their kicks out this weekend, there will be a precipitous and discouraging drop in receipts.<\/p>\n A dark part of me almost welcomes that potential future. Even vaguely rooting for a movie to fail is a reckless thing to do in these days of fading industry; we\u2019re talking about thousands of jobs here, done by people who have little say over the creative decisions at the top, not to mention the tastes of moviegoers. I don\u2019t actually<\/em> want any new movie to stumble. (Except maybe one<\/a>.) Yet a failure could be valuable for Marvel, could help the studio learn a lesson so that the inevitable superhero movies to come might, at least, be better.<\/p>\n It wouldn\u2019t be hard to improve upon Fantastic Four,<\/em> an occasionally stylish but otherwise totally boilerplate superhero movie. At this uncertain point in MCU history, it\u2019s a little shocking that the studio was comfortable delivering such a bland and perfunctory film\u2014especially when it\u2019s arriving at a crucial inflection point for both Marvel and the wider business.<\/p>\n But bland Fantastic Four<\/em> is, playing as an undercooked sequel to a movie that never was. It\u2019s hard to care about these characters, and even harder to root for them when they make a pretty selfish choice about the future of humanity. Little of its tepid humor lands, and the winsome detail of the film\u2019s opening minutes quickly falls away so that the rude mechanics of plot can be dealt with. It\u2019s yet another middling entry in the post-Endgame<\/em> tradition, a film that doesn\u2019t launch the franchise headlong at the future so much as it glumly drags us toward it.<\/p>\n It certainly doesn\u2019t help that the studio across town, the long-beleaguered (and long-be-Justice League<\/em>red<\/a>) DC, recently had a financial and creative<\/a> success with Superman,<\/em> a true reset of the house style. For once in its unending war, DC has pulled ahead of Marvel\u2014with a former Marvel guy, James Gunn,<\/strong> at the helm.<\/p>\n Had Fantastic Four<\/em> really belly flopped, it might have forced more studio-wide (even Disney-wide) thinking about the future of the endeavor. Instead, Fantastic Four<\/em> probably did just well enough to convince the powers that be that things are chugging along okay, that only minor tweaks need to be made. (Or no tweaks, even!)<\/p>\n But I think there\u2019s far more to be done than mere alterations. Creative integrity may not be the highest priority on executives\u2019 lists, but maybe there\u2019s still some interest in making the product genuinely good (as many Marvel movies once were). Enough that someone over there will see the dwindling acclaim and slumping\u00a0(if still profitable) box office, and eventually pull the emergency brake to force a major shake-up.<\/p>\n One idea? If DC is suddenly beating Marvel at the whole whimsical-meets-arch-meets-sweetly-sentimental thing that the latter used to be so good at, then Marvel could swing back to the age of the gritty superhero, which DC errantly prolonged for years. Marvel has gone dark and somber before\u2014think of the closing minutes of Infinity War,<\/em> or the beginning ones of Endgame<\/em>\u2014but the studio has never sustained that mood for an entire film, let alone a series of films.<\/p>\n Maybe the X-Men, a ragtag band who have been on film in various iterations many times already this century, would be fitting subjects for such an experiment. Sure, the ersatz horror movie The New Mutants<\/em> didn\u2019t work<\/a>, but that movie was made before Disney had full control of these characters. We already know some old X-Men are slated to be part of Doomsday,<\/em> so the company would have to figure out whether to fold those actors and characters into a reboot or start completely anew. But that can all be reasoned out. The key thing is that the X-Men have always been a little edgy and in their heads, giving Disney a sturdy foundation to develop upon and tinker with.<\/p>\n Or maybe the studio could take the heaps of money it\u2019s made from the MCU over the last 17 years and spend it on stand-alone films about entirely different things, an attempt at a great rebuilding of Hollywood tradition. You know: middle-budget but commercial movies with compelling movie stars that tell stories we haven\u2019t seen before. Like what used to exist outside the realm of independent cinema. But that\u2019s perhaps too fantastical; it\u2019s probably wiser to stick with the flying people and their grand battles with space monsters. Maybe next time, just add a dog.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n