The "Fantastic 4" reboot had a rough debut at the weekend box office, netting just $26.2 million domestically.
What turned "Fantastic 4" into a fantastic flop? A storm of unflattering media coverage, for one thing. While early reviews cited the film's "go nowhere" plot or pointed out flaws in the characters dating back to the 1960s comic, the fact that the film was panned by viewers on Twitter didn't help.
"@FantasticFour, you destroyed one of the best comic book series in just one movie. I can't believe I wasted my money on this garbage," one Twitter user wrote.
The film quickly earned a score of just 9 percent on movie fan site Rotten Tomatoes and the franchise's problems ballooned from there.
The film's own director, Josh Trank, tweeted his displeasure with the final product, tweeting that "A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would've received great reviews. You'll probably never see it. That's reality though."
To make matters worse, an unfavorable profile of "Fantastic" star Miles Teller in Esquire magazine may've taken some of the wind out of the pre-movie excitement, especially after Teller and his co-stars, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jaime Bell, all took to Twitter to deride the article.
Yet with all the bad publicity surrounding it, even good publicity couldn't fix the film's core problem, as the New York Times' A.O. Scott said in his review plain, old bad filmmaking.
"'Fantastic 4' has nothing," Scott wrote. "(Kate Mara's) character also has the power to make other things vanish. I would say she should have exercised it on this movie, but in a week or two that should take care of itself."
What turned "Fantastic 4" into a fantastic flop? A storm of unflattering media coverage, for one thing. While early reviews cited the film's "go nowhere" plot or pointed out flaws in the characters dating back to the 1960s comic, the fact that the film was panned by viewers on Twitter didn't help.
"@FantasticFour, you destroyed one of the best comic book series in just one movie. I can't believe I wasted my money on this garbage," one Twitter user wrote.
The film quickly earned a score of just 9 percent on movie fan site Rotten Tomatoes and the franchise's problems ballooned from there.
The film's own director, Josh Trank, tweeted his displeasure with the final product, tweeting that "A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would've received great reviews. You'll probably never see it. That's reality though."
To make matters worse, an unfavorable profile of "Fantastic" star Miles Teller in Esquire magazine may've taken some of the wind out of the pre-movie excitement, especially after Teller and his co-stars, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jaime Bell, all took to Twitter to deride the article.
Yet with all the bad publicity surrounding it, even good publicity couldn't fix the film's core problem, as the New York Times' A.O. Scott said in his review plain, old bad filmmaking.
"'Fantastic 4' has nothing," Scott wrote. "(Kate Mara's) character also has the power to make other things vanish. I would say she should have exercised it on this movie, but in a week or two that should take care of itself."
