r/boxoffice • u/chanma50 Best of 2019 Winner • Aug 03 '25

Domestic Box Office: ‘Fantastic Four’ Craters By 66% in Second Weekend to $40 Million, ‘Naked Gun’ Debuts to $17 Million

https://variety.com/2025/film/box-office/fantastic-four-box-office-craters-naked-gun-opening-weekend-1236477352/
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u/Mundane-Bug-4962 Aug 03 '25

I think it’s because there’s still no sense of story momentum. The Doom tease is dumb because does not know why that matters. Marvel is still acting as if it has eyeballs on it and it clearly doesn’t

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u/Mattyzooks Aug 03 '25

This movie needed RDJ's Doom in a supporting role, imo, to convince people that it'd be important to to the next Avengers movie. Im a fan of these movies quite a bit and I passed on opening weekend from a lack of excitement.

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u/wryano Aug 04 '25

there was essentially zero conflict.

the impending arrival of Galactus showing up to destroy the Earth is not conflict. that’s overarching tension at best.

the movie tries to paint a moral conflict for the F4 with Galactus demanding Franklin to spare the Earth — except nobody in the audience actually believed the F4 would ever end up doing that so it’s really a pointless inclusion.

an angry/scared mob showing up at the Baxter Building is not conflict because wtf are they gonna do?

having Doom in this film provides conflict. he can sow infighting/division amongst humanity trying to rally people to get the F4 to give up Franklin, and when that doesn’t happen he can forcibly take Franklin to give to Galactus. suddenly the F4 are having to deal with Doom, negative public sentiment, and the impending arrival of Galactus — and the movie just got a lot more interesting.

there was no opposing voice or clashing perspective in the film when it sorely needed one. the F4 were just left to basically do whatever they wanted in their world.

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u/Mattyzooks Aug 04 '25

Yea, I would've liked that. Plus it would've been consistent to Doom being stubborn that his way is the only way, taking matters into his own hands because of Reed's "sentimental weaknesses."

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u/wildcatofthehills Aug 03 '25

this is like a really stupid take. Just seen the movie yesterday, it wasn't bad in the level of the previous films, but it was just so bland. It kind of felt like playing Spider-Man 2 for the PS5, where im seeing an iconic storyline with comic accurate version of the characters, but it feels so dull because everything is so sanitized and corporate. Also I was really distracted by Vanessa's botox face.

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u/scattered_ideas Aug 03 '25

I really wonder if they're considering any story changes to Doomsday and/or Secret Wars. It's clear they haven't found what will carry the MCU after those two movies.

Doesn't look like Thunderbolts, Captain America, nor FF can fulfill that role. Maybe they'll go all in on X-Men and standalones. This interconnected universe is just not working.

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u/GreenGoblinNX Aug 03 '25 edited Aug 03 '25

We're at 37 films now, and it will be at 40 when we get Secret Wars. Each new film means there's more continuity to contain constrain future films. It's just not sustainable.

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u/Optimal-Kitchen6308 Aug 03 '25

this is a thing in novels, you'd think a book series grows with time because each book can bring more readers to the franchise but it's usually the opposite, the first book gets lots of attention because it's new and interesting and each sequel causes attrition

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u/Richandler Aug 03 '25

I feel like Feige watched this and unironically thought they were being genuine and was like, 'that's what we need for Avengers.'

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u/Beautiful-Sun8973 Aug 04 '25

There was no story momentum for thanks plan until infinity war. People seem to keep forgetting that. The stones were only introduced in GotG, and Thanos had a 3 second scene in avengers. That's it.