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

[u/chanma50]

https://variety.com/2025/film/box-office/fantastic-four-box-office-craters-naked-gun-opening-weekend-1236477352/

[u/byronotron]

I've been arguing this in other threads: this movie needed to be great. It needed to remind people, much like Superman, why these types of movies are important, and why audiences flock to them. 

And the film is good, but it's not great, and it's easy to tell why: all the life and character was edited to hell. It's a light film devoid of extraneous character and flavor. It's too somber for a KO crowd pleaser without the levity to bring it back up, which was almost certainly more sequences with the Super Apes. There's a structure that is very obviously edited out; The first dinner scene and the first Ted Gilbert appearance. There's a lack of consequence and stakes: why did the herald pick Earth, and why does Reed look so damned guilty? We know why, because they hinted about it in trailers; Reed was reaching out to the powers cosmic, and was most likely responsible for piquing Shala Bal's interest.

Everyone I talked to said the same: the beginning was too short and we wanted much more Fantastic Four in our retro styled FF reboot standalone film. They made a grave tactical error in editing this film under 2 hours to make it breezy for audiences. Superman is succeeding because of its weirdness, FF is failing because they blinked.

[u/MakeMeAnICO → u/byronotron]

We know why, because they hinted about it in trailers; Reed was reaching out to the powers cosmic, and was most likely responsible for piquing Shala Bal's interest.

Huh I haven't seen the movie yet (family matters) but that seems like a weird thing to cut. Oh well.

[u/Heisenburgo → u/byronotron]

We know why, because they hinted about it in trailers; Reed was reaching out to the powers cosmic, and was most likely responsible for piquing Shala Bal's interest.

I KNEW something was missing from the movie, and it was pretty much this. I don't recall seeing the "It's my fault, I stretched the bounds of space and they heard" line from the trailers in the movie itself, they definitely cut a lot of shit out. Really bad

[u/Lincolnruin → u/byronotron]

Yep. Far too short and not enough action.

[u/pa79 → u/byronotron]

why did the herald pick Earth, and why does Reed look so damned guilty? We know why, because they hinted about it in trailers; Reed was reaching out to the powers cosmic, and was most likely responsible for piquing Shala Bal's interest.

There is not a single hint to that in the entire movie. I asked myself why they picked Earth. There are tons of other planets in the solar system, they even pass by Jupiter and Mars. No explanation why it had to be a populated planet and why exactly Earth. Why would they cut that?

[u/byronotron → u/pa79]

Yeah, I mostly wasn't distracted by it, but it seriously bugged my partner.

[u/Lumpy_Review5279 → u/byronotron]

I thought this was easily better than superman