Perhaps it’s a little too easy to dump on Fantastic Four. The film has become the go-to punching bag for people wanting to disparage superhero movies for being too leaden and joyless, and for no good reason other than the movie happens to be 100 percent leaden and joyless. Even people who haven’t seen Josh Trank’s (sorry, not Josh Trank’s) flick are finding it an easy movie at which to take shots, just because everyone who has seen it tells them to go ahead and do so. Chief among those people who haven’t seen it? Star Kate Mara, who, in a new interview with The Times, admits she has yet to watch the movie that caused such a stink.
The whole interview is unfortunately behind a paywall, so you can’t see much of it, but some folks who did read the whole thing were kind enough to pull out a few relevant quotes so that we can read those relevant quotes, and then make said quotes available for others to see, so that the Fantastic Four game of schadenfreude telephone can continue, in perpetuity. Hakuna Matata!
It was a tricky shoot, but you know…When you know when you’re shooting it that a film isn’t going to be what you want it to be? That was not the case at all.
Despite the experience filming it being not that bad, according to the tactfully phrased quote above, Mara noted that all the bad reviews made her “a little bit gun-shy” about seeing the film, but that she would get around to it eventually, presumably after a few glasses of wine and a Percocet. She also admitted to being disappointed because, “We have no idea if we’ll ever make another one.” Really, the best high-road-that’s-secretly-the-low-road comment from Mara comes from a subsequent interview with MTV: “I would love to play Sue Storm in a movie that everybody loves. That would be great.” Paging bitter, party of one.