The Best And Worst Live-Action Versions Of Each Fantastic Four Character

With Marvel’s First Family entering the Marvel Cinematic Universe via “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” fans will undoubtedly begin comparing all of the different versions of the superhero team to determine who is actually fantastic and who ought to be forgotten forever. That’s our goal with this article — we’re going to name the best and worst big screen versions of every Fantastic Four member, and a few iconic baddies to boot.

This list compares the main casts of every live-action “Fantastic Four” movie to date: On top of the aforementioned MCU film there’s 1994’s “The Fantastic Four,” an unreleased but heavily bootlegged film hastily tossed together as a way of keeping the rights; Tim Story’s duology of films, 2005’s “Fantastic Four” and 2007’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer;” and Josh Trank’s much-derided 2015 reboot “Fantastic Four,” an infamous box office bomb. Read on for the winners and losers.

It’s not easy to nail the mixture of vulnerability and toughness that is required to play Sue Storm. If you tilt too far in one direction, you end up coming off as too passive. If you make her too tough, you lose the kinder qualities that make Sue such a compelling superhero. Vanessa Kirby lands right in the sweet spot in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” giving fans the best version of Sue to date. She plays her as a smart, caring woman who’s trying to take care of her growing family while also saving the world and acting as a diplomat.

Kirby’s Sue is not the damsel in distress, which is a trap others before her have fallen into. While she definitely faces challenges as the matriarch of Marvel’s First Family, the difference in where she takes the character is striking — and a relief. This Sue is the heart and soul of the team, the one who remembers that family should always come first. However, while her life as a wife and mother is a big part of who she is, it’s not the only part of her — she’s also a fiercely loyal friend. Her role in “First Steps” might feel a bit straitlaced, but the film knows who Sue is in the comics, and it brings her to the screen faithfully.

Jessica Alba’s take on Sue Storm definitely suffers from the writing. At the start of 2005’s “Fantastic Four,” Sue is shown to be the heart of the team in a lot of ways, but her character is exposed as one-dimensional as things progress, and it gets even worse in 2007’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” Her arc in the sequel revolves around her being bitterly disappointed as Reed continuously puts off their wedding to search for adventure. Then she ends up dying during the final battle, only to be resurrected by the Silver Surfer. She’s more of a plot device than a character.

It’s both a disservice to Sue and to Jessica Alba that the character doesn’t get to do anything interesting with her time in the role. Alba was never the same after “Fantastic Four,” and that’s not surprising considering her experience on the second film in particular: Alba almost quit acting following “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer” after being told to cry more attractively during her death scene. Every other character at least gets to show a facet of their personality that makes them stand out from the pack. Sue only gets to nag or be a damsel in distress. It’s no wonder Alba hated making the “Fantastic Four” movies.

All of the live action versions of Johnny Storm, to their credit, are fairly excellent within their own universes. They all have punch, spirit, and a sense of cocky egotism that makes them entertaining to watch. It was hard to pick the best actor in this pile and hard to pick the worst, but Michael B. Jordan’s coolness under pressure gives us a Johnny that’s different from all the rest. His Johnny is a prankster, of course, and he has a lot of confidence and plenty of self-worth, but Jordan’s take on the character is far more grounded than what we’ve seen elsewhere. It may not be saying much, but he’s by far the best thing about 2015’s “Fantastic Four.”

Jordan’s Johnny gets to show off his skills as an engineer in this version of the story — a rarity, because he’s often portrayed as a party boy and a meathead who likes girls and using his flame powers to his advantage. He’s a little more cerebral here without losing his edge or his sense of humanity. He has spirit and a sense of humor, sure, but he could also kick butt in any scientific or physical contest you pose. Like all versions of the character he’s loyal to his family, a crucial element of any Johnny Storm. The difference is that Jordan knows how to reflect multiple sides of his character, making his Johnny the best of the bunch.

1994’s “The Fantastic Four” was never released, though, thanks to bootleg copies, comic book fans got to see just how terrible it is — it’s among the worst superhero movies ever made. It came about because the production company Constantin Film was about to lose the rights to the Marvel property and needed to throw a film together ASAP in order to retain them. Naturally, that didn’t help the actors, including Jay Underwood, whose version of Johnny Storm is the worst ever by some distance.

In this version of the story, Johnny is just a teenager living in a boarding house with his sister, Sue, and their mother when Reed’s experiment goes terribly wrong and creates Doctor Doom. By the time they become the Fantastic Four following their fateful flight, Johnny has grown into a man, but his character isn’t any more entertaining, showing no growth and adding nothing of import to the plot. There’s no character development at all, with Underwood’s Johnny being little more than a passenger along for this (terribly dull) ride.

Michael Chiklis is a decorated actor who has a ton of experience playing gritty characters in crime dramas. He’s also played Curly Howard in a television movie about the formation of The Three Stooges. That duality makes him perfect for Ben Grimm, the ever lovin’ blue-eyed Thing. The actor manages to pull off Ben’s vulnerability, his wit, and his battle-ready sides with aplomb. His Ben is morose, but also quippy and sarcastic. He’s tough and a romantic. He’s all of the best parts of Ben squeezed into a single character, with Chiklis standing up to the challenge of making Ben a fully-rounded character.

Ben Grimm goes through a lot during 2005’s “Fantastic Four” and 2007’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” He grapples with his own sense of self-loathing as he tries to accept his physical change into The Thing. Along the way, he falls in love with blind artist Alicia Masters (Kerry Washington). It’s a story arc that’s frequently repeated in movie retellings of the team’s origins, but only Chiklis manages to suck us into the romance. He gives Ben a prickly exterior layer, but he also makes him completely wonderful and the most lovable Thing by far.

Michael Bailey Smith played the human Ben Grimm in 1994’s “The Fantastic Four,” but The Thing was played by stuntman Carl Ciarfalio, who donned a suffocating rubber suit. There’s actually some charm in his pre-CGI performance and the film’s low budget effects, but not enough to stop this version of The Thing from being the worst to date. One of the main issues is that it’s hard to understand what emotions Ciarfalio is going for every time he reacts to another character, a by-product of the face being remote-controlled by somebody else off-camera. None of this is Ciarfalio’s fault, of course — he did the best he could under pretty unbearable circumstances.

“That’s the hottest f****** thing I’ve ever been in,” Ciarfalio told Keeping it Reel when asked about the suit he wore for the film. “It was a couple inches of fake rubber and I wore a thin-skinned dive suit underneath it so I could get in and out of it. But, yeah brother, I sweated a lot in that suit. The only way to get in and out was to have somebody help me.” He went on to reveal that they actually made two heads, one for fight scenes and one that was capable of basic facial movements. “I would do the dialogue and the only thing I could hear was ‘Vudip, vudip, vudip,’ you know, the sound of these motors going on in my head. And then they looped in Michael Bailey Smith’s voice over the mouth movements.”

There’s something utterly unique about Pedro Pascal’s take on Reed Richards in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” While Ioan Gruffudd leans on Reed’s stolid scientific side and Miles Teller’s Reed comes off as too youthful to be properly believable as the unflappable genius, Pascal hits the sweet spot of being mature enough to seem like a measured scientist while also being joyfully wide-eyed enough to really make you believe that he adores all of the benefits that come with making incredible human advancements. His Reed approaches parenthood with anxiety, while also teaching kids the wonders of experimentation.

Pascal balances Reed’s gravitas with a real sense of human vulnerability that makes him so perfectly well-rounded that you believe that a stretchy guy like him could exist in the real world — and would happily tell your children how to make a baking soda volcano. And, crucially, he is also completely believable as a commanding leader. To date, no actor has better embodied all of the sides Reed Richards has to offer, from hyper-elastic superhero and super genius who thinks that the best thing in the world is particle acceleration, to loving husband and father.

Miles Teller’s Reed Richards in 2015’s “Fantastic Four” is a bad character, but it’s not entirely the actor’s fault — it’s pretty hard to project the right amount of wisdom and experience needed to feel like Reed when you’re playing a teenage version of him. Even so, Teller’s take on a young Reed doing scientific experiments in his garage and trying to woo Sue all while dodging mounting danger and behaving like a fugitive from justice doesn’t have the right resonance. Regardless of age, this is a character with a certain gravitas. Teller’s version of Reed is simply lacking in this area, and that’s partially down to him. Teller’s Reed is, in a word, bratty. 

Josh Trank’s film bungles Reed’s development as a scientist and a man. It doesn’t feel like he’s maturing even as he becomes a fugitive from the law and tries to suppress his abilities to the maximum. It might be the direction, it might be the way Teller’s forced to play the character, or it might be the fact that these characters need to have a certain punch to them to make them work. But Teller’s Reed never emerges from the shadow of Ioan Gruffudd’s far superior version in 2005’s “Fantastic Four” and its 2007 sequel, and it’s certainly nowhere near as good as Pedro Pascal’s version in the MCU.

The late Julian McMahon understood the assignment when he took on the role of the Fantastic Four’s ultimate enemy Doctor Doom in 2005’s “Fantastic Four.” His take on the character combine’s Doom’s arrogance and superciliousness with a cold, calculating sense of viciousness. In this version of the story, Victor von Doom is basically Reed’s boss — he pushes the evils of corporate America while ignoring the bottom-line importance of safety. He doesn’t care if Reed Richards and his family die as long as his wallet and the wallets of his investors keep getting fatter.

McMahon projects malevolence in every scene, though he doesn’t allow his version of Doom to lose every last shred of humanity — beneath this villain’s hot temper and big brain there’s also a wounded man who’s furious with Reed for his perceived failure. He thinks he’s mentally superior to Reed in every single way and there’s an honest frustration that underlines all of his choices. But he lives via science, and it’s science that ultimately undoes him. McMahon wasn’t afraid to go there with his performance, playing Doom as a man who, in the end, was almost too smart for his own good.

If you can’t project menace as Doctor Doom, then you probably shouldn’t take on the mantle. Toby Kebbell has the right glower, and he does fill out a cape with panache. But his Doom does not have the thundering grandiosity necessary for this iconic supervillain, which means he ends up at the bottom of the heap when talking about the character. It’s a shame, because this version of Victor von Doom has an interesting origin as a protegee of Storm family patriarch Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey).

In 2015’s “Fantastic Four,” Doom goes with Reed, Ben, and Johnny to Planet Zero and is presumed dead after an accident there. As such, he’s left behind. This is at least a fresh version of his origin story and it ought to have expanded into something brand new for the character. Instead, he simply surfaces fully reborn as a telekinetic, killing others and seeking revenge on Reed. Kebbell’s Doctor Doom has all the ingredients, but his revenge arc feels thin. As a big bad, he doesn’t possess the full-throated wit that makes Doom, well, Doom. A talented actor, no doubt, but wrong for this role.

Comparing the two big screen versions of the Silver Surfer is like comparing apples to oranges. It doesn’t help that one version is Norrin Radd and the other is Shalla-Bal, two different heralds and two completely different characters. But Doug Jones — helped by a legendary voiceover provided by Laurence Fishburne — takes the crown as the morally conflicted Radd in “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” Jones, who regularly collaborates with Guillermo del Toro and has decades of experience playing creatures and otherworldly characters, gives his Silver Surfer a regality that demands attention.

What’s especially great about Jones and Fishburne’s version of the Silver Surfer is his moral conflict about serving Galactus. Yes, Shalla-Bal goes through similar issues in the MCU film “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” but here, Fishburne’s vocal delivery really sells how Radd feels about the situation. When he ultimately brings Sue back to life before floating off to his own destiny out in space, it’s such an important moment of growth. Together, Jones and Fishburne really knock it out of the park.

Julia Garner is the worst Silver Surfer by default. Topping what Doug Jones and Laurence Fishburne did with the character was always going to be tricky. In fairness, she gives it a good go in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” though you can’t help but wonder if this role was right for her. Garner has an unquestionable amount of acting talent, but her measured line delivery doesn’t have the desired impact, coming across as flat for the most part.

The intent is to build mystery and intrigue, but the character’s coldness stops the audience from connecting in some scenes. She doesn’t need to be quite so distant to build audience anticipation. However, the former “Ozark” star seems to grow into the role as the movie goes on. By the end, we’re definitely rooting for her, and that’s the important thing — you really want to see her thrive without Galactus’ influence hanging over her.