I didn’t think the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies were that bad. We’re living in the privilege of a post-2008 Iron Man superhero movie landscape, but if you go back to the early-to-mid-2000s there were still lots of misses out there: Daredevil, the first Hulk, Superman Returns, the ill-fated Catwoman. Among those, it’s a pretty decent offering.
You also have to think about how comparatively un-fantastic those pre-Marvel Studios movies were. Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies were pretty good, but you couldn’t really imagine Thor, let alone Rocket Racoon, showing up in the world established by those movies. It would be comparatively easy to do a great FF movie nowadays, given that space aliens, gods, magical beings, sentient robots, time travel, alternate dimensions and much more have been established as routine parts of the Marvel cinematic universe as we know it. I think the key is to set the FF up as explorers / adventurers that can hang out in any one of those worlds and feel right at home.
