The Fantastic Four reboot would be the perfect opportunity to put Susan Storm front and centre as a much needed female lead

The New Fantastic Four. Photograph: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan & Jamie Bell by Gage Skidmore via photopin (license) (cropped)

This article contains spoilers for a number of major comic book story arcs...

Trailers released for Fox's reboot of the Fantastic Four seem to suggest that the new film will stay pretty much true to its previous iteration. It appears that Reed Richards will once more be the heroic protagonist and Susan Storm will again be the love interest.

If that's the case, it will be hard to see the film as anything other than a missed opportunity. At a time when anti-hero jerks are all the rage and when there is a real clamour for female led movies - particularly comic book movies - it feels like a chance missed to revitalise the Fantastic Four. Why not embrace Reed's more difficult persona and make Susan the relatable lead?

In Fox's previous iteration of the Fantastic Four, Reed Richards was made into a kind of lovable nerd, filled with childish enthusiasm for science - and even possessed of a sense of humour. He was obsessive, but not nearly to the destructive levels of the comic books.

This seems to be the result of trying to make Reed Richards the focal point of a Hollywood movie, which appears to invariably demand that the character be made 'accessible' and 'relatable' to the audience. That tends to translate to screen as a male character, exceptional in some way, who despite flaws can be redeemed - much like Wolverine, who Fox put front and centre of the X-Men, making him much less of the violent jerk he is in the comics.

The Reed Richards of the Marvel Comics is, however, a much more detached and obsessive figure. He ignores his wife and children to a significant degree, he can be brash and arrogant, and his utilitarian 'greater good' philosophical approach can take him to some very dark places. In fact, in the mainstream continuity, many of the Reeds on alternate Earths have become supervillains. In the Ultimate Marvel continuity, Reed Richards was written to become an outright supervillain - and one the most dangerous.

Even within the mainstream continuity, it can sometimes be hard to see Reed as anything less than a villain. During the Civil War arc, soon to be translated to screen by Marvel as Captain American: Civil War, Richards creates a murderous android that murders one of his oldest friends, his methods alienate him from his friends and even his wife, and he accepts all of it as willing sacrifices, on his part, for the creation of a better world.

Hollywood clearly has trouble with these kinds of complicated heroic characters. But there are tried and tested ways of making the most out of these characters that can be learned from TV. Two of the most memorable are Gregory House, MD, and Sherlock Holmes. Both of these arrogant, difficult and aloof TV characters are central to their respective shows. But they are offset by much more relatable characters, using different approaches.

NBC's House is written with the eponymous character as the one viewers follow. Yet the writers refrain from trying to humanise him. That job is left to the expectations of the viewer, which are frequently disappointed. He is surrounded by much more human, much more relatable characters, that give him frequent opportunities to rise above his mean, cynical and selfish attitudes. Yet he rarely does.

BBC's Sherlock lets the titular character step back, becoming - like the original Conan Doyle character - the subject of the story, rather than the protagonist. For that role, there is Dr John Watson. John is the viewer's window on the world and the filter by which Sherlock's action are interpreted and grounded. This dynamic allows the writers to pen Sherlock in a way that is unrestrained - allowing him to be a full blown sociopath and jerk.

For the Fantastic Four, there is the possibility of following either of these approaches, or combining them. Reed could still be the subject of the story, but there are ready made possibilities that would allow the writers to make someone else the protagonist, through whose eyes viewers see events unfold. That role could go to Susan Storm.

At a time when there is a significant dearth of female superheroes as leading stars on the big screen, Susan Storm is perfect. At her best she is a leader, a scientist, and the most powerful of the Fantastic Four - with powers on a scale that make her, maybe, amongst the most powerful superheroes.

She combines being a mother with being a hero, and is the voice for ethics and compassion, as a foil to the much sterner and colder Reed. In the Civil War arc she is dynamic, an active participant to who rejects her husband Reed Richard's methods. She saves, and later joins, Captain America's rebels from the destructive violence of Reed's murderous android.

Susan Storm also represents somewhat the journey of women on the big screen. She began as as a crudely sexist stereotype, the Invisible Girl - a passive character who was weak, almost, token powers - who was the attractive obsession of male villains and would regularly need saving.

Yet over time she took on more active abilities and a more active role. In the Ultimate continuity, she was promoted to being, herself, an accomplished scientist.

Reducing Susan Storm, a female character who would be a compelling lead in her own right, back to being the pretty love interest for the heroic scientific genius Reed Richards would be a crude and regressive step, not unlike that taken by the characters written for Jurassic World compared to its much more feminist predecessor.

Rebooting a film franchise is an opportunity to do bold new things. The new movie has already taken the positive step of changing up the ethnicity of Franklin and Johnny Storm, increasing representation. Taking the opportunity to give Susan Storm, the female lead, a story arc that makes her more than just a damsel or a prize would be the next big step. A big part of that would be to embrace a darker and more complicated Reed Richards, rather than attempting to shoehorn him into a conventional male hero role - with all of the typical resulting affects that has upon the roles of secondary characters, particularly when they're women.

Jurassic Park is still the king of the dinosaur movies as Jurassic World fails to match its strong feminist overtones

Photograph: IMG_4881 via photopin (license) (cropped)

Jurassic World always faced a gigantic task in trying to emulate the screen success of its predecessor. Jurassic Park was a groundbreaking movie. The clever classic threw maths and science, an appreciation for nature, botany and ecology, and palaeontology at a popular audience, and fully trusted them to be excited and inspired.

The male lead Alan Grant was a grumpy and unsociable Dinosaur expert. Dr Malcolm, the 'cool' character, was a mathematician and the unorthodox voice of reason. John Hammond, the park's creator and 'villain' such as there was one, was a likeable, charismatic and ultimately very human, billionaire philanthropist.

The Dinosaurs were not monsters but animals, which inspired a gleeful awe from the protagonists. The antagonists were neither the Dinosaurs nor the limited number of 'villains' - who amounted to nothing more than wild animals or flawed humans, respectively - but rather human hubris before nature and the creeping abstract concept of chaos.

But above all else, Jurassic Park gave us a pair of strong female characters: Dr Ellie Sattler and Lex.

Lex, Hammond's granddaughter, doesn't let being a frightened child reduce her to a mere passenger. She faces her fears to outwit predatory dinosaurs and protect her brother. Then she uses her own technical skills, as a self-designated hacker, to proactively help get the park's security systems back online.

Dr Ellie Sattler, meanwhile, was the female lead and an expert in her own right, a palaeobotanist who took immediate command of the situation when she encountered a sick Triceratops. With intelligence and dry humour, she openly and unashamedly calls out sexism on at least two occasions while being unapologetically maternal in wanting children. She is also the one to call out the quixotic philanthropist Hammond on his delusions, showing her growth from being 'overwhelmed' by the marvellous dinosaur island to being frightened but resolved. She acts on her own initiative in emergency situations and is strong and dependable.

Then, we have Jurassic World. In comparison, it was just a monster movie. A dumb but entertaining movie that falls well short of its predecessor's high standard. Worse, however, it has been derided as openly sexist (Shoard, 2015; Battersby, 2015).

The core of the problem is centred on how the female lead is treated. She is a stereotype of a woman made 'unnaturally' cold by being out of her 'natural' element, who warms up by being exposed a strong male and the need to nurture and protect children (Fitzpatrick, 2015). Even being allowed a couple of instances of action movie heroics do little to redeem her from the painful stereotype. She's a smart professional who still gets ordered around by men and ignores expert advice; she's capable and informed but behaves with astonishing naivety; and makes some absurd choices, including remaining in breakneck heels in dangerous situations.

All of this, and some of the other rather bizarre plot choices, tend to overshadow what could have been a fascinating renewal of the message of the original movie. Jurassic Park was all about chaos emerging from order, as small events escalate beyond the human capacity for control (Oltermann, 2015). Somewhere in Jurassic World are messages about our short attention spanned consumerism and a very timely reminder of how easily our human constructed structures can be undermined - but it all got lost or buried along the way.

The biggest and most mystifying question is how Jurassic World, made twenty-two years after Jurassic Park, managed to be so much less progressive than the original. It was an entertaining but ultimately problematic movie that failed to break any new ground and so, in the end, will be largely forgetten. Even over twenty years later, the original Jurassic Park will still be the one viewers reach for a smart and entertaining movie.