Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

Sometimes, the only way to really watch a movie is through the lucent lens of hindsight, which is presumably why Fantastic Four director and screenwriter Josh Trank took to Letterboxd Friday to write his own review of his much-maligned 2015 Marvel reboot. “The movie is ALRIGHT,” he writes. “I was expecting it to be much worse than it was. I literally haven’t seen it since like two weeks before it came out, and I was in a heavily fucking traumatized state of mind. Why? Eh, save that for another time.”

If you recall the timeline of the movie’s release, Fantastic Four became an early and frequent target for online clowning. The film, Trank’s second feature following 2012’s Chronicle, current stands at a 9 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, though, the director notes, not due to a dearth of talent in his cast, which featured Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell.

“Everyone in the film is a great actor, and overall there is a movie in there, somewhere,” Trank writes. “And that cast deserves to be in THAT movie. Everyone who worked Fant4stic clearly wanted to be making THAT movie. But … ultimately … It wasn’t.”

Muses the director, “I was 29 years old, making my 2nd film, in a situation more complicated than anything a 2nd-time filmmaker should’ve walked into. That said … I don’t regret any of it.” Concludes Trank, “It’s a part of me.” You can read his full self-review here.