With Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox last year, the Mouse House officially acquired the rights to additional Marvel characters including the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. And the thought of both properties eventually joining the MCU is an enticing proposition, especially in the case of the latter.
While we’ve seen a number of great X-Men movies, the Fantastic Four are 0 for 3 (4 if you include that early ‘90s version) when it comes to feature films. Tim Story directed two goofy pics in the mid-’00s and besides the curiosity of seeing a young and pre-Cap Chris Evans in the role of the Human Torch, those movies have not aged well.
Then came the disaster that was the 2015 Fantastic Four. That’s a film that’s on my shortlist of BTS documentaries that would be must-see. Between the countless reshoots, bad wigs and director Josh Trank’s behavior on set, let’s just say the finished product was a debacle.
Marvel will no doubt have a much better vision of what to do with these beloved characters though and according to recent reports, they’ll be changing up the origin of the four central figures. Rather than have them simply be superheroes, Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing will apparently be a family of explorers.
This report – which comes from 4Chan, so take it with a grain of salt – also indicates that in their first solo film, the team will travel through strange lands, worlds and dimensions. Sounds like Lost in Space to me. And they’ll get their powers while journeying to the Negative Zone, which could in fact be a pocket dimension in the Quantum Realm found in the Ant-Man movies.
As we’ve seen with Spider-Man, Marvel and Kevin Feige certainly know how to rehabilitate a franchise. With Fantastic Four, though, they’d be resurrecting it. But given the studio’s excellent track record, we have full faith that they’ll be able to do the team justice.
