Sorry, Sam Wilson. Forget about it, Thunderbolts. The most notable Marvel movie coming in 2025 surely has to be The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the long-awaited MCU reboot of the franchise’s First Family. Of course, while we’ve yet to see Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s incarnations of the fabulous foursome before, a couple of FF variants have already turned up in the Sacred Timeline.
John Krasinski surprised us all when he showed up as Earth-838’s Reed Richards in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. And then Deadpool & Wolverine went even further by bringing back Chris Evans, not as Captain America, but as his Johnny Storm from the mid-aughts Fantastic Four movies. Both were fan-favorite cameos that blew fans’ minds… But, in hindsight, they might indicate a troubling trend that Marvel had better not continue in First Steps.
Marvel needs to fix its fascination with Fantastic Four fatalities before it’s too late
X account @MCUPerfectGifs got fans worried with one viral tweet which combined two oddly similar moments from both Krasinski and Evans’ cameos as their characters. In Doctor Strange 2, the Illuminati’s Mr. Fantastic was infamously shredded into spaghetti by Scarlet Witch, while in Deadpool 3, Human Torch had the skin ripped from his body by Cassandra Nova. Putting the two clips back to back like this is making folks realize something: wow, Marvel loves killing the Fantastic Four, huh?
When you look at their cameos through this perspective, suddenly it seems like Marvel is not honoring these characters but reducing them, by killing them off after about five minutes of screentime. As one commenter even dared to declare, “They are not respected in the MCU.”
Ben Grimm might be feeling a little worried right about now.
“What will they do to invisible woman?” That’s what we’re all scared to find out!
On the upside, if Pascal’s Reed and his pals are all murdered in First Steps then it could lead to an epic storyline where the Richards’ son, Franklin, aka one of the most powerful characters in Marvel lore, goes on a revenge-fueled rampage.
But, wait, believe it or not, not everyone in the Marvel fandom is immediately feeling the doom and gloom. As one X user optimistically put it, “There is a reason, they showing you that when it’s done right, nothing will compare.” Hear hear!
So is there really cause to fear about how Marvel will handle the First Fam in First Steps? Honestly, it’s unlikely that anyone at the studio is actually gunning for the gang and wants to brutally kill them off every time they appear. The similarity in these Krasinski and Evans scenes simply draws from the fact that the filmmakers needed a way to establish Wanda and Cassandra as uber-powerful villains — so having them instantly defeat a beloved Marvel character is an easy, economical way to do that. Any apparent vendetta against the FF is just a coincidence. Well, unless that’s just what Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom wants us to think…
Published: Oct 7, 2024 02:11 pm