The Marvel Studios kingpin Kevin Feige has revealed that the upcoming MCU Fantastic Four movie will not be using another origin story, a plot tool that has already been tried, and failed miserably… twice. The history of the Fantastic Four stretches all the way back to 1961, and they were the first characters that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made famous, even before Spider-Man. The team consists of Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, and The Thing, and they have become huge fan favorites over the years as well.
Even though the popularity of the Fantastic Four has been incredibly high over the years, cinematic representations of the team have been less successful. The first attempt came in 1994 when Roger Corman tried to develop an origin film, and although it was completed, the film was never released, apart from some bootleg copies. Next up were the ill-fated films from the mid-2000s directed by Tim Story – there is a reason a trilogy was never completed. A reboot was then announced with Josh Tank taking over, and what resulted in 2015 might just have been the worst out of the lot.
In a recent interview, Kevin Feige discussed the highly anticipated film, reassuring fans that the studio wouldn’t be going down the tired and tested origin story model that the previous films did. “A lot of people know this origin story. A lot of people know the basics. How do we take that and bring something that they’ve never seen before?” explained Feige.
Introducing the Fantastic Four this late on in the MCU is nothing out of the ordinary though, a similar thing happened with Spider-Man, a character that already had five films before jumping into the MCU. The idea is that this character had already received two different origin stories, which is why he jumped straight into the action when introduced in Civil War – just to save all that faffing about again.
This decision to have the Fantastic Four jump straight into the MCU without an origin story should hopefully be well-received by fans, especially since their stories are so well-known already. The tough decision is casting these characters correctly because they will need to be assured in the roles as if they’ve been playing them for years – let’s see how that works out down the road when the movie comes out.
