Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been waiting. Since Disney acquired Fox’s entertainment properties, there have been two big things on our minds: The X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Yes, there are others, like the future of Deadpool and what have you, but with the merger, it did seem like we’d finally have mutants, and Reed Richards and company, in the MCU.
Then, when the news broke that a Fantastic Four movie was officially on the horizon, the gears began turning, but it’s been pretty quiet on that front since the announcement. We had a little switch up of directors, and we did get to meet a version Earth-838’s Reed Richards in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, played by John Krasinski (but there’s no word on whether or not he’s the same Reed Richards we’ll see on Earth-616).
Now though, in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige talked a bit more about the future of the franchise and, specifically, where we can expect to see the Fantastic Four in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Just don’t expect to get another origin story from the team.
“A lot of people know this origin story,” he said. “A lot of people know the basics. How do we take that and bring something that they’ve never seen before?” Feige went on to acknowledge that it isn’t going to be an easy task. “We’ve set a very high bar for ourselves with bringing that to the screen.”
We’ve seen their beginning
Whether it’s the 2005 film starring Chris Evans, Jessica Alba, Ioan Gruffudd, and Michael Chiklis or the 2015 version with Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, and Kate Mara, we’ve watched as the team got their powers twice now. And twice, Victor von Doom has gone from their friend to their foe. Seeing that for a third time? Not really necessary. And the Marvel Cinematic Universe has done a pretty great job of bringing in heroes whose origins we already know without forcing us to watch it again.
Peter Parker is a great example of how they just moved on and basically threw us into the story with Peter already being Spider-Man. We didn’t need to see him get bitten by the spider and learn how to climb walls, and we really don’t need to see, again, how Reed Richards learns how to stretch or Sue Storm suddenly being invisible.
Throwing us into the story like this also means that we don’t necessarily need to wait until the announced Fantastic Four movie. We could see a new version of Reed (or, if Krasinski is officially our Reed Richards, even him) somewhere else in the MCU. We could have Johnny Storm or Ben Grimm show up in something else, and we could just have the team appear separately from their first standalone outing. That would be nice given that it is a) not an origin story and b) there’s a little while before it’s released.
Now that we know it’s not an origin story, though, can we get an official cast announcement soon?
(featured image: Marvel Entertainment)
