Fantastic Four will subvert MCU fans' expectations in one surprising way
Marvel has a unique plan in place for the Fantastic Four.
Marvel fans may want to reset their expectations for Fantastic Four.
The Phase 6 film is one of the most anticipated movies Marvel Studios has in development. Following Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Fantastic Four will be the first MCU project to use some of the superheroes previously under Fox’s control. Couple that fact with the Fantastic Four’s status as one of Marvel’s most beloved superhero teams, and it’s not hard to see why there’s so much excitement surrounding a standalone movie about them.
In anticipation of the film’s 2024 release, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige recently offered an intriguing new update about Fantastic Four.
John Krasinski briefly showed up as Mister Fantastic in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness earlier this year.
Skipping Past the Origin Story — While speaking with The Hollywood Reporter about Marvel’s current slate of film and TV projects, Kevin Feige revealed that 2024’s Fantastic Four will not retell its team’s well-known origin story. Instead, Marvel intends to find a new and refreshing way to introduce audiences to its first family.
“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?” Feige told THR. “We’ve set a very high bar for ourselves with bringing that to the screen.”
In the same interview, Feige also admitted that Marvel plans on handling the Fantastic Four’s MCU debut in a way similar to how the studio introduced Spider-Man in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War.
The Fantastic Four are coming to the MCU.
Introducing Marvel’s First Family — Prior to Feige’s comments, most Marvel fans had assumed Fantastic Four would be an origin story in the same vein as titles like Captain Marvel, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Now it seems more likely that the Fantastic Four will already be assembled by the time they’re given the chance to lead their first MCU adventure.
There’s no telling right now just what said adventure might entail, especially now that we know it won’t cover the Fantastic Four’s origins. Feige’s comments do, however, make it seem even more likely that Marvel will choose to bring Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Ben Grimm, Johnny Storm, and Victor von Doom into the MCU prior to the 2024 release of Fantastic Four.
A number of recent MCU rumors have also suggested that will be the case. Doctor Doom is rumored to appear at the end of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, while The Thing is expected to have a secret role in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. Taking both those rumors into account, it doesn’t seem outlandish to think that the members of the Fantastic Four are all going to show up in the MCU over the course of the next two years.
If that’s what Marvel really plans to do, there are a number of upcoming MCU titles that could reasonably feature appearances from the Fantastic Four. Thanks to their cosmic and multiversal settings, films like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels feel especially viable for cameos.
The Thing poses heroically in Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #642. Published in 2015.
The Inverse Analysis — The Fantastic Four’s origin story has already been depicted in two previous 20th Century Fox films, both of which were reviled, so it’s not hard to see why Marvel seems so uninterested in dedicating an entire MCU film to repeating the story. Unfortunately, that also means Fantastic Four is going to remain shrouded in mystery moving forward.
The good news is that, if the studio truly intends on setting Fantastic Four after its team’s origin story, the odds are high that fans won’t have to wait until November of 2024 to see Marvel’s First Family arrive in the MCU.
Fantastic Four is set to hit theaters on November 8, 2024.
