How to Incorporate the Fantastic Four Into the MCU

So while I’m at it, I thought I’d talk about how to incorporate the Fantastic Four into the MCU if the deal with Fox ever works out. 

So the first thing I’d do is to have the first Fantastic Four movie set in the early 1960s similar to how the first Cap movie was set in WWII. Because as revolutionary the FF were in 1961, one of the problems that the movies have had is that everything after built on what they introduced, so that inter-team conflict and flawed heroes isn’t new. A lot of their personalities work best in their time: Reed Richards as an emotionally repressed, know-it-all, Type-A, paternalistic personality is more at home in Apollo Project-era NASA than 2016; Susan Storm (at least in the way that Stan Lee interpreted Kirby’s art) is very much trapped in the Feminine Mystique waiting for Second Wave Feminism to come around; Johnny Storm is very much a teenager of the James Dean era, all hot rods and hot dates; Ben Grimm is a product of a Jewish working class Lower East Side that no longer exists.

So here is my vision of how the movie would go:

The movie starts in a stylized Cold War/Space Race/Mad Men 1962, at an international science conference on the recent theoretical work on the existence of a parallel dimension called the Negative Zone, credit for which is split between NASA wunderkind Reed Richards and the USSR’s own Doctor Victor Von Doom. At the conference, Reed and Von Doom are pitted against each other in the media – Bobby Fischer vs. Gary Kasparov – and have something of a clash of personalities. 

We then skip ahead to a race between the US and USSR to launch shuttles to orbit the Blue Area of the Moon at a particular cosmic convergence where it’ll be possible to travel into the Negative Zone. In the process of putting together the mission, we meet Ben Grimm (chief engineer), Susan Storm (biologist and mathematician who wasn’t supposed to be on the mission), and Johnny Storm (hotshot pilot). Right before they’re set for launch, NASA gets word that there’s an unprecedented solar storm that will make the launch too dangerous. At the last second, Reed pleads with Mission Commander Jack Kirby that the one-time-only conjunction is too important to miss, no matter what the risk. They blast off into space.

Once they’re coming around the dark side of the moon, the combination of solar energy and the transfer into the Negative Zone transforms the unshielded Americans as they crash-land onto a planet in the Negative Zone. In the crash, Ben gets buried in rubble and becomes the Thing, Johnny gets caught in a fire and becomes the Human Torch, Sue telekinetically holds up the roof to allow them to escape the ship, Reed stretches to grab something while pinned. 

When they emerge from the craft, they find out that the Soviet team have made a controlled landing to provide assistance to the Americans, albeit in a patronizing manner. It turns out that, as opposed to being cavalier about the health of their cosmonauts as we might expect, the Soviets are protected by Doom’s armor.

Here’s where the twist comes.

Doom taunts Reed about his arrogance (why didn’t you protect your friends from the energy) and limited vision (doesn’t he realize that because the Negative Zone exists at all points in time, you can use it to go back and forth in time?). Reed thinks the Soviets are going to Terminator the U.S and makes his accusation known. 

But Doom reveals that he doesn’t give a fuck about the Soviets. They were the stepping stone he needed to get to the Negative Zone, but now Doom need kneel to no one. He’s going to go back in time and liberate Latveria! The Soviets try to stop him, but they’re wearing his armor, and he remote controls their armor, killing them all, and bids his adieus as he flies off the planet in his armor looking for another portal.  

Meanwhile, Reed and Co. have to build a new spaceship from scrap to chase him, because it turns out that the planet belongs to Annihulus or Blastaar! Either of whom would be fine as the throwaway first villain, allowing Doom to remain the arch-nemesis for future movies. After some well-staged action where the heroes learn to harness their powers and work together, they manage to cobble together enough of a spaceship from the Russian ship and Annihulus/Blastaar’s tech to get off the planet and go after Doom.

The Four have a big round-table discussion about whether to go back home or to take the risk of jumping through another portal to find some place and time where they can get the technology to stop Doom. And at the end of the day, they’re explorers, To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before…

And they land…in the MCU present. And this presents some fascinating possibilities: all of the sudden, Reed’s fifty years behind the scientific curve and needs to prove himself, Susan Storm now lives in a post-Second Wave world, Johnny can immerse himself in X-Games and Red Bulls free from the stultification of the fifties, and Ben….Well, Ben represents nostalgia and a sense of loss for what they’ve left behind. His Lower East Side is gone. But my thinking is that rather than just lament the past, Ben Grimm finds meaning as an anti-gentrification activist in NYC.