Just a quick point. There is no evidence to suggest that the public, or even many comic book fans have problems with origin movies. Yes they decided not to do this for Spider-Man but that was a little different. We had reached saturation point on Spider-Man, and literally every movie fan could tell you the story.
"Always listen to the crazy scientist with a weird van or armful of blueprints and diagrams." -- Vibranium
I know this isn't happening -- well, I can't imagine it is -- but cut to Avengers Endgame!
It would be getting down to the last 15 minutes or so of Avengers Endgame.
The Avengers are losing, again. It's a big fight, like what went down on Titan. Thanos is going to kill them all -- Captain Marvel, Avengers, Rocket, Nebula, assorted SHIELD personnel and Wakandans.
Suddenly, a flying bathtub comes screaming out of the sky, careening straight into Thanos, right before he can deliver the coup de grāce! Leaping off of it, the Fantastic Four! "It's clobbering time!" follows. Reed whips out the Ultimate Nullifier, presto! Marvel Universe restored, Thanos defeated, and Fantastic Four say, "We had this the entire time." Roll credits.
Last edited by Brian B; 03-20-2019 at 02:34 PM.
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I would argue the most recent version bears no relation to the real origin, and therefore the public would be pretty confused if it wasn’t reiterated. And just because movie critics seem to express that they don’t like origins the public don’t actually seem to mind them. Black Panther was pretty much a standard origin, Captain Marvel is admittedly a non standard origin, but it’s still an origin. Doctor Strange was IMO a tedious origin rehash but it still did well.
They won't really do a time travel/ fish out of water story because it's already been done with Captain America and, to a lesser degree, with Captain Marvel.
They won't have them secretly in the background for years because that's Henry Pym's schtick.
They probably won't do the space travel routine because IW and Endgame have already done that along with GG.
Most likely, they'll go with something there hasn't already been huge fan speculation about.
Power with Girl is better.
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Leaving the efforts of all the other heroes meaningless like the arrival of Superman in Justice League? No thank you. This is not the FF's fight, and bringing them in as a deux ex Machina is the worst possible introduction. I'd rather have a time travel from the 60s story.
How I'd do it:
Reed has been around. We didn't know about him because he's not recognized as the smartest man yet. For years he struggled for funding of his projects because his ideas are too ahead for most to comprehend.
It took the events of the Chitari and Thanos for the government to desperate enough to give him a shot. The goal is to crack FTL travel which makes sense considering the MCU's confirmation of alien life and that life possibly being dangerous. The rest can pretty much follow the origin as we know it. Just have Sue and Johnny have roles on the crew besides "girlfriend and her brother" and exchange cosmic rays for some other energy and BOOM! The Fantastic Four are here without the need of convoluted time shenanigans.
It can also play into the drama of Reed's failure and the reason for him being sloppy was wanting to prove himself. That's why they had an accident. From then on he becomes the much more cautious Reed we know.
All of this can easily be explained in cameos and Easter eggs in other films in dialogue and a short refresher in the actual film. No origin film needed.
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Sadly, I doubt Marvel will do it like I suggested. And the Fantastic Four kicking ass doesn't make them a deux ex machina. It just restores them to The World's Greatest, as they deserve and befits them. They've always been Marvel's heaviest hitters, no matter what their supposed abilities are. It'd be no MacGuffin for the Thing to lay the hurt on Thanos. Heck, by publication date, Ben's one of Thanos' oldest sparring partners, along with Iron Man and Mar-Vell.
I would disagree that their origin is probably one of their better stories and their foundation. The last FF origin movie was in 2015(the one before that was 1994) and we are not going to get another FF movie by the earliest 2021. People have had plenty of time to forget about old movies and 2015 movie was so vastly different it really doesn't count.
Where I agree with you is don't need origin movie but if the first 15 mins told their origin as flashback and then operate from present day it would be fine. What I will say also they need to take the MCU Spiderman approach with villains and leave DR Doom alone FF has too many good villains for them to be using Doom.
See I dont see Caps story heavily relying on the fish out of water stuff. Closest you get is Winter Soldier and maybe a 5th of it is that ? I'd make a F4 movie at least a third of it.
All this origin talk is kind of missing what an origin film is. It isn’t an entire movie about how the hero gets his powers. That’s usually covered in the first act, so in a two hour movie the story of how they get their powers is often over in the first half hour. It depends entirely if getting powers is the early inciting incident in the first act or the reversal that sets up the climax.
An origin movie introduces a lot more than this, and to some extent is needed for any main character we introduce into the wider narrative. We get who the characters are, how they see the world, what drives them, and what they stand for.
The only reason they felt able to dispense with the Spider-Man origin is that technically the origin can’t be twisted that far. Besides, we know what he stands for by now. Not sure that is the case after three F4 movies. But look at how different the stories of Spider-Man and Amazing Spider-Man were. They are not the same movie. They have different themes, different things that the protagonist wants, different obstacles and antagonists.
Maybe wisely Sony and Marvel felt it would be redundant to do it again, but we did hear the voices of many critics and some of the general public, suggesting that they were not keen on seeing yet another Spider-Man. I doubt we would hear that sentiment over the F4.
It might even have been a risk to redo Spider-Man. Mess up that brand and you have damaged a 4 Billion per year industry.
The thing they shouldn’t do is combine the origin with Doom’s. Then it might feel like the previous versions. But there is nothing intrinsic about Doom that makes their origin work. Sure, Reed and Victor are foils, and the natural way to highlight his character is through Reed’s dark mirror reflection, but maybe that isn’t the way to introduce four characters anyway. One could just as easily make Sue the main protagonist. That might even make more sense.
I started to explain how this could be done and realised I was just giving away a decent plot outline but the point is solid without a worked example. You build the origin story differently because you choose different themes to develop and different family dynamics to explore. Getting the powers can be the same but the movie can be entirely different.
Last edited by JKtheMac; 03-21-2019 at 03:54 AM.