If there’s one thing Phases 4 and 5 of the MCU have made clear, it’s that nothing really matters. In particular, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness proved that Marvel's plans can make room for deaths, resurrections, recastings, and yellow chair-ifying of old familiar friends. They can all happen and then un-happen in the course of a Disney+ series. While the effective removal of the idea of “mortal peril” has hamstrung some of the franchise's recent efforts, a lack of meaningful stakes in the MCU is actually great news for Fantastic Four. And the vintage TV / greeting card from the atomic age aesthetic of Marvel’s official cast announcement is cause to be even more hopeful. This is not about the names. Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn, and Vanessa Kirby (who I believe to be the best choice of the four) is a great group of talent, but if Fantastic Four is to succeed, it’ll be more likely thanks to a complete and total lack of Multiverse Saga baggage.
To start with, that Matt Shakman, director of WandaVision, came at us with another vibe that wildly diverges from the standard Marvel look-and-feel should not be surprising. WandaVision kicked off Phase 4, putting two of the MCU’s most established characters on a new trajectory thanks to the fact that the show literally took place in a bubble. With mostly TV on his resume, Shakman proved ideal for acknowledging the story that’s come before his installment without being overly burdened by it, and the future that the series set up was mainly confined to a post-credits scene. Judging by the artwork released by Marvel, it seems that Fantastic Four is poised to do the same thing.
The challenge for the post-Endgame MCU has continually been an issue of living up to the conclusion of the Infinity Saga. If anything, they’ve tried way too hard to sell the importance of the Multiverse Saga as a worthy successor. Looking at this casting announcement is encouraging because if Marvel’s First Family needs a standalone Cold War-era, space-race, maybe-comedy treatment to efficiently establish themselves, then that’s literally all Shakman and company need to do. Because pretty much anything is possible thanks to the existence of infinite universes; the filmmakers can pick any story they want to present this new iteration. Maybe, for the sake of argument, they only want to borrow from one issue of Fantastic Four: Life Story, the decades-spanning miniseries from Mark Russell and Sean Izaakse. Fine! That's all you need. The point here is Fantastic Four only needs to concern itself with introducing engaging new versions of these characters with whatever story does that most effectively.
If the film is indeed set in the 1960s, or ideally some corner of the multiverse where it’s currently the 1960s, Fantastic Four might find itself completely unburdened by the baggage of Phases 4 and 5. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The Marvels, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania — they all fell apart in the moments where concerns for the greater MCU took over, and the film we were currently watching took a backseat. To be fair, this isn’t a recent concern for Kevin Feige. You can go all the way back to Iron Man 2, just the third film in what was then still an experiment, to see what happens when setting up the future becomes a priority ahead of making a good movie. Avengers: Age of Ultron suffered from the same thing.
So what can Fantastic Four do to avoid the same fate? Wedged into Phase 6, less than a year before the now decidedly NOT Dynastic Avengers 5, it seems impossible to think that the film won’t do a lot of narrative heavy lifting, but what if it doesn’t? Look at the Guardians of the Galaxy. Theirs has always been a story of doing things out on their own and, as a result, the franchise actually showed continued success past their involvement in Endgame, a feat nearly all the other Avengers seem to have struggled with. If Shakman can take a similar approach with Fantastic Four, the film will have a real shot at being good.
Make it a smaller story, one set far away from anything we’ve seen so far in the MCU. Again, the ’60s vibes of the announcement artwork seem to be doing that. Use the creative blank check afforded by the whole idea of a multiverse and set it in a different universe or timeline or dimension altogether. That way you don’t even need to waste screen time explaining why they weren’t there to fight Thanos. And for God’s sake, keep the villain minor. As much as everybody is thirsty for Doctor Doom or Galactus, setting up a Thanos-level big bad in this Fantastic Four movie who then carries over into a team-up film would be a mistake. It’s one added layer of storytelling that pulls focus away from the heroes. Teasing bigger bads is what we have post-credit scenes for.
And so all that to say, Fantastic Four, as pivotal and hyped as it wants to be, only has two jobs to do. First and foremost, let Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben exist on their own for a minute or two or 85. It might be too much to ask for the movie to be a tight 90 minutes, but this is my manifesto and if the movie’s only got two jobs to do, it shouldn’t take two and a half hours to do them. Especially because the second job only requires a narrative nudge toward Secret Wars, which you can do in just a few minutes worth of mid-credit shenanigans.
The instinct to bring Marvel’s First Family into the fold might be to go big, but the Marvel brain trust would be wise to remember that the Fantastic Four are new. It’s likely the film won’t be an origin story, but it does need to introduce a group of engaging new characters. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man succeeded at that, and Homecoming, Far From Home and No Way Home director Jon Watts pulled that act off admirably even in the corporate merger mess of a multiverse, so it is entirely possible.
If Fantastic Four can truly take advantage of the complete lack of stakes in the MCU, and carry just the minimum amount of narrative baggage, it just might work. Granted, it’s just two pieces of official announcement artwork we have to go on, but at least it looks to be headed in the right direction.
