Kevin Feige Suggests MCU’s Fantastic Four Will Be From Another Universe
Marvel’s First Family may be guests in the MCU rather than fixtures. In an appearance on The Official Marvel Podcast, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, after saying he was most excited for The Fantastic 4 out of all the upcoming Marvel projects, talked about what we can expect from the film. When asked by one of the hosts, Feige confirmed that The Fantastic 4 will be a period piece set in the 1960s, which most assumed would be the case based on the first piece of artwork for the movie. However, there’s another wrinkle to this, as Feige suggested that the Four in this film will be from another universe. Here’s the quote:
“Yes, yes, very much so. It is a period [piece], and there was another piece of art we released with Johnny Storm flying in the air and making a ‘4’ symbol, and there was a cityscape in the corner of that image. And there were a lot of smart people who noticed that that cityscape didn’t exactly look like the New York that we know or the New York that existed in the 60s in our world. And those are smart, smart observations, I’ll say.”
How have I never seen this artwork? I only saw the first, not the one with the Human Torch flying around. If, like me, this passed you by, here’s the image:
I see what he means, and yep, that definitely looks like a sci-fi city from another world, or at least a distant future. The implication is that the Fantastic Four will be from an alternate universe and somehow make their way into the MCU’s world, another result of the multiverse. I’m not a fan of this. I don’t want the characters in the MCU to be alternate-universe castaways; I want this to be their world, especially the characters who built the Marvel Universe in the comics. It feels like a cheap way to bring them into the MCU instead of building the characters from the ground up and making us fall in love with them as we did with the Avengers. Even Spider-Man got an arc that showed us how he became a hero despite the films eschewing a proper origin story. It’s lazy, which appears to have become the cornerstone of Marvel’s storytelling lately; that’s also part of the problem because, while I’m sure there are ways to make this work, I don’t trust Marvel’s current stable to crack that code. It would have been fine to have the Fantastic Four come about later in the movie world as long as the characters felt like the Four from the comics; I’d even be okay with a period piece that took them through some sort of time warp, kind of like Captain America being frozen in the ice. But doing it this way reinforces my frustration with the multiverse and the way Marvel is using it.
Comments (2)
Also, the FF is from a time when we were going to the stars and other planets. Now, Boeing’s Starliner is leaving them stranded. China seems to be the ones that are going to lead in sci, tech and innovation now.
Wokeness, DEI, ESG, BlackRock and Larry Fink have pretty much wrecked these companies and programs. Makes you wonder if they sabotage us for the benefit of China.
One thing Marvel comics did that was good was they hired Alex Ross to do covers for Fantastic Four and for Thor lately. Alex Ross covers, I think, are an excellent way to signal quality. Ross has become a bit of a licensing brand, just his very name alone.
Even the other variant covers are kind of leaning on his style and the other artists are very good.
My issue is that the M-She-U and the wokeness has damaged Marvel and Disney a lot. MCU had a great run with so much quality and I am grateful to them for it, but lately, for years now, it’s been a let down and there’s no reason to expect anything. Multiverse or not, I don’t care so much, as long as it is good story, good dialogue, good pacing, good layout, good editing and that the characters are realistic.
I also have major beef with Kevin Feige for canceling the Marvel Television Company that gave us Agents of SHIELD, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Daredevil and Punisher. All of those were very good, but they did produce some dogs, too. The reason for my spite of Kevin is that he should have looked at AOS, JJ, DD, and Luke Cage and said, ok, what made these so good and who are the people I want from this? Because what they did was better than what Marvel is currently producing.