How the Fantastic Four Will Be Introduced Into the MCU! Theories and Castings

Marvel‘s first family is finally in the safe hands of Kevin Feige after under his control when Disney bought Fox for 70+ BILLION dollars, other Marvel properties involved in the deal were of course the X-Men and Deadpool. While the X-Men will be their own corner of the MCU with individual characters popping up in other movies (before the eventually 2030 movie of Avengers vs X-Men), the Fantastic Four will be a center focus and will be a cornerstone of the MCU going forward.

But the big question is HOW will they be introduced?

We have already had two horrible attempts at kicking off a Fantastic Four storyline in the past 15 years, and I am not here to throw stones but these were horrible.

Fant4Stic was especially bad and wasted an absolute incredible cast of actors. But once again no stones thrown here, so let us just stick to the positives and move on.

The Fantastic Four is comprised of Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Sue Storm, and Johnny Storm. Here is background information on our four heroes as well as how their story could be introduced (or revealed) into the MCU.

Dr. Reed Richards aka Mister Fantastic is probably one if not THE smartest character in Marvel comics so soon to be in the MCU as well. Think of it like this, Tony Stark's genius was primarily in engineering, Bruce Banner's is in biology and radiation studies, and Shuri's is in engineering and biology (so far, though we do not precisely know this is just based off what we have seen), meanwhile Mister Fantastic's genius is in engineering, math, and physics. While Tony created all this amazing computer and military technology, Bruce studied human biology and radiation, and Shuri leads Wakanda's entire scientific and research development creating amazing medical technology as well as military tech similar (superior) to Tony's, Reed Richards builds space and interdimensional ships along with other out of this world projects than point iron suits to shame. They all have their own individual specialties and could one up each other in certain aspects but Reed would never be lost in understanding what the others are doing. All of that was said to set up how the most important part of Reed Richards is his intelligence not the fact that he can stretch his body at well into any shape or size at will. Born to a wealthy family Reed was a child prodigy and even started college at Caltech at the young age of 14, but he did not stop their he also earned degrees from Harvard, MIT and other prestigious universities. While in college Reed met many people that would be integral to his life moving forward.

Susan "Sue" Storm aka the Invisible Woman and Jonathan "Johnny" Storm aka the Human Torch are sister and brother who grew up on Long Island until their father, who had become an alcoholic after their mother died in a car crash, gambled away their family fortune and ended up in prison. Sue and Johnny went to live with their Aunt who ran a boardinghouse, an it was here that Sue met Reed Richards, who was staying their while working on his third doctorate, and they fell in love. Eventually Reed left the east coast to live out in LA (I am substituting the fictional city of Central City for Los Angeles because the MCU uses real cities) to begin developing on his big project being funded by his own wealth and the US government. Sue, in love with Reed, decided to follow him out to LA and start a career as an actor. Now to be honest historically Sue Storm has been primarily been used as the "mother" of the group and used as the lynch pin in conflicts (like her mutual flirtations with hero/villain Namor), but we all know Kevin Feige will not use her like that and will develop her role out more. Her powers include turning herself invisible but also includes the ability to turn other things and even people invisible and being able to create forcefields strong enough to stop nearly any onslaught. Johnny meanwhile was just a child to early teenager while living with their aunt and now being in the suburbs instead of New York City he became obsessed with cars and a great mechanic even at such a young age. Johnny having to stay behind and go to high school as his sister went out to LA to act, he was your typical troubled student but had a desire to become popular so began using his mechanical skills to build a hot rod to show off and gain popularity. Eventually turning 18 he decided to move to LA to be with his sister.

Benjamin "Ben" Grimm aka the Thing is the member of the Fantastic Four whose back story has varied the most depending on who is writing it the most but here is how I will sum it up, with some twists to how I believe it will be handled in the MCU. Ben grew up very poor with an alcoholic father who could not hold a job and the man of the house was really his older brother Daniel who was the leader of a local gang. Ben idolized his older brother and wanted to join the gang as well but his brother was sadly killed by a rival gang. Ben goes on to become a great high school football player and received a football scholarship to play in college where he met Reed Richards who was his freshman year roommate. They became best friends and Reed told him of his dream project an intergalactic space ship that he planned to build to explore the stars. Ben joked that he would one day be his pilot for this dream spaceship. While in school together they both met Victor Von Doom who was a student from abroad and became Reed's intellectual rival. Reed tried to help Doom with an experiment and after Doom refused his help his illegal experiment exploded and covered his face with scars. Doom was expelled from school and returned home to Latveria vowing revenge on Reed. After college Ben joined the Air Force and became a very successful fighter pilot. Depending on the timeline they decide (I will get more into this in a few minutes) Ben could have come into contact with the Howling Commandos Captain America's squadron or post World War 2 where it could include Logan (Wolverine) but I believe they will go the route in the 90's where Ben could have been in the Air Force academy alongside Maria Rambeau and Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel. After his tour of duty in the Air Force Ben became a test pilot as well an astronaut.

Reed Richards' project for his intergalactic spaceship could possibly be a part of Project Pegasus, as seen in Captain Marvel, but loses government funding once Dr. Wendy Lawson dies mysteriously in a test flight of a separate plane that she was developing. Reed distraught gets Ben to join him to run a test flight of his ship to show off its abilities. Sue and Johnny, both who are now in LA as well, join in to help Reed finish the project. Johnny being a very capable mechanic specifically helps with the final stages of putting the ship together. Ben voices his concerns with how safe the shielding of the ship will be in coming in contact with any flares in space but Reed's arrogance gets ahead of him and insists everything will be fine and the foursome launches the virgin voyage of the intergalactic spaceship. The launch of the spaceship works flawlessly and they begin their voyage into space. A solar flare causes a radiation belt in space to be infused with cosmic energy as they fly through, and the four space explorers are changed forever.

After being hit with the cosmic energy Ben pilots the ship back to Earth and upon landing the group learns of the drastic changes that have begun happening to them. Reed and Sue's new found powers have already been explained so I won't go over it again. Johnny's newfound ability to engulf his body in flames inspired him to name himself the Human Torch. Meanwhile Ben begins to transform into the monstrous Thing his skin turned orange and grew thick and massive and hard as a rock. While the foursome is obviously in shock at their freakish changes Reed convinces them that they should use these new abilities for the greater good of planet Earth. Sue and Johnny become the Invisible Woman and the Human Torch, names out of admirations of their new powers, Reed names himself Mister Fantastic as an obvious reflection of his ego, meanwhile Ben is distraught at his new grotesque physique calls himself the Thing. Reed takes it upon himself to be their leader and calls the quartet the Fantastic Four.

After taking time to develop and learn how to use their powers the group once again take flight in Reed's ship that he has now upgraded to protect them from any sort of cosmic rays. They begin their flight and finally hope to test its intergalactic capabilities but once engaged they are instead transported into the quantum realm and are trapped there.

In Ant-Man and the Wasp we see the quickest glimpse of the quantum realm city that the Fantastic Four have been trapped in. Rumors are that this will be revealed in a post credit scene for an upcoming MCU movie, possibly Captain Marvel 2 set to come out July 2022. I believe we will see this fully formed team reworking Reed Richards' ship to escape the quantum realm, and as we know time works funny in their so we will be seeing Marvel's first family come out in modern day MCU. Their first MCU film should be a much more grounded story covering all that I laid out in the paragraphs above showing all of their lives growing up and coming together, not being "Fantastic" until the very end. A movie really without a main villain entirely, setting it apart from all MCU movies before it but it is really necessary to develop these characters setting up the future of the MCU. The movies final scenes will show them getting trapped in the quantum realm and their own post credit scene will show their escape and return to earth landing in Time Square mimicking Captain America the First Avenger thus setting up an entirely new era of heroes for the MCU.

Thanks you guys for reading! Here are some final thoughts, tidbits and my ideal cast for the Fantastic Four!

There is an awesome story I personally would love to see on screen showing Johnny coming in contact with the Amulet of Zarathos. The amulet tries to choose him as an embodiment of the Spirit of Vengeance (Ghost Rider) meanwhile a character called St. Germaine is trying to hunt down the amulet to revive his master, Dracula. Now imagine all of that playing out as a quick few scenes showing Reed meeting Sue and Johnny, and when they both leave for LA he is left alone. Johnny discovers the amulet but escapes before St. Germaine can kill him. The movie moves on and just those few scenes could introduce both the idea of the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider and Dracula setting up Blade all in one fell swoop. That would be incredible because we know both Ghost Rider and Blade are coming eventually.

CAST-

Reed Richards - John Krasinski

Sue Storm - Emily Blunt

Ben Grimm - Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

Johnny Storm - Zac Efron

Victor Von Doom - Cillian Murphy

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I can be found @HaroldLStokes on twitter if you want to discuss (or yell at me) my theories or all things MCU !