MovieChat Forums > The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) Discussion > With the Super-Skrull Off the Table what...

With the Super-Skrull Off the Table what's Left??


My attraction to Marvel's First Family was indeed the characters, their dynamic, and the endless adventures that they had as Explorers, Discovers, and Scientists and NOR as crimefighters.

The MCU has taken Skrulls off the table.
The Super-Skrull of the table.
Namor the Sub-Mariner off the table.
The Agents of SHIELD version of the InHumans (Medusa, Black Bolt, Crystal, Karnak, Gorgon) off the table.
Hulk vs Thing battles (Those were some awesome bouts) off the table.

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Introduction of the Black Panther is OFF the table.

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Hulk vs. the Thing can still happen, and probably will. Sub-Mariner can certainly show up, as can all manner of Fantastic Four villains and allies. They can battle the Mole-Man for their first adventure, meet the Molecule Man en route to Secret Wars, or have a comic side adventure with the Impossible Man. The Frightful Four can pop up. Annihilus is floating around in the Negative Zone somewhere. And of course they can team up with the Silver Surfer, battle Galactus, who could well be the Thanos or Kang of the next phase. Oh, yeah, there's Dr. Doom, too.

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What made the FF a must read for me, as a kid, was the introduction to those characters via the FF. It is akin to Ultron being created by Hank Pym and NOT Tony Stark. Hank had been diminished as a character for Tony to be elevated in stature (within the MCU).

Taking those (that I mentioned) off the table doesn't leave much to build up to for new audiences. The MCU as made up of (Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Vision, Falcon) i.e. were not this Uber popular team until they were built up via the solo films.

The FF are already big with me, but previous movies have hurt the IP and the Brand. Coming out of the gate with a Dr. Doom or a Silver Surfer is a non-starter. Tim Story started with a poorly conceived Victor Von Doom and the 1st FF was okay but it didn't reach near the heights or show the importance of what the team meant to Marvel in print.

To your point, The Mole Man does indeed work. It opens up that idea that the world is bigger with more wonders than we would know. The FF being grounded in NY and discovering doors and portals to the Unknown was I believe a key to their success.

Oh look, Challengers of the Unknown. I wonder where Jack Kirby and Stan Lee got their idea for the FF from?

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Weren't Challengers of the Unknown a Kirby creation? Was that ever confirmed or disproved? I only know of them as Kirby's pre-FF adventurer quartet.

Interesting point of view that it's important to you that the characters are introduced in a certain film. I tend to give the films a lot of leeway, because I understand that with a film, you can give at best each hero 1 story every 2 years, and can only put out a total of 3 or 4 stories per year. With comics every character can have 12 comics a year-- really popular ones can have 50 or more-- and the overall universe is comprised of dozens of titles. When Iron Man hit, Downey became the de facto face of the MCU, and the limited amount of story-telling opportunities more or less forced them to center stories around him. In a perfect world they could have perhaps had a Hank Pym trilogy of films alongside the original Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Thor films, and more closely mirrored the comics, but film is film.

The Fantastic Four were unfortunately unavailable until recently, so some of their adversaries have been doled out to others, but I'm still interested to see where the MCU takes them. I have my own ideas about how they should do it, but I have faith that whatever they do will be worth watching.

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I’d be happy with a Dr. Doom that doesn’t sound like Paul Lynde.

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Some lame ass villain they’ll pull out of nowhere played by a miscast PoC actor.

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