How would you introduce the FF4 and X-Men characters now that Disney bought them back?
I can only think of a Deadpool cameo in the end credits of Avengers 4 saying he craves some cheese.
shareI can only think of a Deadpool cameo in the end credits of Avengers 4 saying he craves some cheese.
shareFantastic Four: Reed, Sue, and Ben are fresh out of college while Johnny is a high school senior. They have been given a grant by the Baxter Foundation to investigate the Negative Zone Reed has recently discovered. I wouldn't introduce Doom just yet but maybe the FF can fight Annihulus or someone.
X-Men: Mutants have kept a low profile for centuries but recently, more and more of them have sprung up and the next evolution of humanity has begun. People are scared and violent; in some cases, the fear of mutants is warranted while other times it isn't. Xavier's School for the Gifted has faculty to deal with such situations.
Deadpool: He's out of the mainstream MCU mostly but can come and go as he pleases. He knows he's a fictional character after all.
I would do the FF VERY easily. SHIELD detects an incoming energy signal in near Earth space. They call in Stark for analysis and tell him the energy signature matches that of Reed Richards experimental hyper-drive. Stark says he always thought Reed Richards was a myth. The SHIELD person (please let it be Coulson) explains that in 1963, Reed Richards was working on space travel to win the space race and, when the government was going to interfere, he stole his own prototype and launched it with his best friend, girlfriend and her brother as the crew. Soon after they left Earth orbit, they engaged the experimental drive and promptly disappeared. Assuming all hands were lost and to avoid the embarrassment that a scientist and 3 civilians were able to steal an experimental spacecraft, the government never owned up to the story and the whole thing became a myth.
The ship crash lands and SHIELD goes to intercept, expecting to find 4 55 year old dead people. Instead, well...you know what they find. We find out that the ship did not explode (obviously) but had been shunted into an alternate universe Richards called the Negative Zone. Because it was an uncontrolled entrance into the Zone, they spent 2 years there and not 55. The uncontrolled transition, in addition to a bombardment by cosmic radiation gave all four different sets of powers (shocking, I know). And now these 1960's people have to adjust to a 21st century world (a fun part of this would be everyone assuming Reed Richards would be way way behind the times in terms of science only to find he catches up and surpasses them in a period of days).
Meanwhile, in Latveria, sensors trip by the detection of the radiation and a tomb opens. We find that Victor Von Doom, who Reed had known until college and had left school after being scarred in an illegal experiment KNEW that Reed and the gang did not die (and may have sabotaged their drive to shunt them away) and, as he still wants Reed to die at his hand, ....
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put himself in suspended animation until such a time as Reed returned (because he definitely did not want his nemesis outliving him).
And shenanigans ensue.
Hey, you could even say the release of this radiation in 1963 has led to the beginnings of mutations if you want to REALLY tie things in....
The FF take actually sounds quite alright. Can't say the same for Doom though. Doom needs a proper origin.
Well, I wanted to keep it comic faithful and not have the FF beating on a 90 year old...
shareI would make Doom the magic bound character he is in the comics as well.
shareOkay...use magic for how he survived young for 50 plus years..but why would he wait until now to try and take over the world?
shareIn the comics he learns magic to free his mother from Hell. They could use that perspective to introduce both him and Mephisto. I would have more trouble reconciling his magic skills with his tech genious. One of the things that I do not like about Doom is his "school years" or how he and Richard are related. Never made sense to me. So he is a gypsy who's mother is in hell... learns magic to free her... and meanwhile he goes to college and becomes a tech wizard, ending up ruling Latveria... it's too convoluted.
I could see him being a ruler of Latveria already in the MCU, but would ditch his relationship with Richard. Simplify. If him and the F4 are to have a discord, make it similar to the Wakanda situation. Latveria is a small country rulled by an iron fist, but a closed society.
They could choose to keep the X-Men in a separate universe and bring FF4 as a pre existing team you simply have not heard much about yet. Reed Richard should be a peer of someone like Stark so I don't think they should be young adults like the last FF4 was.
shareI wouldn't do it in "Infinity Wars", there are too damn many characters there already.
shareIt has to be post Avengers 4.
shareYeah, Marvel will be looking for a new Team franchise after that, because they can't keep paying Downey about a hundred million a go.
So they'd better put their best writers, directors, and special effects people on a stand-alone film, and nail the actors into unbreakable contracts that allow them raises but will never allow Downey-level money. And use the opportunity to make any adjustments in the Marvel film universe they'd like to make, and leave SHIELD out of it for the first film. Can't have Jackson thinking he's indispensable, when contract negotiation time comes up tell him he might get written out from now on.
I don't even care for Jackson in the MCU to be honest. I haven't been missing him at all. His relevancy was demonstrated with the formation of the Avengers and in Winter Soldier. The rest of the movies followed quite well without him.
shareHow would I do it? Well, lemme tellya... I'd start with a Fantastic 4 film set in 1961. I'd avoid the comedy and quirkiness of Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor:Ragnarok, but keep it light and funny, in the spirit, and keeping the tone, of the original comics. Think Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder...
I'd briefly show the team's origin, probably while the opening credits roll, and then pit them against Dr. Doom and the Sub-Mariner in an exciting and unpredictable adventure. End by revealing that this is not the 1961 of the MCU.
Post-credits, something Thanos did in Infinity War would be shown to have had the effect of merging the two universes, similar to what happened recently in the comics. And just like the that, the FF, Doom, and Namor are in the MCU, and very much fish out of water, being that they are from a screwball version of 1961.
- F4 in 61
- Dr Doom
- Namor
- Not 61?
- 2 universes and alternate realities...
that's way too convoluted, no?
I don't think so? It's just a film set in an alternate reality that ends with that reality meshing with the one we know. You could easily rewrite your list as
- Adaptation of Fantastic Four #4
- Set in 1961/62/early '60s to match source material
- Post-credits teaser of universes merging
tha't the problem. I'm not seeing the MCU dealing with alternate realities. It's too confusing for the non-comic book readers.
shareWell, I think you're pretty safe, as I doubt Kevin Feige will be calling on me to write and direct a Fantastic Four movie anytime soon. But if he DOES call, I have faith that the Marvel movie audience will understand. They can think of it like The Upside Down meets Mad Men.
shareSpeaking of which, only saw the first Season of Stranger Things. How's the second one?
shareIt isn't as tightly plotted, or as fun, as the first, but it's worth watching. The new character Billy is pretty great. There's a wasted episode that shows Eleven's vacation to the land of How Hollywood Thinks Punks Look and Act. Probably not enough Wynona Ryder. But still fun.
sharegotta give it a go.
shareCan I ask, would you keep the series in 1961 or boot it forward at some point? I mean I think it would be way cool to have a series of films set in the sixties, but these things are big-budget and need to have as much mass-audience appeal as possible, and films set in modern times generally sell better than period pieces.
I've always been sorry that there weren't more "Captain America" films set in the 1940s, but they wanted to boot him forward in time as fast as possible. So they had him go directly from his first real mission to the deep freeze, which was IMHO a bit of a missed opportunity.
My problem with the 60's is that the F4 is super heavy in high tech. Putting them in the past would result in a lot of issues with the absence of such tech in the present day MCU. This far, only Ant-Man had the shrinking gadget but he was never heard of [for being a secret agent and because the death of his wife led him to quit the business - plus the side effects of the shrinking] and Tony's dad with some stuff that we saw glimpses of - with the exception of the Super Soldier serum and Arc Reactor - but again, no other tech to talk about.
Reed, being the smartest in the entire Marvel roster of characters, needs a proper high tech setting; given that that's his whole shtick. Also, space.
The only way I'd be kind of ok with F4 in the 60's would be if they were Space bound so we don't ever see their tech thingies and make them re-appear in the present [a la Cap and Ant-man]; but even that would need to be really well explained so not to contradict whatever existed back then and is absent now [I could see Tony's dad knowing it].
I'd be happy to see one Marvel FF film based in the '60s, with some of the tech almost being part of the humor in how behind our times it is, while cutting edge for the era. Then we can bring them into the 21st century, and have some fun watching Reed catch up, and/or be dismayed that his then-cutting-edge inventions are now retro and obsolete.
sharethat's a nice twist.
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