Why Marvel needs The Fantastic Four.

I am a fan of comics. Always have been, always will be (unless the creative types behind them completely fuck it up) and as such I absolutely love the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The MCU recently passed Star Wars as the number one most profitable film franchise on the planet, and I think it deserves that accolade. The MCU is the most interesting, successful, and in my opinion best film making experiment in years, maybe decades and amazingly in the eight (as of my writing this) years since the the Marvel Cinematic Universe began no one has been able to do it as successful, as much as DC and Fox might want you to think otherwise.

One of the main reasons is that the heroes are likable, complex and relatable. In the comics and their film adaptations, of the Avengers, for instance, Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans) is a morally upstanding, likable person (regardless of being Captain America), Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is charismatic, but eccentric genius regardless of being Iron Man. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is a single dad and ex-con who hates corporate corruption and just wants to be a part of his daughter’s life regardless of being Ant-Man.

Speaking of which, one of the main criticisms Marvel films is their lack of interesting or engaging villains in most instances. This is not an unfounded criticism, while there’s Loki, Fisk, The Winter Soldier, Zemo and, some would say, Ultron, the vast majority of the villains have been like Iron Monger, Malekeith, Yellow Jacket and Ronan the Accuser.

The main reason for this, is an unspoken rule of superhero films that is next to never broken, I call it ‘the one and done rule’. The one and done rule states that a super villain in a super hero movie is inherently less important than the hero and thus must be gone by the end of their first appearance in a series. While there are exceptions to this, the original Lex Luthor, the new (DCEU) Joker, Loki, arguably Sam Raimi’s Norman Osborn and if you’re being really generous Thanos who, as of my writing the most recent Marvel movie ie Captain America: Civil War (so he may have more appearances on the way) come to mind - but most super villains die at the end of the first movie they appear in.

There is another criticism that I personally have and that is that most of the movies are so locked to one setting. The only non earthbound franchises so far have been Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, (by entering another plane of existence) and the upcoming Doctor Strange. However in comics, Captain America goes to hell, Iron Man goes to space and Spider-Man meets God (not a good story, but it did happen).

The thing is, there is one Marvel property that has the potential to do all of that; and has a villain that could not only carry the entire universe, but also a movie and/or Netflix show of his very own.

That franchise is The Fantastic Four.

The thing about the Fantastic Four is that all of those things that I mentioned above, going to hell, going to different dimensions, meeting God, those are all pretty common things for the F4.

An average Saturday night for Reed, Ben, Johnny and Sue is that an alien arrives in their top story apartment looking for help to reclaim their home world from an inter-dimensional war lord. Reed agrees wondering what they can do to help. The group set off and fight their way through the now enslaved soldiers of this Alien’s home world resulting in some fun banter between Ben and Johnny. The Fantastic Four make it to the Warlord’s base of operations to find Doctor Doom. Doom and Richards exchange some dialogue then Doom pulps them in a four on one fight. The Fantastic Four retreat to plan something, mostly Reed and Sue putting their heads together. The FF come back and set their plan into motion, but Doom reveals that he had planned for their plan, but then Reed reveals that he had planned for Doom’s plan. Doom, defeated, retreats back to the main Marvel universe, shaking his fist and yelling something like “I will have your head from this Richards! Mark my words! Doom will return!”. The native people of this planet then thank The Fantastic Four and they head home.

But that’s not all they do, there have been stories about the death of Johnny Storm and how they all deal with that, Ben becoming human looking again, Sue and Reed’s love for one another, Reed and Sue doing some parenting by taking Franklin and Valeria to another dimension to look at wildlife and even Reed talking a guy down from throwing himself off a building. The characters themselves needed next to no changes at all for those stories to work, because these characters are so versatile, meaning they can cross the lines of setting and tone effortlessly. Unless you wanna make them gritty...

Now that may seem like a pretty good reason to get them back, the sheer number of different stories that they can work well in, but that isn’t what’s most important. What all of the Fox Fantastic Four movies so far have really missed is that the most central aspect of the Fantastic Four, which like most Marvel super teams, is their secondary title, the first family of Superheroes.

Emphasize ‘family’. The thing about them and part of what makes them so enduring and beloved is that even if they weren’t Superheroes, they’d still be a mother, a father two children and two uncles. They’d be a man and his wife, her brother and her husband’s best friend, but once you have what makes them like everyone else, that’s when you introduce what makes them not like everyone else.
Reed is a father who loves his wife and children, but has a problem of getting too engrossed in his work and his passions to have time for wife and kids sometimes, something that he often deeply regrets.
Sue is a woman who loves her family more than anything else and would do anything to protect them. She’s strong independent and one of the few people who can keep up with her husband intellectually.
Ben Grim is a bruiser and can be an intimidating guy, but at his heart, he’s a man who wants to be loved and is friendly and generally easy going and is very insecure at times.
Johnny is a young, sometimes irresponsible kid who loves attention and has a generally hotheaded and cocky personality, he can be rude and brash, but he’s a good guy at the center and would do anything, within reason, to help his friends and family.

Notice how I never once mentioned anything to do with them having super powers?
That was intentional, you see what makes these so great and timeless is the family aspect, that people can relate to.
It would benefit Marvel to spend the money to reacquire the rights to them, even if their powers have nothing to do what makes them interesting, likable and relatable.

Now the previous reasons were why it was good to get them back, but this is why it’s essential. Doctor Doom.

Doctor Doom is in my opinion the single greatest Super Villain in the history of comic books and a contender for greatest villain in all of fiction.

Doom is at his core a man bent on world domination, but what makes him different is his reasoning for it. He hates poverty, suffering, abuse, war, violence, bigotry and all of the other blights of the world. His core philosophy boils down to this. “The only way to stop suffering is to take away the freedom to oppress.”

Now this isn’t something Victor Von Doom came up with while sitting on the toilet one day.
This was beaten into him as a young Gypsy in the (fictional) Eastern European nation of Latveria under the oppressive rule of it’s old royal family. His mother dabbled in black magic causing her to be taken to hell by the devil, not long into his childhood. His father would then try to raise him alone, but would eventually be killed by the militarized police force of Latveria, causing a young Victor Von Doom to run away from his home land.

Over the next few decades he would put his genius intellect to work and learn almost everything there is to know about science and sorcery, because why have one when you can have both?
This knowledge would lead him to create a machine to send his mind to hell to try save his mother, however due to a miscalculation (that he blames on his college acquaintance Reed Richards) he would acquire a surprisingly small scar on his face when the machine literally exploded in his face. However despite the fact that his scar was tiny, he was horrified and convinced by his large ego that he his once perfect face had been tainted, leading him to drop out of college. Going to Tibet, he learned much more about magic. But more importantly, he had an enchanted suit of full body armour built for him, so that no one could ever see his newly scared face. However, in his eagerness to get the mask on, he didn’t wait for it to cool and as a result his face was irreversibly scared.
After this, Doom would return to Latveria, kill the king and take his place at the thrown leading his people to happiness and prosperity.

This is an excellent back-story, but the best is yet to come.
Many nerds will have heard this at some point “With time to prepare Batman can beat anyone, no matter what.”
This is clearly untrue, because Doom out does him in every respect. He has fought Celestials and Gods winning against both and even been a God himself.
He’s outfoxed The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, Dracula and the devil, to name just a few. He’s even built entire universes and all of this is fueled by his indescribable drive to achieve his goals, though an almost infinite number of equally infinitely complex plans, back up plans, preparations and contingencies.
In fact according to the council of Reeds (a council made of versions of Reed Richards from across the multiverse) Doctor Doom, regardless of which universe, is always the most dangerous person in said universe and really the only person who can consistently defeat him, is Reed Richards - Mr Fantastic himself; and then only because he knows Doom better than anyone else.

But the thing is with goals and motivations like his, Doom could easily be a hero, or at least a protagonist in a solo movie or Netflix show. When the Avengers and Fantastic Four team up to take him down, we have an attachment to Doom and are conflicted about which side to take.
We will likely believe that they need to work together to combat such a threat, yet he could always have some bigger plan than the heroes; even putting the heroes into positions where they owe him - then calling in those favors. Or working with him despite the fact that he will betray them later on.

In my opinion, it’s worth it for Marvel to spend a few hundred million dollars to get the Fantastic Four and Doom back. It will also allow them to use Galactus and The Silver Surfer as well, so that’s an added bonus.

It will let them fix their villain problem and it’ll give us some really interesting movies to look forward to. But enough about what I think, what do you think? I’d really love to know.