The knives have been out for The Fantastic Four for so long that every fresh piece of info is seen as further evidence of the film’s fantastic FUBAR status.
20th Century Fox have released one of their few updates on the Fantastic Four reboot, via reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with a synopsis that lines up with that earlier leaked storyline.
THE FANTASTIC FOUR, a contemporary re-imagining of Marvel’s original and longest-running superhero team, centers on four young outsiders who teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe, which alters their physical form in shocking ways. Their lives irrevocably upended, the team must learn to harness their daunting new abilities and work together to save Earth from a former friend turned enemy. (C) Fox
The thing is, while that is deviation from the traditional origin story, it’s really not that controversial.
In Brian Michael Bendis, Andy Kubert and Mark Millar’s Ultimate Fantastic Four, the quartet are students at a prestigious academy in the Baxter Building and gain their powers… in a teleporter accident.
No rocket mission, no cosmic rays, no Ben Grimm: Space Pilot.
Interestingly, The Fantastic Four won’t be the first Marvel movie to take its pointers from the Ultimate line, with Joss Whedon’s Avengers Assemble (as well as elements of Captain America: The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier) cribbed directly from The Ultimates, aspects of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man taken directly from Ultimate Spider-Man (including deviations from the sacred Lee and Ditko origin story), and Quicksilver’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson has already highlighted the Ultimate influence on Avengers: Age Of Ultron.
So, what’s the problem?
If it’s lack of word-for-word fidelity to the original version of the origin story, then look back to Iron Man, Batman Begins and Man Of Steel which pick’n’mixed various storylines for their own narrative benefit.
If the problem is partisan baying about the crimes that 20th Century Fox is somehow doing to the Marvel Universe, then slam the brakes on that. We haven’t even seen this film yet, but what we do know is that it’s based on an actual comic-book story arc, it’s got the director of Chronicle and an awesome core cast of rising stars.
Plus, we’ve already seen the classic Fantastic Four origin story:
Fantastic Four is set to be released on 7 August 2015. You can buy Josh Trank’s Chronicle on Blu-ray for £9.75 at Amazon.co.uk and find out more on the comics that have inspired the film by picking up our 100 All-Time Greatest Comics bookazine now!
