All the Indiana Jones movies and most of the James Bond movies have opened with a teaser sequence that sets up who the hero is, etc., but usually has nothing to do with the story at hand. Ideally, this is all I am suggesting - the movie starts with the conclusion of an adventure - thus you open with a bang. If the above movies did not think it was pointless, then it would not be in a Marvel movie, either.
Except those teasers were more practical and cost effective then a teaser with some B-list super villain who cost a lot in terms of special effects, someone like Shocker would cost a fair amount money.
But hey, I get it, you don't like the Wizard [or the evil FF] - fine. You keep pointing out how he's not written a certain way in the comics - so that's what you change - just like they changed Whiplash, etc. Bond did not fight the same villain in every movie, so why should the FF - it just makes their world unnecessarily smaller than it is.
I might like Wizard better if he wasn't poorly written from day one and if we learned more real details about him, like why he suffered a mental break down. If you aren't going to give a villain much of personality beyond "Mwa. ha, ha! I will use my Frightful Four to defeat the Fantastic Four," there is almost no reason to care about him.
There are just characters who are far more interesting then Frightful Four who a collection of dull and goofy villains with one note personalities and no depth. They aren't very menacing or interesting, its why the Ultimate Frightful Four were a better super villain group then their 616 counter parts, even though they wouldn't work on screen very well either.
Having the FF fight Street level villains like Trapster, doesn't seem very epic for a movie. I would rather they go to Negative Zone then fight some guy with a glue gun. The FF are supposed to be cosmic explorers, having them fight a collection of street level villains is pretty underwhelming.
Again, the Wizard has been included in the recent issues of FF for a reason, give it a chance. Maybe he is a fraction of Reed's intellect, but maybe it's a BIG fraction. All your "negatives" can easily be erased with very little effort from a decent screen writer.
Expect a fraction is just fraction, if someone had a fraction of the Hulk's strength, they wouldn't pose much of a threat to him. A fraction is supposed to be very small.
Except we don't know where Hickman is going with this direction with the Wizard, so it is far too early to say its a good one. Heck, we still don't know why Wizard had a mental break down, questions like that needed to be answered before we say they will work on screen. Plus if Wizard is so smart, why did Susan and Johnny make a fool out of him in his first appearance?
The Trapster's traps can be enhanced to a lever that they can pose a threat with little or no effort. Doom has used gimmicks in his armor that have nearly bested the FF, why is it unthinkable that the Wizard has outfitted the Trapster with similar gizmos? Instead of trying to see the endless possibilities of these characters, you have already made up you mind that they suck and are not willing to give them any chance or thought. Glad you are not running the show at Marvel.
Because having every Tom ,Dick and Harry be equal to Reed Richards in terms of intelligence makes Reed less unique. Reed and Doom are supposed to be the smartest men in the world and having Wizard and Trapster stump Reed makes title almost irrelevant.
Also in the comic Wizard is just a poor man's Doom, so why use him at all, he has almost the same motive as Doom, except its less developed and less interesting. Doom's back story makes him character you can understand, you kinda see why Dom hated Richards, Wizard's motives just shallow, its not much better then Wizard waking up one morning and deciding he was to be an FF villain for no real reason.
Keep in mind movie Whiplash was so different from 616 Whiplash that he was almost Whiplash in name only, but in a good way. It seems like that's what you have to do wizard to make him work on screen, change a ton of stuff, because the cannon stuff with him kinda sucks, until recently and the recent stuff is not well explained yet.
I mean you think of anyway to make Wizard into something besides a poor man's Dr. Doom, because that's what he has been in the comics for decades.
MODOK could look good on screen the same way any countless number of special effects characters have looked on screen since the original King Kong or Frankenstein Monster. You hire creative effects artists and let them create! All you need is an imagination.
Frankenstein was still humanoid, how many successful alive action Cephalothorax characters have there been?
