Fantastic Four as Villains?

[VenomsMom]

Now before you guys hang up the phone hear me out on this. I got to thinking with all this talk about the FF in the 60's and time jumping why not introduce them as villains from the future? They would be agents of Kang the Conquerer?

I thought about this after watching GOTG2. Marvel is in no shortage of superhero groups right now. Avengers and Guardians have it all on lockdown. Where would the FF even fit in when Marvel gets them back? There is truly no place for them. With Thanos manipulating things with the gauntlet it causes a disturbance in the timeline and awakens Kang. It's an opportunity to travel there and take over. He has forced the FF to serve him so they arrive first from the future to do battle before him and his armada shows up.

To make a long story short they eventually change sides helping the good guys destroy Kang and stay here in the present day as new heroes. This would be something entirely new and far from what anyone has seen before. It gets them in the MCU and they go on to start their own films in the next phases.

So what you guys think?

 

[NealKenneth]

You bring a up a good point by mentioning that they don't really have a unique place to "fit in" anymore. The unexpectedly explosive success of The Guardians has sorta stolen their thunder...

However, I don't like the idea of them being villains at any point. If they were time travelers, that would probably make them distinct enough to feel like they are their own thing, although you really have to have a lot of time travel (which I know is risky for ANY story, much less a complex interconnected cinematic universe.) For what it's worth, Gunn said he'd be done with Guardians after the third one, which will probably come out in 2020. That's just in time for the FF to step in as the "new" secondary team in the MCU.

 

[NealKenneth]

Off-topic but have the FF ever been Apocolypse's Four Horsemen?

 

[InCali]

No thank you. I hope Lumpkin doesn't see this. He might have some sort of stroke.

 

[Crimz]

No, that is the complete opposite of what the FF are. It also feels like change for the sake of change rather than enhancing anything.

Also the FF can fit in the MCU, they aren't superpolice like the Avengers and they aren't lovable rogues like the GoTG are; They are a family of explorers... with superpowers. They not only explore space, but time, dimensions and anywhere their love of science and adventure takes them. That's the aspect that should be focused on. One moment they are in ancient Egypt, the next they are discovering a new race in another dimension.

With GoTG the new planets and aliens were the backdrop, the decoration to show that they aren't on Earth. With the FF those new and interesting creatures/locations would be the focus. It needs to be visually spectacular and memorable. GoTG didn't focus on that so the different planets and races aren't remembered. The Marvel cinematic Universe is big enough for them.

 

[Gabe99]

The Four: Could This Twisted Vision Be The Inspiration For Fox’s New Fantastic Four Movie?

The production has been so secretive that nobody outside of the making of Fox’s new take on the Fantastic Four knows exactly what the flick is going to look like or be about, but it’s possible that we’ve already got a blueprint for the Four’s reboot. If you know where to look, that is.

With its X-Men movie franchise now appearing to turn out quality pictures, Fox is looking to make Marvel’s Fantastic Four into an equally bankable property. There hasn’t been much leaked from the production, and that has fans of the Fantastic Four worried.

Adding to those worries have been some of the things people affiliated with the film have said about the new Fantastic Four reboot. For one, the new FF movie will apparently have Johnny and Sue Storm as adopted siblings rather than blood relations, a move that has some fans howling.

Add to that some commentary from Miles Teller, who plays Reed Richards, saying that the story will be told “in a different way,” without a “kitschy, overly comic-book world,” and your average Fantastic Four fan probably just fainted. And that’s not even mentioning Michael B. Jordan’s recent remarks about the Four all in “containment suits” in what he classified as a “gritty film.”

So what could Fox possibly be crafting for a new take on Marvel’s Fantastic Four? It might be the case that the “gritty” nature of the Four was already set out in another comic, but not a Marvel comic.

Starting back in 1999, Wildstorm comics began publishing Planetary. We won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say that Planetary was an amazing journey through the history of comics, expertly written by noted internet madman Warren Ellis and beautifully illustrated by John Cassaday. If you haven’t read it already, do yourself a favor and pick it up.

The main villains in Planetary are a group of former adventurers who went into space, encountered a portal between universes, and returned from their journey much changed. They’re known as the Four.

The leader of the Four is Randal Dowling, creator of Science City Zero. A brilliant scientist, Dowling comes up with the plan to launch the Four into space, and he comes back with the ability to “stretch” his mind, allowing him to steal information from others.

Next up is Kim Süskind, daughter of a Nazi rocket scientist and Dowling’s lover. Kim is able to turn herself invisible and project invisible force fields.

Alongside those two, there’s William Leather, a hothead who comes back from the Four’s journey with the ability to project a fire-like energy from his body, as well as some other super skills.

Finally, there’s Jacob Greene, the pilot who flew the mission that took the Four into space. Greene faired worst of all of the Four, mutating into an incredibly durable but hideously disfigured monster.

So, a stretchy guy, a woman that turns invisible, a hothead fire guy, and a tough, rocky monster. Sound familiar? They should; the Four were, of course, based on Marvel’s Fantastic Four, mimicking the powers of Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing.

What does all this have to do with Fox’s Fantastic Four reboot? Well, think back to what Jordan said about “containment suits” and a “gritty” take on the Fantastic Four. Jordan also had a peculiar way of referring to the Fantastic Four’s fantastic abilities.

“We’re more or less a bunch of kids that had an accident,” Jordan said to MTV News back in July, “and we have disabilities now that we have to cope with, and try to find a life afterwards – try to be as normal as we can.”

“Disabilities,” eh? One thing about the way that the Four are portrayed in Planetary is that they’re not all totally happy with their powers. Süskind can turn invisible, sure, but she also loses the ability to see – because the light isn’t absorbed by her eyes, because they’re transparent, because science! – unless she uses special goggles. Greene, of course, is near indestructible, but so deformed that he can’t live among people.

It’s possible that the more “grounded” approach Fox keeps talking about for the new Fantastic Four could be rooted in the twisted funhouse mirror version seen in Ellis’ Planetary. Not that Jordan, Mara, et al would be villains, per se, but that their powers won’t be exactly the way fans are expecting them to be having read the comics.

And that could be a good thing, because – frankly – the Fantastic Four are kind of silly. That shows through in the rather lackluster reception the two previous Fantastic Four films got; neither was a bomb, but nobody has been clamoring for Michael Chiklis to put his Thing costume back on, eh?

Of course, this is all just conjecture, as nobody knows what the Fantastic Four will look like when they take the screen late next summer. Still, taking a page from some other comics and avoiding the happy-go-lucky, shiny look of the previous films could be exactly what Fox needs to do to turn the Four into a household name.

Warren Ellis and the Fantastic Four

Planetary

Ellis returned to the Fantastic Four in Planetary, this time published by DC’s WildStorm imprint. Each issue, the series explored a different genre or set of characters, usually renamed for reasons of copyright. Most such characters weren’t super-heroes, although it’s worth noting that the first Planetary story, in Planetary Preview #1 (Sept 1998) is centered around a deconstruction of the Hulk’s origin story that’s almost dark enough to feel at home in Ruins.

Ellis didn’t get around to the Fantastic Four until Planetary #6 (Nov 1999). There, Ellis ties the Four’s space vehicle to Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, whom the United States secreted away and who contributed to the Space Race — in real life. With this fact alone, Ellis deconstructs the happy, smiling version of American space technology in the same way that he’d previously deconstructed super-powers.

The Four, as Planetary calls them, did gain super-powers that didn’t kill them. Ellis was trying to reign in his darkness on Planetary, in hopes of producing a more commercial product — hopes that were rewarded. (My essay inKeeping the World Strange expands upon this.) Still, the disaster that gives the Four their powers is depicted as painful and horrible — and it destroys their bodies, even as it transfigures them into something else.

Oh, and did I mention the Four are bad guys?

What makes all of this so curious is that (outside of that Planetary Preview #1), the series had previously been so hopelessly optimistic. Even when the story involved horrible, horrible things, Ellis would typically make sure the ending recast everything as wonders that make the characters smile — a move borrowed from Marvels, not its opposite, Ruins. Most of the oddities encountered were friendly, or at least not utter villains like the Four.

Why was the first issue of Planetary that directly explored super-hero stories — and the Fantastic Four in particular — also such a departure into darkness?

One answer may be found in the issue itself, which shows that the Four have suppressed many fantastical discoveries from the world.

The WildStorm Universe, founded in the 1990s, was a dark and violent place. Implicitly, this was the Four’s fault. As in Ruins, it all goes back to the Fantastic Four.

But in Planetary, which celebrates the pulp tradition out of which super-heroes came, one can also read the Four as suppressing the natural evolution of those wonders. Although later issues would emphasize the Four’s suppression of world-changing technology, the emphasis in Planetary #6 was decidedly upon the fantastic for its own sake (and especially on elements from early Fantastic Four stories).

In a series that excavates the history of fantastical literature, the Four’s suppression of these elements parallels how the super-hero derailed the natural progression of the pulps. Those quasi-literary adventures disappeared behind the super-hero formula inaugurated by the Fantastic Four.

No wonder the Four, introduced in Planetary #6, became the ruthless villains of the entire series. They’re so evil that, when the real origin of their powers is finally revealed (in Planetary #25, June 2006), it’s that they sold the Earth to an evil alien intelligence.

Super-hero fans may love Planetary. It may represent Ellis tampering his cynical tendencies to give super-hero comics readers what they want. But the series also contains a savage criticism of the entire genre — one centered around the Fantastic Four.

 

[metaphysician]

I'm going to go with "No". I think that's a safe and accurate answer.

 

[Yowza]

Honestly, I think adaptations of characters are good (Planetary is certainly an "adaptation" of the FF). However, I'll say use other characters if going this route other than the FF. Too radical of a departure. The characters are best served being left alone for a bit I think.

It's certainly a good idea to introduce the characters but I just think other time travelling hero's (like Starhawk) could be focused on first.