Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four will star Pedro Pascal, but setting the movie in the past could validate a wrong fan opinion about the First Family.
Marvel Studios is finally moving forward with The Fantastic Four, which is set to be the third theatrical iteration of the classic team. There’s a lot riding on the team finally being done justice, especially given the criticisms towards the previous movies. Unfortunately, one seeming decision surrounding the movie might have already doomed it.
As seen in the movie’s cast announcement art, The Fantastic Four will possibly be a period piece. Though setting it in the 1960s and 1970s might fit the team’s publication history, it does The Fantastic Four no favors in terms of their relevance to modern Marvel fans. Likewise, another possibility could also be problematic, effectively showcasing how difficult it will be to introduce the First Family this far into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Marvel’s The Fantastic Four Is Seemingly a Period Piece
As noted, the announcement for the cast came alongside retro-themed art of The Fantastic Four.
Seen on social media, this image has the team sitting in a swanky, swinging living room. The team’s heads are all photoshopped with the heads of their actors, giving fans a glimpse at what The Fantastic Four might look like on the big screen. A newspaper clip suggests that the film will take place in the 1970s, though the overall decor and vibe screams 1960s. The latter time period makes sense given that this was the beginning of the “Marvel Age” of comic books.
The Fantastic Four debuted in the first issue of their eponymous comic book on Nov. 1, 1961. Given that past movies (namely 2015’s Fant4stic) were not exactly the most well-received or accurate adaptations, taking things back to their roots in a literal sense is logical. If nothing else, it helps to ease fan concerns that this will be another poorly-done adaptation. Unfortunately, those movies definitely did damage to The Fantastic Four brand, and regardless of quality, the new film’s setting may do the same thing.
Sticking The Fantastic Four In the Past May Hurt Their Brand
One major criticism of The Fantastic Four is that the team is seen by some as outdated and not as “cool” as other Marvel properties. This criticism has several layers to it, with the poor reception towards the previous films not helping in that regard. Even in the comic books, The Fantastic Four have rarely been part of Marvel’s premiere characters for several decades. After Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men run began, the mutants and Spider-Man inarguably became the faces of Marvel Comics.
This was especially the case in the 1990s, with the “Heroes Reborn” event happening due to the unpopularity of properties such as Fantastic Four. The mid-2000s brought the Avengers into prominence before the MCU did, with the team finally cemented as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. While The Fantastic Four had well-received runs from creators such as Mark Waid and Jonathan Hickman, the property as a whole failed to maintain the consistent success of the Avengers, the X-Men, Spider-Man or even Daredevil.
Add in the largely disliked 1990s Fantastic Four cartoon, it’s not hard to see why even hardcore Marvel fans have little in the way of nostalgia for the team. This has kept the sense that the team is outdated alive, as there aren’t many successful iterations to counteract this idea. Due to this, making the MCU debut of the team into a period piece will likely only exacerbate the issue. It’s almost a marketing admission that the characters only work in the past, with Marvel Studios seemingly outright running into this concept. It also falls into the problem of other period piece superhero movies, both from Marvel and DC.
The DC Extended Universe movie Wonder Woman showcased that the heroine left Themyscira and first came to Man’s World during World War I. This begged the question of what she was doing during the events of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. The same issue plagued Captain Marvel, whose movie was set during the 1990s. These issues become even more apparent if another team has the same concept. There is another way to explain The Fantastic Four being in the past, though it comes with its own problems.
The Fantastic Four May Tie Into the Multiverse
Another idea that may explain where The Fantastic Four have been is the use of the multiverse. In other words, The Fantastic Four won’t be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper, but rather an alternate universe that will become connected to the MCU. That’s already being experimented with via the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine, which involves the Fox X-Men movie universe. In the case of that movie and its world, however, said universe was already defined by numerous films, namely the popular Deadpool movies that preceded it. The new movie will also likely be one of the few projects to be praised in the current Multiverse Saga.
For the most part, Marvel Studios’ Multiverse Saga has been a major disappointment to many. Under this overarching storyline, the MCU has had some of its most negatively-received projects. Likewise, some of these movies were also misfires at the box office, with 2023’s The Marvels having the lowest box office returns of any Marvel Studios project. This has all given the Multiverse Saga a negative reception, and it doesn’t help that some of the movies handle the concept in different ways. Some of these uses for the multiverse were well-received, but even in those cases, this was mainly due to nostalgia for projects outside the MCU.
Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four Has the Same Problem as X-Men
The Fantastic Four and the X-Men are only now being introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe for legal reasons. Until 2019, their cinematic rights were owned by 20th Century Fox, who obtained said rights following the 1990s when Marvel sold them to get out of bankruptcy. Eventually, Disney bought Fox out, and by the end of the Infinity Saga, Marvel Studios owned the rights to the X-Men and The Fantastic Four. This meant that the company could finally introduce these characters and concepts, but this still wasn’t ideal. After all, the MCU had just killed off Iron Man in Avengers: Endgame, and as shown by the interest in MCU movies post-Endgame, this film was the end for many casual audiences’ interest in the shared universe.
There’s simply no easy way to mesh these characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s the same issue that affected Captain Marvel, who some fans argued felt forced due to her late implementation. Things are further complicated by the rumors that the upcoming Avengers: Secret Wars will end with the MCU being rebooted in some way. That hasn’t been confirmed, but it does beg the question if the cast in The Fantastic Four already has an expiration date. If so, it might be for the best, as Marvel Studios can thereafter start from scratch and create a new Fantastic Four that interacts with the Avengers and the X-Men. Hopefully, this happens after the team has shaken off its “outdated” nature, though making their new movie a period piece might make this difficult.
