FISCHER: Fantastic for middle-age

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

It seems that, at long last, Marvel Studios finally has their own Fantastic Four movie in the work.

Having re-acquired the film rights to Marvel’s First Family during Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox, it was only a matter of time before we’d see the MCU adaptation of one of the first teams of Silver Age superheroes.

Pedro Pascal has been rumored as the frontrunner for Mr. Fantastic for some time now (I had my fingers crossed for Henry Cavil myself). That casting was confirmed along with the cast for the rest of the team.

Venessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach will play the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing respectively.

I’d qualify that further, but I’ve seen very little of the work of any of these actors.

I’m sure they’ll be fine though.

One thing that is kind of interest though is the age of the cast.

Pedro Pascal will be 50 by the time this movie comes out, making him significantly older than any of the previous actors that led a Fantastic Four movie.

Pascal isn’t the only one though. Across the board this cast of actors is the oldest to portray these characters.

This gives a bit of weight to the theory that this movie is going to skip the usual Fantastic Four origin sequence and jump straight into them as an established super hero team.

Which I’m not entirely against, also I feel like that would be a missed opportunity.

Something that tends to get lost in movie adaptations of the Fantastic Four is the absolutely bonkers circumstances of the super-hero team’s origins. In the original comics, Reed Richards is so intent on winning the space race against the Soviets that he steals a rocket and launches himself into space along with his best friend, his girlfriend, and her teenage brother.

Yeah, for his first few years in publication, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, was a teenage super-hero.

Live-action adaptations have avoided this reckless endangerment of a minor by aging Johnny up to be a closer contemporary with his teammates. The 2005 film portrayed Johnny as a hotshot Air Force pilot and the 2015 film never had a space launch at all.

At 30-years-old, Joseph Quinn is older than either Chris Evans or Michael B. Jordan when they played Johnny Storm, so it seems like a teenage Human Torch is again off the menu.

Sure, sometimes you have to sometimes adjust the details of stories from ages past to meet the expectations of modern audiences.

In the 1960s, Peter Parker got his super-powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. He and his aunt were then able to maintain a two-story home in Queens after his uncle died with a part-time job and something called a “pension.”

These are concepts that a modern audience aren’t going to resonate with. That’s why today’s movie have genetically engineered spiders and Peter getting seen on social media and catching the eye of a billionaire to get lifted out of poverty.

But here’s the crazy thing. The Fantastic Four’s 1961 origin has only gotten more realistic over time.

An eccentric genius recklessly decides to take his best friend, his much younger girlfriend, and her teenage brother on an impromptu space flight? That is more likely to happen today in the real world than in the last 60 years.

I’m sure it’ll be fine, but what a missed opportunity.

We’ll just have to see.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and can’t believe that the un-released 1994 movie is somehow still the most comic accurate of the bunch.