Now that Doctor Strange has shown us a bit of the version of John Krasinski What Mr.FantasticMarvel fans, only have questions about the franchise, its return, its cast and everything that Marvel has planned for its integration into the timeline, on this, the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to be organizing for the introduction of the Four Fantastic and the X-Men, who can now be incorporated into the MCU continuity after Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox a few years ago.
Since the Fantastic Four, in particular, have already been debated extensively, especially considering the several failed movie reboots that previously starred the characters, so the Fantastic Four reboot currently doesn’t have a cast, release date, or a director, but that hasn’t stopped speculation about how the team could be set up within the MCU’s main Earth-616.
Theories have fans wondering if the multiverse could play a role in the group’s introduction, yet another possibility remains: that the team (and its first film) could have its roots in the 1960s, the decade when the Fantastic Four were created. initially by jack kirby Y Stan Lee in 1961, they were certainly a product of their time.
Where the legend says that the team was created as a response to Marvel to the Justice League of America, who were fast becoming DC’s premier superhero team, so the composition of the team’s ensemble, combined with general cultural sentiments about the nascent Cold War space race, culminated at its origin, creating an eclectic and flawed group of space travelers who develop superpowers after their ill-timed rocket launch into space is hit by radiation.
Furthermore, throughout the 1960s, the group thrived on adventures that pushed the limits of scientific and cosmic possibility, with genre-defining imagery for Kirby and convoluted, cunning character dynamics that helped ease an itch that had bothers them. comic book readers didn’t know they had it at the time.
Sure, there could be a successful version of the reboot of The Fantastic Four from Marvel Studios to also modernize the team, starting from scratch in the post-Blip era of the 2020s, and allowing them to team up alongside Earth’s Mightiest Heroes from then on, but that feels like a detriment to what the team has to offer within the MCU, as well as the wide swathes of canon the franchise as a whole still has to explore.
I mean, setting its origins in the 2020s would inevitably draw comparisons to the controversial billionaire-led privatized space race that’s currently going on in our real world, just as in the beginning, the MCU was operating on an incredibly specific timeline of when they might superheroes have existed, with the franchise hinting for a while that (outside of Captain America), costumed characters weren’t widely known before Tony Stark publicly announced he was Iron Man in 2008.
So setting the new movie in the 1960s would not only cast a shadow over a largely uncharted era of the MCU, but provide an easy way to narratively justify the team’s decades-long absence, just as fans have theorized for years. years, so there’s even the possibility that the group’s space travel has led to them being trapped in the Quantum Realm for decades, similar to their various comedic adventures in the Negative Zone, so there’s still plenty to debate.