The bronze age Thing design put a smile to my face. Changing Silver Surfer is a strange choice if we can believe the rumours considering it is such a fan favourite character. Normally I waive on all the DEI noise but this one will be difficult to dismiss. Do the chiefs come in with their quota requirements before a writer can put pen to paper?

Strange choice not going for a younger actor to play Reed Richards. 49 is not old but In 10 years time he will be. Very confusing 

Posted by: @ornclown

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The first teaser dropped a day ago:

Trailer #1

I'm loving the retro 50's art deco aesthetic... however, rumors have it that the Silver Surfer (my actual favorite Marvel character) is going to be a woman in this.

More accurately, the Silver Surfer is going to be Shalla-Bal... the wife of Norrin Radd (the ACTUAL Surfer).

I really want to like this movie (the FF are some of my fondest childhood memories... especially the John Byrne era), but how could Marvel Studios veer so far off course with the Surfer?!?

Ouch...

Shalla-Bal is the Silver Surfer of Earth-9997. If Fantastic Four is set there, it would explain why they did not exist in the past of Earth-616.

There has been some discussion that . . .

Posted by: @brasco

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Strange choice not going for a younger actor to play Reed Richards. 49 is not old but In 10 years time he will be. Very confusing 

Age aside, I think he is a strange choice altogether. I was hoping they would bring back John Krasinski, but I can see how he would not fit with the rest of the cast.

Ben and Sue seem well-cast. Johnny seems a little weak at the moment, but I could be sold if I see more of him. I do not love the CGI of Thing, but I have not loved it for characters like the Hulk or She-Hulk either. I have come to accept that the over-sized characters are going to be glorified cartoons.

I hope the Thing is a work in progress. He looks cool but at the same time the CGI looks very fake.

Posted by: @brasco

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Strange choice not going for a younger actor to play Reed Richards. 49 is not old but In 10 years time he will be. Very confusing 

They tried to do that with Blade too and they did that to Ross. Instead of bringing in an actor younger than William Hurt they went older and replaced him with an 82 year old Harrison Ford. How long can he do it for? If they don't kill off Ross now it will be a pretty dumb casting choice.

@asterstar Based on age and movie legend status alone (which is very expensive), I'm confident that Harrison Ford only signed on for one film. Even if this movie is a hit, it'll be at least 4 years I'm guessing until another sequel, by which point Ford will be in his late 80's. Hard to imagine that being viable. 

But hey, stranger things have happened - I was amazed that they got Robert Redford to make a second appearance!

@adam_prince-of-eternia 

Yep... this is something I posted in another forum:

I heard that Doctor Doom was going to be the big bad guy across the next couple of phases... which suits me just fine. I think Doom is one of the best villains of all time - right up there with the likes of Skeletor and Darkseid. However, if he is truly going to be played by Robert Downey Jr., I will vomit. I can't stand that guy, or the fact that he was the most pivotal character in the MCU - going so far as to replace Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man continuity, barf!

With that said, word on the interwebs have said that this FF movie actually takes place in an alternate reality, outside of the standard MCU films. Although, knowing Reed Richards and his knack for making the impossible possible, it is very likely that they will cross over into the MCU at some point - which would explain their mysterious absence during End Game. (X-Men, too.)

But really, for me, I just want this to be true so that we can get a classic Silver Surfer in the MCU!! I have waited so long... Rise of the Silver Surfer did a decent job, and I really liked the way Doug Jones portrayed Norrin Radd, but it was over in a flash...

Heck, I wouldn't even mind if Shalla-Bal sacrifices herself (going against her master) to destroy Galactus in this movie if it makes way for Norrin Radd to appear in the MCU proper.

@brasco 

He is a versatile actor no doubt, and I love him in the first season of The Last of Us... but, a part of me feels like he was chosen for the role because he's a hot ticket right now and not because of the aforementioned acting chops...

@ornclown Yeah, it's like the marketing department is desperately telling us, "Hey look! We got the Mandalorian guy as the lead!! Isn't that awesome???"

Posted by: @ornclown

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I heard that Doctor Doom was going to be the big bad guy across the next couple of phases... which suits me just fine. I think Doom is one of the best villains of all time - right up there with the likes of Skeletor and Darkseid. However, if he is truly going to be played by Robert Downey Jr., I will vomit. I can't stand that guy, or the fact that he was the most pivotal character in the MCU - going so far as to replace Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man continuity, barf!

Tony Stark is Doctor Doom in Earth-5012. Reed Richards of Earth-5012 prevents him conquering the world by transporting him to Earth-616. So he is likely a Doctor Doom, but not the Doctor Doom—at least of our universe anyway.

The multiverse makes literally anything possible now - particularly lazy writing!

Posted by: @durendal

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The multiverse makes literally anything possible now - particularly lazy writing!

Posted by: @durendal

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@asterstar Based on age and movie legend status alone (which is very expensive), I'm confident that Harrison Ford only signed on for one film. Even if this movie is a hit, it'll be at least 4 years I'm guessing until another sequel, by which point Ford will be in his late 80's. Hard to imagine that being viable. 

But hey, stranger things have happened - I was amazed that they got Robert Redford to make a second appearance!

That is what I mean. Unless the plan is to kill Ross off why cast someone so old? I think Red Hulk will be fighting Green Hulk in that Secret Wars movie they are making. It was the same thing with Blade. Why get Mahershala Ali to play Blade who is 50? It is like Marvel stopped looking forward and just looks at the now.

Posted by: @durendal

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That is what I mean. Unless the plan is to kill Ross off why cast someone so old? I think Red Hulk will be fighting Green Hulk in that Secret Wars movie they are making. It was the same thing with Blade. Why get Mahershala Ali to play Blade who is 50? It is like Marvel stopped looking forward and just looks at the now.

 

Marvel Studios stopped looking forward a long time ago.

Their first set of movies were groundbreaking introductions to the main cast of the MCU. The following movies were great world-builders. And the culminating two-part End Game saga was a nice payoff for the previous 10 years of superhero flicks. Marvel put together a solid beginning, middle, and end... they had a roadmap and clear idea of how they wanted to proceed with this bold new world.

Fast-forward to now. The past few years have been spotty, inconsistent, unnecessary, and bloated. There seems to be no direction and I get the same feeling I did when reading the comics back in the late 80s / early 90s when crossover events got out of hand and destroyed the individual worlds that occupied separate books. 

The addition of a "multiverse" (the world's biggest MacGuffin ever conceived) and the acquisition of Fox isn't helping matters either... somehow, the Fox X-Men get introduced via Captain Marvel?

It's a monumental flustercluck at Marvel Studios right now.

However, with all of that said, they have had some really good stuff pop up between all of the shovelware... X-Men '97 is incredible and I really enjoyed season 2 of Loki (even though its entire premise revolves around the aforementioned multiverse...) And, of course, Deadpool & Wolverine.

Posted by: @ornclown

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Marvel Studios stopped looking forward a long time ago.

Their first set of movies were groundbreaking introductions to the main cast of the MCU. The following movies were great world-builders. And the culminating two-part End Game saga was a nice payoff for the previous 10 years of superhero flicks. Marvel put together a solid beginning, middle, and end... they had a roadmap and clear idea of how they wanted to proceed with this bold new world.

Fast-forward to now. The past few years have been spotty, inconsistent, unnecessary, and bloated. There seems to be no direction and I get the same feeling I did when reading the comics back in the late 80s / early 90s when crossover events got out of hand and destroyed the individual worlds that occupied separate books. 

The addition of a "multiverse" (the world's biggest MacGuffin ever conceived) and the acquisition of Fox isn't helping matters either... somehow, the Fox X-Men get introduced via Captain Marvel?

It's a monumental flustercluck at Marvel Studios right now.

 

However, with all of that said, they have had some really good stuff pop up between all of the shovelware... X-Men '97 is incredible and I really enjoyed season 2 of Loki (even though its entire premise revolves around the aforementioned multiverse...) And, of course, Deadpool & Wolverine.

End Game introduced the time travel concept, albeit it was presented as nigh impossible, so that it would not become a plot device outside of that film. Then Loki undermined that by introducing an entire bureaucracy devoted to maintaining the timeline, that somehow managed to not intervene during the events of End Game.

It also introduced the multiverse concept, which was further explored in Multiverse of Madness; and Kang, who was further explored in Quantumania. Clearly, the plan was to go from the universal threat of Thanos to the multiversal threat of Kang, and Loki was the vehicle for all this multiverse nonsense.

Marvel had no problem recasting War Machine, Stature, or Red Hulk with no explanation. But are somehow averse to recasting Black Panther and Kang, the latter of whom would require no explanation. So instead, we get a legacy Blank Panther played by an unlikeable supporting actor, and the Kang Dynasty is cancelled altogether.

This creates problems for the next Phase, because Marvel was clearly relying on the multiverse concept in The Marvels, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Fantastic Four to bring the 20th Century Fox acquisitions into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So as convoluted and seemingly unpopular as it may be, Marvel really cannot abandon it altogether.

I think it would have been far better to avoid branching timelines and multiple universes altogether, and have the events of End Game cause a Buttefly Effect that creates the problem of Kang the Conqueror. This would reinforce why time travel should have never been attempted, and would remove that plot device going forward.

Absent the multiverse, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men could still be introduced in one of two ways: by updating their respective origins so they are set in the present; or maintaining their origins, but retroactively setting them in the past.

For example, the Fantastic Four could have worked alongside Peggy Carter, Janet van Dyne, Hank Pym, and Howard Stark in the 1960s. That work was clandestine, and the public was not aware of it, so there is an in-universe reason the audience was not previously aware of them. Similarly, mutants have been exceedingly rare, and historically have been subjected to human experimentation by groups who sought to weaponize their abilities, such as HYDRA, the Soviet Special Forces, and Weapon X. It is not until a recent population boom of mutants that the public becomes conscious of them.

Alternatively, Marvel could forego the classic origins for both, and adapt the origins from the Ultimates titles, which are set contemporaneously. These are arguably less familiar to, and popular with, general audiences, but it achieves the goal of bringing them into the main continuity without rectons and multiversal shenanigans.

I am hoping that the upcoming Fantstic Four is a level-set for the MCU that recalibrates things for Phase 6.