MCU Will Tackle Fantastic Four Before The X-Men
By George Robbins
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, is easily one of the most recognizable franchises out there at the moment due to the fact that it is so well recognized by the general public. For the public at large, the MCU is a franchise where the world of comic books has finally managed to make it to the big screen in a way that a lot of people have fallen in love with. Taking the comic book medium, which has been known for being a niche for a certain group of people for a long time, and turning it into a video medium for everyone has been a trip. There has been a number of years that these films have been worked on and it should be no surprise that no one really thought it would turn out at first. When everything first began, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was not going as well as people may have originally believed it would due to the issues involved with the production of the first film, ‘Iron Man.’
‘Iron Man’ is known by just about everyone at this point as the film that kicked off the MCU and made it known that it was possible for the MCU to even exist in the first place. No one was quite sure about whether a successful shared comic book universe could be made but the ‘Iron Man’ film was a good start and it showed that there was a general crowd who were out there willing to watch the films. If there was actually a crowd who wanted to watch the film then they would definitely have a reason to keep making their films and this gave them the confidence to continue working on future films. It would not be until the first ‘Avengers’ film that we finally got to see the first act pay off and the idea of creating a shared universe for films became cemented as a possibility. This would end up being a template that many different studios have since tried to replicate in some way, shape or form, but many have not really managed to succeed.
Over the years since the initial success of the first act of MCU films, there have been a lot of studios which have been trying to capture the same success seen by the MCU, but this hasn’t been so simple. Legendary’s Monster-Verse is actually one of the few other shared universes to be relatively successful, but they do not have anywhere near as many films as the MCU has. The fact that Marvel Studios has managed to take countless films over the years and put them into the same universe successfully while each one maintains its own story just goes to show how impressive it all is. That aside, it has been a long road since and it is one that is not meant to end anytime soon as they are still working on getting a massive number of films started filming going into this next year. Needless to say, these next couple of years in general are going to be huge for the MCU and will change a lot of what happens moving forward.
So what exactly is being changed moving forward and why would this change what will end up happening in the future with the MCU as a whole? The answer to this lies squarely in the fact that the pandemic has fundamentally changed the way that things are going to be handled moving forward because dates for filming and releases have changed constantly recently. When the pandemic first began, the first thing that was affected was that all active productions in the industry ended up being shut down and while they may have resumed and mostly finished already, this pushed back the productions of many other movies. Going into 2021 many new MCU films are actually going to be starting production to release over the course of the next couple of years with ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ starting first in January. Things have already been heavily affected by the pandemic as well as other issues that have been dealt with in the past couple of years by the industry.
One of the biggest questions on the minds of a lot of fans is just how they are going to handle things going forward and how this is going to affect the overall story of future films. Obviously, they are still trying to release certain films before they finally release others, but it is now a matter of just what films now have to be released in what order for them to make sense. For instance, it has been made known that in order for things to continue in the proper manner, ‘Black Widow’ must release before the ‘Falcon and Winter Soldier’ show can premiere. This means that many storylines matter and the order by which they play out is affected by the order of release. On top of the films that are being discussed, there is also the fact that there are many others that people are trying to focus on that aren’t getting the attention people have been hoping for as of late.
Among those movies are the ones that Marvel Studios and Disney now have all of the rights to and that is the X-Men and Fantastic Four titles. These titles have been some of the most sought after by Disney because they are some of the most popular IP’s that FOX held before they were bought out by Disney. The fact remains that they are easily among some of the most popular titles for the MCU to now have their hands on and this has led to many now speculating how they will add those new additions to the already established MCU. This is something that many people have worried about with some of the upcoming titles because of the addition of ‘Blade’ and other characters who would have a huge impact on the universe. How exactly would they be able to handle the inclusion of mutants into the MCU with the X-Men and how would this play out in the future.
This same thing can be said about the Fantastic Four, but the X-Men is a much more complicated premise to try and establish as it would completely change the world order in-universe. With the X-Men being a part of the universe, a certain percentage of the population would actually be considered mutants which would mean that it would be difficult for them to incorporate this idea into future films. During the big Investors Day for Disney recently, it was announced that the Fantastic Four would be joining the MCU faster than people imagined they would. Kevin Feige, head for Marvel Studios, announced that Spider-Man director Jon Watts would actually be working on a ‘Fantastic Four’ film which would introduce them to the now established MCU. This is something that no one would have expected this soon, but it is a welcome surprise as people were thinking that their introduction would still be a ways off.
So why are they choosing this as the chance for the introductions of the characters to the MCU while they are shafting the X-Men for the moment. This can very easily be drawn back to the fact that they are not sure of how to properly introduce the characters and mutants as a whole to the universe any time soon especially with so many other films still in the works. While nothing other than the director has been announced for the Fantastic Four movie, we already know that introducing them in-universe would end up being a much easier task by comparison. There have been three Fantastic Four based films made by Fox in the past and none of them have really done all that well and, on top of that, those movies mostly stood on their own. This means that a proper MCU reboot for the characters would not be as difficult as people anticipated it to be as the characters would not need to go through much to make them viable for the universe.
On top of it not being too difficult to make the characters viable for the new universe they would be in, they could even use this as a set up for the future X-Men introductions. While not mutants in the same way as the X-Men or other mutants in-universe, the Fantastic Four are one way for those characters to introduce the idea of mutants to the MCU. Even if this isn’t the case, they are still an easier set of characters to introduce overall, therefore they are a good choice for characters to add now. Needless to say, all of this information is very exciting and even though we may not be getting the X-Men anytime soon, we know that we are bound to get them eventually. The introduction of the Fantastic Four is a step forward which shows that they are ready to introduce more previously Fox-owned heroes to the MCU. Therefore, these characters are a good stepping stone for bringing many other heroes into the MCU eventually, giving us an even more expansive MCU.