The Fantastic Four: First Steps had a monumental storytelling task — it didn’t have to establish just one superhero, but four. What’s more, these four superheroes inhabited a previously unseen Earth different from our own. Even The Avengers had previous Marvel movies to lean on, but this MCU outing introduced a superheroic team from scratch.
The solution was an immersive intro in disguise as a retrospective on the Fantastic Four’s many successes in their first four years, a whistle-stop tour of the team’s constant line of defense against supervillains, plus Reed’s scientific advances and Sue’s diplomatic efforts. However, large chunks of these efforts — including whole characters — were left on the cutting room floor, and now we’re starting to see bits and pieces of the original vision.
