How Would You Do the Fantastic Four?

[Rogar Demonblud]

Reed having to catch up on about 30 generations of scientific and technical advances will sideline him fairly well.

[Lt-Murgen]

You could use Captain America's little "get a life" thing at the end of Endgame as a jumping off point.

He went back and had a family with Peggy.
He couldn't help himself, and got Hydra out of the early SHIELD. So none of that happened.
But, as a side effect, Pym left in disgust and Howard was disgraced out of the weapons business. So no Ant-Man, no Iron-Man.
SHIELD still needs new scientists, however, and taps Reed Richards and crew.
Now it is Reed and associates playing with the space stone- so no need for aliens, no Captain Marvel. The explosion is how they get their powers.

But then when Captain America time-jumped again to another timeline, they have to go and find him- or so they think.

[Psyren]

Reed having to catch up on about 30 generations of scientific and technical advances will sideline him fairly well.

Why? He's perhaps the sharpest mind in all of Marvel; picking up on modern technology quickly would only serve to better demonstrate the quality of his mind. For recent examples, Star Trek Discovery had their crew get catapulted a millennium into the future, and picked up on the hyper-advanced technoology of the new era quickly and in a credible way. Or for an MCU example, Doctor Strange mastered decades of magical theory after only being at Kamar-Taj for a few weeks/months. People can just be that smart, especially science-fantasy comic book people who are geniuses even by those standards.

I wouldn't. I'd make a Dr. Doom story.

Same as how Infinity War couldn't possibly do the story of every single character within it...but it *could* follow Thanos. And by following Thanos's path and telling us his tale, it made for a pretty good movie.

You still have the F4 in there, obviously, because they're relevant to Doom, but this gives you one origin story instead of four, one set of character decisions, and far more actual progress, because honestly, once the F4 get into their tower, they...don't develop much more. Doom ends up going from a college student to running a county, and that could absolutely be spun into an interesting tale.

I want to watch the tale of a man who sees power, the mess the world is in, and decides that he's the tyrant for the job. Someone pissed that every other superhero gets infinite power dropped in their lap, and then does nothing useful with it, and works his way to getting power the hard way.

But for the love of god, don't give us four origin stories bolted to ben moping, followed by an obligatory Dr Doom fight scene.

Edit: I see I'm not alone in this. Exxxcellent. We need more proper supervillain tales.

I agree to an extent. They definitely should either start with Doom or with the FF, not both in the same movie again.

Doom is harder to start with though because, unlike Thanos, we didn't have a pile of movies prior to his movie (Infinity War) where we could explain all the folks that would eventually take him down and how they all relate to him (the central Gauntlet/Stones macguffins.) So while you pitch an interesting angle for Doom - going from brilliant college student to techno-wizard authoritarian - that alone is not enough to make him relatable or compelling. His relationship to Reed is what does that, so I'm in favor of establishing Reed first since his motives of protecting his family and bettering mankind are much moreso (i.e. relatable and compelling) - especially when the two clash.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Incidentally, I've been rereading old Fantastic Four comics, and while they've fought a collection of mad scientists (incidentally, Red Ghost and his Super Apes do canonically share the source of their powers with the FF, so if you want a rival scientist with a shared origin, there you go, filmmakers), some Skrull, a couple of M-Men (Miracle Man and Molecule Man), a persistent and horny fishman, and the Puppet Master, Cosmic Threats From Beyond The Stars are pretty thin on the ground so far, being limited to (arguably) Molecule Man (originated on Earth, but the Watcher did pop up to warn the FF about him), and a couple of immature green and purple alien types.

I gather there have been some hints in-MCU in Namor’s direction, but I also gather there are some rights issues with him. I think Universal has distribution rights for Namor, same as the Hulk. Though if it’s exactly the same maybe they could use him as long as it’s not a solo movie...? Movie rights are not my area of expertise.

[Rogar Demonblud]

AIUI, Universal has the rights to Namor, period. There's probably some horse trading that could be done, similar to that with Sony and Spiderman.

[Manga Shoggoth]

MovieBob did a whole 3-part pitch for this that I really loved. So I'm just going to point at it and say "pretty much that, that's what I'd do."

There was another part!?! OK, that's me sorted out for videos this evening.