It’s commemoratin’ time. 20 years after Marvel’s First Family took their first steps onto the big screen in 2005’s Fantastic Four — with Ioan Gruffudd as elastic team leader Reed Richards, Jessica Alba as invisible woman Susan Storm, Chris Evans as hot-headed Johnny Storm, and Michael Chiklis as rock-solid Ben Grimm, who teamed up to thwart the plans of Julian McMahon‘s metal-skinned Doctor Doom — the four astronauts are boldly going where no FF movie has gone before: the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“I want to wish the cast and crew of First Steps the best of luck and success. I admire these actors and look forward to seeing them take on these iconic roles,” Chiklis tweeted of The Fantastic Four: First Steps castmates Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.
Chiklis, who reprised his role as the Thing in 2007’s F4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, thanked fans for “all the Fantastic Four love [these] last couple of months during the run up to the new F4 flick” and included the hashtag “F4Forever.”
Evans made a surprise cameo as a Human Torch variant in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, making the former Captain America actor the lone Fantastic Four star to reprise their role in the MCU. The quartet of Pascal, Kirby, Quinn, and Moss-Bachrach are all set to return in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, which producer Kevin Feige says will “reset” — not reboot — the interconnected cinematic universe launched with 2008’s Iron Man.
Chiklis’ Thing successor previously told EW that with First Steps, Marvel Studios is doing their, ahem, own thing.
“I haven’t seen those movies,” Moss-Bachrach said. “When I got hired to do this, it didn’t feel like that would be productive to watch those movies. People ask me about ‘How is this different from those other ones?’ and I don’t think it’s helpful to make something in opposition to something else.”
“We’re really just making our own specific thing,” The Bear actor continued. “This is no discredit to those movies. But we’re telling our own very specific story. Like any great play, you can cast a play with four people, and then recast it with four different people, and it’s the same play, but it’s a completely different experience.”
The Fantastic Four: First Steps — also starring Paul Walter Hauser as Harvey Elder/Mole Man, Julia Garner as Shalla-Bal/Silver Surfer, and Ralph Ineson as Galactus — is only in theaters July 25.
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