One of the big draws of next week’s Fantastic Four: First Steps is seeing Marvel’s First Family in the retrofuturist Earth-828. They’re Earth’s only heroes in that dimension, and before Galactus shows up, it sounds like they’ve done a pretty good job protecting the planet. They might even be too good at it, which is why they’re in their own universe to begin with.
During a recent MovieWeb interview, director Matt Shakman discussed how the Four were made “in this time of optimism during the space race, [where] people were dreaming of stars,” so it made sense to put them in a dimension inspired by the decade their comics began publication. But he also admitted the universe’s other purpose: it got the team away from Thanos and the larger Infinity Saga. Had they been in the MCU version of Earth-616 with the other superheroes, he said they’d have easily helped “solve the problem.”So instead of contorting a reason for them not to be in the earlier movies, a la Eternals, it was deemed easier to give them their own, separate Earth.
Lest you think this is just Shakman glazing the team he’s in charge of, previous MCU projects like What If…? and Doctor Strange 2 have shown alt-universe heroes seemingly taking care of Thanos more efficiently than the 616 Avengers did. Sure, this is Marvel working around their former rights issues with Fox, but it’s also easy to imagine the Fantastic Four really would’ve significantly lightened the Thanos load for our heroes, since Reed’s one of the smartest people ever and Susan’s a powerhouse all her own.
Once the Fantastic Four have settled properly into the MCU after everything in the two Avengers movies gets sorted out, we might see how they adjust to no longer being the only superheroes in town and how that changes the way they operate.
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