Roger
Corman screwed it up. Tim Story screwed it up (twice!). Josh Trank
screwed it up.
Clearly,
it's way too easy to screw up making a Fantastic Four movie. There
may be a curse involved. So how to get around that? Easy: You set out
with the intent
to
make a Fantastic Four movie outside normal canon. That way, the
screwing up gets
screwed up,
and you end up with a successful movie after all! It's a case where
using a double negative is the only way to go.
So,
here's my plan:
First,
we're not going to use those silly "superpowers" at all.
That clandestine space launch, the cosmic rays, all of that is out
the window. Instead, the story will take place before any of that
happens. That's right, my FF movie will be a prequel!
If
you go all the way back to the original comics from the early 1960's,
there's interesting back story given to the characters. Both Reed
Richards and Ben Grimm fought in World War II. Reed was an undercover
operative in Europe, working with the Resistance against the Nazis,
while Ben was a fighter pilot, doing his own bit against
Hitler.
Nazis
and Hitler! It's a foolproof scenario. If the story starts to lag,
punch a Nazi. Works every time. (See: the Indiana Jones movies. Nazis
involved? Whoo-hoo! No Nazis? Meh.)
So,
we'll have Reed and Ben in Europe during WWII. But Reed's on the
ground, Ben's in the air. What kind of story do we need to get them
together? And where are Sue and Johnny Storm, and how do we make them
part
of this story? Especially since Johnny, even going by the original
continuity, wouldn't have been born yet.
Well,
let's just dump Johnny Storm, then. Fortunately, there's another
character from Marvel backhistory who can serve in his
place....
Among
the various versions of Fantastic Four history and backstory that
have been retconned, alternate-Earthed, or conveniently ignored over
the past six decades, I'd borrow several pieces and make them my own.
What? Of course I can screw around with canon and continuity. It's now established in the Marvel Universe that there are multiple universes, with multiple versions of the same characters, but different, each existing in their own timelines. It means you can do pretty much anything you want to do with characters and canon, It's just one more variant in the multiverse, and only Marvel's lawyers can stop you!
Let us proceed:
Pre
America's entry into WWII, Sue Storm is the brainy teen-age daughter
of Franklin Storm, a professor who leads a program to recruit and
develop young scientific prodigies to aid the American government.
(Howard Stark is involved in this somewhere, you betcha.) But because
of her youth (about age 14-15 at this time) and because she's a girl
(girl cooties! eek!), she's not taken seriously, even though she's
brilliant enough to qualify for the program if she were male.
Said
prodigies are boarded in Professor Storm's large home while attending
their advanced classes at Big Brain University, and include Reed
Richards, who shares the room being vacated by Victor von Doom; Doom,
son of Latverian aristocrats, is returning to Europe to fight the
Nazis who've invaded and occupied Latveria. Ben Grimm is also around
Big Brain U, on a football scholarship while he pursues an
engineering degree and races fast planes in his spare time. (The team
motto of BBU's football team is, of course, "It's Clobberin'
Time!") He also teaches Sue to fly a plane; through Sue, he
meets Reed, who becomes a good friend.
Hah!
See what I did there? "Invisible" Sue, "Clobberin'
Time" Ben? I'm taking away those superpowers and replacing them
with metaphors!
Because
I am one of those high-falutin' artsy-fartsy literary fuckers. Who
likes to punch Nazis.
[Note
to self: Have some "High-Falutin' Artsy-Fartsy Literary Fucker"
business cards printed up.]
Fast-forward
a few years. America is in the midst of WWII. Professor Franklin has
been recruited into a top-secret program somewhere in the American
Southwest, effectively ending the program at Big Brain U. Students
have scattered, and most have enlisted, been drafted, or are working
for the war effort.
Sue
followed up on her unofficial flight training, and is now a WASP. No,
this has nothing to do with Ant-Man. Women Air Service Pilots served
to release male pilots for overseas and combat duty, by serving as
instructors and trainers, and by flying newly-built planes from
factories to military bases in North America. Regular (male) flight
crews then flew the planes to oversea bases. So we need a way for Sue
to be flying planes to Europe, counter to actual history.
Ben
Grimm is an American fighter pilot based in England. (This is a
change from original canon, where he flew in the Pacific side of the
war.) He has stayed in touch with Sue and Reed by mail, and they try
to meet up in London whenever their schedules coincide. Reed's the
one most often unavailable, for classified reasons.
Reed
has told Ben he's a paper-pusher in an office somewhere in the war
bureaucracy. Reed is lying out his wazoo. In actuality, Reed makes
clandestine undercover missions into Europe to try and extract
Allied-friendly scientists and/or recover their research, or to steal
or destroy Germany's own scientific programs and scientists, and to
lend his scientific expertise to Resistance units. (Another Howard
Stark idea, most likely.) Reed is actually very good at things like
making IEDs ("two paperclips and a ham sandwich"), or
turning the barbed-wire fence of a POW camp into a radio
receiver/transmitter, as well as other skills he's picked up.
So, let's have a go at what sort of film synopsis might exist for:
(Because this is pretty long -- about 7500 words -- I'm putting a jump break here.)