In the very close future, Marvel’s first family will finally come home. It’s only four months before The Fantastic Four: First steps Beginning – the culmination of a long -standing desire for Marvel Studios president, Kevin Feige, brought the emblematic superhero team to the fold of the Marvel cinematographic universe. But in order to realize this future, the film returns to the past: putting everything in an alternative retro-futuristic component of the multiverse, another mid-20th century where artistic and science fiction shoulders of science fiction. And, as EmpireThe exclusive photos of the show, before they become the Fantastic Four, the gang – Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss -Bachrach) and Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) – were simply four extremely intelligent and capable astronauts, which launched in a perilous mission in space and accidentally in the process.
The film, says that director Matt Shakman, seeks to evoke the optimistic spirit of the 1950s and 1960s. “It is really the spirit of the space race”, explains Shakman. “It is a question of JFK and optimism. It is to imagine these four in space instead of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. This idea is that they are the most famous people in America, because they are adventurers, explorers, astronauts-not because they are superheroes. And they come back and they are superheroes in addition. But mainly they are astronauts.
Shakman – whose previous credit in the MCU directed just as retro Wandavision – wanted to ensure that the film feels from that moment, or at least a fantastic MCU version. “I really wanted to go with a version also based on a version of the space,” he says. “So no worm holes. Their technology is very retro-future, but they are also booster rockets. It is a combination of Marvel and Apollo 11.”
This philosophy has spread to the way in which the film itself was directed. “I really wanted it to have been done in 1965, the way Stanley Kubrick would have succeeded,” said Shakman. “Within reasonable limits.” There is, he said, an emphasis on the sets and practical accessories – production included a miniature of spaceship 14 feet high, similar to the way Kubrick used miniatures on 2001: A Space Odyssey – And Shakman and his team “used old lentils, and adopted an approach to cinema that feels more over time. Of course, we still have a lot of CG. ”
This film, it is clear, will feel different from other MCU entries. Significantly, there is separately from everything we have seen in the franchise so far. “We are our own universe,” says Shakman. “Which is wonderful and liberating. There are really no (other) superheroes. There are no Easter eggs. There is no running in Iron Man or other. It is only, in this universe. I love the interconnected Marvel universe, but we can do something so new and so different. Finally, this world will meet with other worlds – but for the moment it is our own corner. ”
This possible meeting of “other worlds” is, of course, an allusion to the next Avengers: DoomsdayThe next major Marvel team; The studio recently confirmed (via a series of chairs) that the first family would appear. The Fantastic Four Will, inevitably, will be a large part of the future of the MCU – but we have their past to hope, first.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps arrives in British cinemas from July 25
