The 2015 Fantastic Four movie was a critical failure and box office bomb, but there’s still a way that the MCU can repair the damage it did to the team’s legacy.
Fantastic Four (or Fant4astic as some of the posters read) was Fox’s gritty reimagining of Marvel’s First Family from Chronicle director Josh Trank, starring Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kata Mara, and Jamie Bell. It shifted away from the team’s signature blue jumpsuits and fun, science-fiction adventures for a super-serious tone that occasionally veered into body horror territory.
It delivered a painfully generic threat from Doctor Doom (Toby Kebbell), who tries to destroy Earth via a portal to the Negative Zone. Before the film’s release, Trank infamously tweeted (and deleted) an explanation, saying: “A year ago, I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though.”
While the MCU brought the heroes back to their colorful outfits in 2025’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, there’s still a way that Marvel Studios can repair the damage done by the 2015 movie.
The MCU needs to cast Miles Teller as The Maker
Yes, Miles Teller needs to play a villainous version of Mr. Fantastic: The Maker. The character debuted in the Ultimate line of comics where he started out as the heroic Reed Richards fans know, but he becomes twisted after his marriage proposal was rejected by Sue Storm, and the Fantastic Four also breakup.
To fast-forward a lot of alternative universe chaos, he essentially becomes obsessed with restoring the Ultimate Universe in a way that he sees fit. To put it bluntly, the Maker has become such a huge threat to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (and the rest of the multiverse) that he’s on the same level as Thanos, Doctor Doom, and Galactus.
The events of Ultimate Invasion see the Maker rewrite the typical Marvel timeline so that he rules the world of Earth-6160, and some heroes never existed at all.
Now, we’re not suggesting that the MCU throw this storyline into the mix with Doomsday and Secret Wars on the horizon, but bringing Teller back as the Maker would be a great way of acknowledging the 2015 Fantastic Four movie and giving him the darker backstory from the comics. Given how the film saw Teller’s hero go on the run from the government, it’s easy to imagine that it might start his descent into villainy.
Not only that, but since Doomsday and Secret Wars will undoubtedly cross over into other universes, it would be easy to fold the Maker into the story. Remember, Kevin Feige has already suggested a soft reboot after Secret Wars, probably because Robert Downey Jr’s Doctor Doom will mess with the existence of all the different universes and timelines.
By introducing the Maker in the next two Avengers movies, Feige could give the new MCU an overarching big bad that could work quietly in the background, just like the way Thanos did over the first few phases.
It’s clear from the interview on Radio Andy that Teller enjoyed getting the chance to play Mr. Fantastic, but he’s certainly not oblivious that the film wasn’t very good, and what better way of turning its reputation around than by becoming the next great MCU villain?
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