The Fantastic Four: First Steps wore its comic book inspirations on its sleeve, with the work of Jack Kirby and Alex Ross clearly crucial in establishing the reboot's visual style.
Ryan Meinerding, a Character Designer, Creative Director, and Head of Visual Development for Marvel Studios, recently took to Instagram to share one of his keyframes featuring Marvel's First Family. It's a beautiful piece of artwork, and one that appears to take some cues from Ross' comic book work.
"Fantastic Four together! This was a keyframe I did this early in the process, trying to get a tone of the movie from setting the characters against a retro future city," Meinerding wrote. "I didn’t have the suit designs approved when I first did the keyframe, those were adjusted later."
While The Fantastic Four: First Steps hasn't soared as high at the box office as Marvel Studios likely hoped, it's eyeing a $500 million total worldwide, making it a moderate hit.
Crucially, these characters have been redeemed in the eyes of moviegoers, and their stories will continue in Avengers: Doomsday next December. Assuming Marvel's First Family plays a key role in that and Avengers: Secret Wars, there will likely be enough interest in them to justify moving forward with a sequel.
Recently, The Cosmic Circus reported that future Fantastic Four movies will likely see the heroes "adapting to their new world and environment," and indicated that a "reset" is planned for Galactus and Silver Surfer.
We also have some additional pieces by Ji Hye Lee and Pablo Dominguez. The former created a keyframe showing Mole Man's arrest, with the latter dreaming up some Alien-inspired interiors for Galactus' massive Worldship.
Set against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world, Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps introduces Marvel’s First Family—Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) as they face their most daunting challenge yet.
Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, they must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). And if Galactus’ plan to devour the entire planet and everyone on it weren’t bad enough, it suddenly gets very personal.
Also appearing are Natasha Lyonne as Rachel Rozman, Paul Walter Hauser as Harvey Elder/Mole Man, Sarah Niles as Lynne Nichols, and Mark Gatiss as Ted Gilbert. John Malkovich was set to play Red Ghost, but was cut due to time constraints.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is directed by Matt Shakman from a screenplay by Josh Friedman and Eric Pearson and Jeff Kaplan & Ian Springer.
The movie is now playing in theaters.