The 2025 Fantastic Four movie will abandon one popular part of the original film franchise. This plot change will make this new installment stand out among the cinematic Fantastic Four stories of the past 20 years.
Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps will not retell the superhero team's origin story. Instead of revisiting how the team got their powers or their early struggles to understand them, the upcoming MCU movie will pick up four years after they've already become established heroes in their world.
Confirmed by Marvel, First Steps will avoid a full-on origin story, a major element in both the 2005 and 2015 Fox films.
While flashbacks may still appear, like a pre-Thing Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) in astronaut footage or scenes from an interview segment teased in the second trailer, this history won't be a primary focus of the narrative. The creative decision reflects Marvel's desire to jump straight into a new era for the characters, setting them up for future MCU crossovers like Avengers: Doomsday.
This pivot is significant because it signals a shift in Marvel's approach to legacy characters, especially after the mixed reception of past Fantastic Four adaptations. Rather than retread familiar ground, First Steps will explore new stories in a 1960s-inspired futuristic world where the team is already active. This positions the movie as a unique entry in the MCU, allowing for a deeper focus on character dynamics, their established stature as celebrities, and the cosmic threat of Galactus.
Premiering on July 25, 2025, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is directed by Matt Shakman (WandaVision) and stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Moss-Bachrach as the iconic team. The ensemble cast also includes Julia Garner, Paul Walter Hauser, Ralph Ineson, and Natasha Lyonne (who are being hidden in marketing).
Good Idea or Bad Idea: Skipping the Fantastic Four Origin Story
Skipping the Fantastic Four's origin story is not only a smart creative decision but also a necessary one. In 2025, general audiences do not need another drawn-out explanation of how the team got their powers since they have seen it twice before, and one could argue that neither attempt resonated.
Instead, First Steps gives viewers something they have never had on screen: a fully formed, experienced version of Marvel's First Family. That alone sets this film apart, and immersing audiences in a retro-futuristic world from the start allows the characters and their dynamics to shine without being weighed down by a familiar setup.
Read more about how 2025's Fantastic Four is doing something historic compared to prior MCU entries.
What is particularly clever is that the film does not abandon the Fantastic Four's origin entirely; it simply reframes it. The use of The Ted Gilbert Show TV segment glimpsed in the trailer offers a meta-narrative tool to give audiences the necessary backstory in a condensed and entertaining way. Combined with footage showing Ben Grimm before his transformation, it is clear that flashbacks will still be used to ground the characters emotionally.
This MCU technique worked brilliantly for Spider-Man: Homecoming, which skipped Peter Parker's (Tom Holland) origin yet never felt incomplete.
In a way, the new First Steps trailer's opening line, "Well, folks, we all know the story. Four brave astronauts head up into space... and come back forever changed," feels like Marvel directly acknowledging the audience's familiarity with the Fantastic Four.
It has been nearly two decades since we last saw an established team in Rise of the Silver Surfer from 2007, and First Steps finally delivers what fans have long been waiting for: not an introduction, but a new chapter.
