Reed Richards' stretching in The Fantastic Four: First Steps was largely inspired by Marvel and DC artist Alex Ross and Spider-Man, says director Matt Shakman.
"Stretching is challenging. People understand invisibility, they can understand being on fire. You can even understand a big rock guy, but stretching is tough because there's nothing in our world that does that," the filmmaker, whose previous credits include Game of Thrones, The Boys, and WandaVision, tells GamesRadar+.
"Octopuses can kind of squeeze through tiny spots or whatever. But how do you do something that no one can do? You don't have a parallel for it in the natural world, and also, it's easier to do in comic books and probably in animation than it is to do in live action. So that was tricky, for sure."
Starring Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, and Pedro Pascal as Mister Fantastic, The Fantastic Four: First Steps sees Marvel's First Family face off against the Silver Surfer and Galactus. Obviously, the quartet want to save Earth from the Devourer of Worlds, but there's a bigger reason they're so desperate to stop him, and that's to keep Sue and Reed's newborn baby Franklin safe.
"We approached it knowing we wanted to respect physics," Shakman continues, after we ask which of the heroes' superpowers was the hardest to bring to life. "So if he's going to stretch his arm, he's going to need to counterbalance, right? He's going to need to conserve some of his mass, because he can't just invent mass. So if his arm is getting longer, his hips and his waist are getting smaller, his legs are getting thinner, you know? We wanted to try to think about it that way. We also wanted to make sure there was always anatomy present, so it didn't become a tube; that there was always an elbow and a wrist and a shoulder.
"There's a famous comic artist named Alex Ross who I looked at a lot, who has done some pretty wonderful Reed Richards drawings and paintings over the years," he goes on. "He manages to keep an athleticism to it and a kind of heroic proportion, while also maintaining the stretchiness, which is a key part of who he is. So how do you make stretching into something dynamic? He moves quickly when he's stretching in our film, so there's almost a Spider-Man quality to it, so he was helpful to look at too."
While it's not yet been confirmed that Tom Holland's Peter Parker will be seen in upcoming team-up movie Avengers: Doomsday, there's every chance Pascal's Reed, who is set to be its main protagonist, will run into the webslinger in the future. If and when that happens, it'd be interesting to see the pair swing around the city together.
For now, The Fantastic Four: First Steps releases in UK cinemas on July 24, before arriving in theaters across the pond the following day. While we wait, check out all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows on the way, as well as our guide on how to watch the Marvel movies in order.
