One of the biggest mysteries surrounding the recent reboot of Fantastic 4 – besides why it was so goddamn terrible – was what happened to a certain key scene from the trailers, featuring Jamie Bell‘s The Thing.
ICYMI, the film’s trailer featured The Thing diving out of a plane en route to messing a bunch of evil henchmen up. It offered a brief glimpse of action sorely missing in the movie itself, and many people wondered where the hell it went.
(You can see snippets of the scene around the 2:20 mark here; Miles Teller‘s “two minutes” line is actually in reference to something totally different in the finished product).
Details of what happened have recently come to light via EW, who revealed that the scene was part of an early version of the film, that director Josh Trank alluded to in his infamous, now-deleted Tweeet about how the studio messed his vision up.
If you saw the film, you may recall a bit, soon after the titular four get their powers, that cuts to black before a ‘One Year Later’ title card appears. The Thing’s big, deleted action sequence was meant to take place directly after that.
Per EW, the original plan was to cut to a Chechen rebel camp at night, and see soldiers pause and turn their faces to the sky as a large, imposing object drops from a plane and lands with a thud. Cue smoke, bullets, then:
As The Thing lurches into view, bullets spark and ping off his impenetrable exterior.Rather than some elegant, balletic action sequence, The Thing moves slowly and deliberately. He’s in no hurry. The storytelling goal was to show the futility of firepower against him as he casually demolishes the terrorists. It’s a blue-collar kind of heroism.
American soldiers then flood into the camp, and The Thing lumbers sadly past them, a “heartsick warrior” making his way to a helicopter, to be airlifted off.
Sources close to the film say that the scene was not completely shot, but that Trank had planned it out meticulously, before budget cuts forced him to pare it right back.
A compromise was reached, say EW, in which the scene received limited finance, and a crew was sent to capture some shaky, hand-held footage, but Trank hated the result so much that the scene was pulled entirely.
This small snippet of information, if true, appears to be indicative of a troubled production, and sheds light on why the film’s second half, much of which was apparently reshot without Trank, jars so awkwardly with the first.
After Fantastic 4‘s box office failure, it was speculated that Fox might pull its planned sequel and replace it with Deadpool 2, but sources close to the studio have confirmed that it’s definitely going ahead, so … good luck with that?
via EW
