The Fantastic Four: First Steps is only weeks away from arriving to the 2025 movies schedule, and there’s a lot to look forward to, including seeing this superhero team operate on their own Earth. These versions of Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm come from a 1960s-inspired retrofurturistic Earth where they’re the only superheroes. So their costumes arguably look more old-fashioned compared to what we’re used to seeing in the MCU, and First Steps costume supervisor Dan Grace talked to CinemaBlend about approaching these suits differently than what we’d get in an Avengers movie.
When CinemaBlend attended the set visit for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Dan Grace opened up about how it was necessary to strike a balance between making the costumes all look like they came from the same source, while at the same time adding in enough differences to make them stand out from one another. Even as someone who’s read Fantastic Four since he was a kid, it hadn’t thought about this in the context of the upcoming Marvel movie. As Grace explained:
Well, because they are a team, so slightly different to… sometimes when you are doing, I don't know, maybe like the Avengers or whatever, where they all come from different worlds and different things. One good thing was that they all have to have the same origin, the same technology, the same look, Because essentially all these suits are designed and built by Reed and Sue. So they're all going to have similarities. So yes, you want to bring in differences, but it's not like the difference between Iron Man and Doctor Strange. So the challenge, in that sense, was actually not how to make them all the same, but how to make them subtly different, and to represent their characters in a different way.
The Fantastic Four’s costumes coming from Reed Richards is nothing new, whether we’re talking comics or other media. Among his many accomplishments as the smartest man on Earth is fashioning suits made of unstable molecules that mimic the wearer’s physical properties, i.e. stretch along with Reed, turn invisible as Sue is and not catch fire when Johnny flames on. I’m curious to see how Vanessa Kirby’s Sue aided in the creative of the MCU’s Fantastic Four costumes alongside Pedro Pascal’s Reed, her husband.
And yet, as anyone who’s seen a Fantastic Four: First Steps trailer or pictures from the movie, the team’s suits don’t all look exactly identical. So while Dan Grace and his team didn’t need to worry about differentiating the costumes in the same way they would for the characters in an Avengers movie since First Steps takes place in another universe, one might argue this endeavor was more difficult. Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, The Thing and The Human Torch are all rocking the same blue and white color scheme with the same material, so it’s not like there are a lot of ways to add unique flourishes to each suit.
The costume designers pulled it off in the end, though, and we’ll see even more of these suits when The Fantastic Four: First Steps comes out on July 25. Of course, considering how often characters change costumes in the MCU, I won’t be surprised of the Fantastic Four are wearing new suits when they return in Avengers: Doomsday late next year. For now, let’s just enjoy these nice threads while they’re here.
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