Script Notes for "The Fantastic Four: First Steps"
Our Sr. Director of HR, Amanda Nowak, actually scribed the first draft of the new FF blockbuster. Not a lot made it to the final script, but here are the studio notes!
— Thanks for your draft of Fantastic Four: First Steps (hope you agree to our removing the quote marks from around “Fantastic” in your version of the title). To be frank, it seems a fairly significant rewrite will likely be necessary—if for nothing else than we feel strongly that Susan Storm-Richards (the Invisible Woman) seems to be by far and away the main focus of the story. BTW you do realize there’s a fourth character (Johnny Storm, Susan’s younger brother and the Human Torch) of this hero team, correct?
— The team’s ongoing actual or feigned confusion over the concept of “clobberin’ time,” resulting in what Susan calls “Fucking flakiness,” makes for a bit of a soft third act we felt. Particularly as this precludes the team from ever being in the same place at the same time in the entire script.
— “Constantly canceling the last fucking minute” is also just not a typical theme we’d explore—especially to the depths you do—in an MCU film (cost hundreds of millions of dollars, want people to see it, and so on).
— Having Susan, upon being bombarded by cosmic rays, appear to age 5 years and thus “might as well be fucking invisible” (as Susan puts it to her mother during one of their 7(!) scenes of them crying on the phone and smoking cigarettes) is an interesting take.
And as astounded as you have Ben Grimm act when she unleashes this “power” (“Wowza! You’re slightly less attractive than you were! It’s ignorin’ your value as a human time!”), it still didn’t really sell it for us in the same way as if Susan could turn actually invisible. Or again, if Johnny Storm existed and, as an extension of that, was the Human Torch. (We can’t emphasis enough that we’d really like to explore having all four heros in the film. We think it makes for a nice mathematical elegance with the name Fantastic Four.)
— We don’t feel “male gaze” really resonates as a power per se. Yes, Dr. Doom uses it to “see” and thus flatter Susan at the Coldplay concert so he can be seen dancing very close with her. This then to cause great marital strife between her and Reed. But this ordeal turn of the second act doesn’t really land when Reed, seeing this moment online the next morning, merely re-posts it on Facebook with a laugh emoji and goes back to Wordle. It just doesn’t add much to the story, we don’t feel.
— We’d prefer a bit more scenes that add to the story.
— Susan’s vibrator. A couple points: (a) It’s in the script at all. So, “no” we think sums up our thoughts on that. (b) It’s called the Purple Torch. You’re so close to having the Human Torch in the script. Please do see if you can push that extra inch to include him.
— With that, do you think you could find room for Reed Richards to actually use his power (beyond the single scene of him stretching his finger slightly to grab his car fob on the dresser)?
His power can (and have throughout decades of comics, cartoons, and films) lend itself to some very visual action set pieces and might help move the story along. No, it’s not great that Susan has to take on a second job because her husband is “Taking time to be sure I really find something that uses my talents.” But it doesn’t, to us, qualify as the type of good vs. evil tension audiences would be looking for.
And the scenes (yes, “scenes” plural) of him on LinkedIn ignoring job offers for his skills as a scientist, and of his adding “Looking for stretchy work” to his profile pic won’t likely play very well on IMAX.
— Susan’s insistence that the rest of the group wear a simple “4” pin on whatever they’re wearing precludes the team from wearing the blue uniforms we think audiences would hope for. Susan’s insistence that “I’m not going around wearing fucking skin tight outfit on the regular. During my workdays? You kidding? Did men design these things?”
— During the spa getaway Susan takes Reed on to attemt to reinvigorate their romantic spark, we did actually enjoy Susan’s sexy baby voice bit in the bedroom scene—this could give Pedro Pascal some good use of his mischievious smirk.
We think it’s perfect if you just trim off the part of that dialogue where she goes back to her regular voice and says, “You probably actually get turned on by an adult woman talking like a fucking baby.”
— We finally gather, about midway through act 2, that you’ve relegated Dr. Doom to being just a lecherous Coldplay fan and instead, made the main villain of the film (again, one we’d like people to see) “Life.” To us, that’s a little broad and innocous to read at all as a character, much less a main character. Even with the addition of Life’s evil sidekick, Bras.
— Okay, in the final act, as Susan finds a new romantic partner who loves her for who she is and makes the men of the group recognize their “blind spots” (a concept Dave, Luke, Sergio, and I don’t quite follow), and brings back the Netflix series Nailed It! to be better than ever, you have all the FF enjoy a show at the club that features a drag queen named The Torch. —Again, so so close. Could you please—You know what? Fine. She’s the fourth of the four.
— Oh, and Hilda, my assistant, told me you were in the elevator with us the other day at the Marvel building. She said you waved and said, “Hello. Have you read the script yet?” I vaguely remember some older lady in there but I guess I somehow missed you. Sorry!