This article contains mild spoilers for "Fantastic Four: First Steps."
The first scene in Matt Shakman's "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" sees Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) learning that she is pregnant. She tells her husband Reed (Pedro Pascal), and he is elated — they had been trying for a while — but also struck with trepidation. Both Sue and Reed are superpowered individuals who absorbed an unhealthy dose of cosmic rays on a space voyage many years before, and Reed was worried that their altered
DNA would affect the health of their child. All through the first half of "First Steps," Reed conducts multiple medical tests on the fetus. Also, because Sue can turn invisible, she and Reed are able to look in on the baby directly to visually monitor its development. Reed and Sue also panic as they build cribs and baby-proof their retro-futuristic home.
Sue is nine months pregnant when Earth is visited by an eerie metallic alien from beyond the stars. The Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) warns Earth that it has been marked for death; the entire planet is going to be physically consumed by the ever-hungry space deity Galactus (Ralph Ineson). Although on the cusp of labor, Sue treks into space with Reed, Johnny (Jonathan Quinn), and Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) to confront Galactus. The confrontation doesn't go well, and the Fantastic Four have to flee the angered space god in their spaceship, the Silver Surfer on their heels. They escape, Ben has to pilot the ship — slingshot-like — around a neutron star. This, naturally, is when Sue begins going into labor.
Their baby, Franklin, is born in zero gravity as the ship is fleeing angry aliens. It's a dramatic start to the baby's life.
That wasn't always the story for "First Steps," though. According to Shakman, who recently spoke with EW, there was a draft of the script where Franklin was born in the very first scene. He moved it because he felt the birth could be made more dramatic.
Read more: Every Marvel Character Locked Up In The Raft
There Was A Draft Of First Steps Where Franklin Was Born At The Beginning
Shakman said that Franklin's birth was, for a large portion of production, the opening salvo of "First Steps." Shakman shifted it later into the movie not just because he had a great idea for the birth scene itself, but because he felt it would be human — and funny — to see superheroes setting up baby gates and outlet protectors in their super-apartment. In his words:
"For a long time, the baby was born at the beginning of the movie. [...] And then we realized it would be wonderful to see the baby-proofing and the preparation and to see them get ready for the child. So moving Franklin's birth to the midpoint was something that we decided to do, which also then allowed me to combine it with some of these other moments."
Not that Franklin's birth at the beginning of the movie was humdrum. It seems that the film used to open with a spacebound rescue on board a space station. Franklin, in Shakman's eyes, was always going to be born in space. As he said:
"Franklin was always born in space [but] he used to be born at a space station rescue at the opening of the movie. So having him born in space while being chased by the Silver Surfer while slingshotting around a neutron star, it just felt like taking the already stressful birth idea and just magnified it by a thousand ... a very Fantastic Four thing to do. But also it felt like a nod little bit to '2001' too. This idea of a space baby, he's got the Power Cosmic, he's born in space."
Franklin isn't quite the same as the Star Child from Stanley Kubrick's seminal 1968 sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey," but he did possess an unknown and eerie cosmic force in his little baby body that Galactus recognized as the Power Cosmic. The true meaning of that phrase isn't explored too deeply in "First Steps," though, leaving it for any potential sequels.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
