In the early 2000s, superhero movies were on their way to becoming the dominant force in pop culture for the first time. There had previously been one-off hits such as Tim Burton's "Batman," but the success of 2000's "X-Men" put Marvel on the mainstream map for the first time, having built off the popularity of 1998's "Blade." Sam Raimi and Sony's "Spider-Man" took things to another level in 2002, and from there, it was off to the races. 20th Century Fox then followed 2003's "X2: X-Men United" with
director Tim Story's "Fantastic Four," which became a solid hit for the studio. It also very nearly created a shared on-screen Marvel universe ... sort of.
Ioan Gruffudd portrayed Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic, in Story's 2005 adaptation of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's superheroic comic book family. Jessica Alba co-starred as Sue Storm, with future Captain America Chris Evans playing Johnny Storm, and Michael Chiklis portraying The Thing. "Fantastic Four" hit theaters just as the "X-Men" franchise was blossoming, with "X2" becoming a massive box office hit and "X-Men: The Last Stand" firmly in the works. That being the case, Fox saw an opportunity to have some fun.
In a deleted scene (which you can see below), Gruffudd's Reed is shown very briefly morphing into Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. Kind of. It's a bizarre moment and, looking at it now, it's not hard to see why it wound up on the cutting room floor. In an interview with Vulture, Gruffudd discussed the scene 20 years after the fact. Here's what he had to say about it:
"I don't know why that didn't make it into the film. Paying homage to the great Hugh Jackman was quite a thrill because I absolutely love him as an actor and his Wolverine. I'm glad that it has a chance to exist somewhere. That was a reshoot, and I was in Vancouver on a soundstage and Jessica was in New York, so we weren't actually together, but we look perfectly in sync."
Read more: Every Marvel Character Locked Up In The Raft
Fox Lowkey Tried To Do A Shared Marvel Universe 20 Years Ago
It doesn't seem like this scene was something that was meant to be included from the beginning and sounds like it was a little thrown together. The CGI is rough, while the moment itself doesn't add much to the movie, other than technically establishing a shared universe between the "X-Men" and "Fantastic Four" franchises. While the notion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be born in 2008 with the release of "Iron Man," this would have been a novel idea at the time. It's easy to see why someone at Fox would be attracted to the concept at the time.
"For a brief second, yes. That's a good pub-quiz question," Gruffudd added when the interviewer pointed out that he technically played both Reed Richards and Wolverine.
For what it's worth, this wouldn't have been the first big, mainstream Marvel crossover outside of the comics. 1988's TV movie "The Incredible Hulk Returns" united Hulk and Thor on screen decades before they would come together in movies like "The Avengers" and "Thor: Ragnarok." But having big superheroes meet in a major motion picture? That was still a bold enterprise in the early 2000s.
Disney eventually purchased Fox in 2019, which effectively ended the latter's versions of the "X-Men" and "Fantastic Four" franchises as we know them (though Josh Trank's 2015 "Fantastic Four" was a catastrophic bomb that had already killed that property for a good, long while). In any event, Fox never ended up merging characters from these two universes together in the nearly 20 years that it was producing Marvel movies. Was that a missed opportunity? Or a blessing? We'll never know, but this scene is about as close as we got.
You can grab 2005's "Fantastic Four" on DVD from Amazon.
If you're looking for the easiest way to keep up with all the major movie and TV news, why not sign up to our free newsletter?
Read the original article on SlashFilm.
