Ms. Marvel, Mr. Fantastic, and the Limits of Elastic Body CGI
Making these powers look convincing? It's a stretch.
SPOILER ALERT: This post discusses a spoiler character from ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’.
Fans of Kamala Khan were surprised to see a major change in the character’s powers in her Disney+ series debut. In the comics, Kamala’s powers come from an explosion that activates the Inhuman genes in her DNA. Her powers manifest as “morphogenetics”, meaning that that she can stretch, expand, or compress her body. The comics explain this power as Kamala “sharing her mass through time with different versions of herself.” Kamala’s elastic body abilities mirror Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic’s own stretchy abilities.
But while these powers work on the page and in animation, live-action “embiggening” is a bigger challenge. The Disney+ series will see Ms. Marvel gain her powers from a set of bangles which give her purple laser-like powers to project and shape as she needs. This is partly because Inhumans haven’t been introduced into the MCU yet, and partly because this type of special effect still leans towards the cartoonish.
In an interview with Empire, Kevin Feige discussed the change in Kamala’s powers saying,
“We adapt the comics; it’s not an exact translation. [Kamala] came about in a very specific time within the comic-book continuity. She is now coming into a very specific time within the MCU continuity. And those two things didn’t match. What we will learn about where those powers come from, and how they come about, is specific to the MCU. You will see great comic splash panels in some of our action sequences. If you want big, giant hands and arms, well they’re here in spirit, if not in stretchy, plastic-type ways.”
Several films and television adaptations have tried to capture Mr. Fantastic’s abilities, with various degrees of goofiness. Tim Story’s 2005 Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer leaned into the cartoonish nature of Reed Richards’ powers. Tobey Maguire’s dancing in Spider-Man 3 gets a lot of grief, but who could forget this ridiculous dance sequence from Silver Surfer?
20th Century Fox took another stab at the Fantastic Four in 2015, where director Josh Trank hid Reed’s (Miles Teller) powers in dimly lit, quickly edited scenes. The resulting effects were still less than impressive, and struggled against the film’s dour and self-serious tone.
Most recently, we saw John Krasinski make his MCU debut as Reed Richards, a member of the Illuminati on Earth-838. Reed and the rest of the Illuminati team up to fight the Scarlet Witch, who quickly unravels Reed like a ball of yarn, killing him. It’s a classic bit of Sam Raimi body horror, but still darkly comedic.
And Marvel is once more returning to the Fantastic Four, with an upcoming film planned, although Krasinski has yet to confirm that he’ll reprise his role (or direct). But what will this new version of elastic CGI look like? While Marvel has spearheaded plenty of CGI breakthroughs, this may be their toughest nut to crack. Or stretch?
(image: Marvel Comics/2oth Century Fox)
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