Fantastic 4 Deleted Scene Highlights A Woefully Underused Character
Going deeper.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps had a monumental storytelling task — it didn’t have to establish just one superhero, but four. What’s more, these four superheroes inhabited a previously unseen Earth different from our own. Even The Avengers had previous Marvel movies to lean on, but this MCU outing introduced a superheroic team from scratch.
The solution was an immersive intro in disguise as a retrospective on the Fantastic Four’s many successes in their first four years, a whistle-stop tour of the team’s constant line of defense against supervillains, plus Reed’s scientific advances and Sue’s diplomatic efforts. However, large chunks of these efforts — including whole characters — were left on the cutting room floor, and now we’re starting to see bits and pieces of the original vision.
USA Today recently shared a deleted scene from First Steps, one of the five available on the upcoming October 14 physical media release. Titled “Subterranea,” it’s a closer look at Sue Storm’s peace deal with Mole Man, played by Paul Walter Hauser.
This scene would’ve come in between the announcement of Sue’s pregnancy and the visit from Galactus’ herald, when the movie was still establishing the Fantastic Four’s role in this world. In the final cut, we barely saw any of Mole Man during this stretch: he pops up as a villain, but we soon see a magazine cover about Sue reaching a peace deal with him, an event that’s handled off-screen.
We get a closer look at Mole Man’s leadership in a deleted scene.
Mole Man isn’t completely dropped from the story, as Subterranea plays a major role in the final confrontation: it’s where the population of New York City evacuates to while the Fantastic Four lure Galactus to Times Square. So instead, much like Natasha Lyonne’s Rachel Rozman, he appears a couple of times but is given much more weight than is actually earned.
Deleted scenes are deleted for a reason, but it’s hard not to wonder what the movie would have been like if Mole Man was featured more prominently as a cautious ally. His cooperation in the final plan seems to come out of nowhere, but this scene establishes the symbiotic relationship between Subterranea and the surface, and Sue promises to look into employing more Moloids (residents of Subterranea) on construction and repair projects.
This may not be a scene about the ever-looming threat of Galactus, but it still provides insight into Sue’s character as a skilled diplomat and straight talker who isn’t afraid to work with others to get what she wants. At least Marvel is bringing it to the surface now.
