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Fantastic 4 Site Reveals New Twist On Reed Richards

Anyone who’s been following the development of 20th Century Fox’s imminent ‘Fantastic 4′ reboot knows that this latest take on Marvel’s original superhero team has been leaving comic book purists in fits of fan-rage.

Many fans had felt the existing two ‘Fantastic 4’ films from director Tim Story deviated too far from the source material - but this latest film from Josh Trank has gone even further, with a much younger core cast, black actor Michael B Jordan playing the traditionally white Johnny Storm, and a radically rewritten origin story for the heroic quartet and their nemesis Doctor Doom.

Now, the new official website for the upcoming superhero movie has revealed yet another way this reboot will stand apart from previous portrayals of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s famous characters - and it’s all to do with the unique superpowers of team leader Reed Richards (Miles Teller).

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Traditionally, Reed Richards and his cohorts Ben Grimm and siblings Sue and Johnny Storm go into outer space and are caught in a cloud of cosmic rays which alters their physiology. In Reed’s case, his body gains extraordinary elasticity, enabling him to stretch like an over-sized rubber band.

However, in this version of events the core four - and their colleague Victor Domashev (Toby Kebbell), who becomes the villainous Doom - pick up their powers via inter-dimensional teleportation, and Reed’s powers in particular have a new twist.

Rather than being able to stretch his own body, Reed “can warp the space around him, and appear to stretch his body into impossible forms and to incredible lengths.”

While it’s not necessarily the most drastic revision - ultimately, he’ll still be going all bendy-stretchy - this is a somewhat different conceptual approach to Mr Fantastic’s powers which may result in some new and unusual effects.

Otherwise, the descriptions of the four sound pretty much what we’d expect power-wise, with Kate Mara’s Sue Storm said to have “the power to become invisible and generate force fields” - though it’s also emphasised that she is “brilliant and beautiful, independent and sarcastic.”

Michael B Jordan’s Johnny Storm is described as “a trouble maker and a thrill seeker” and “the rock star of the team,” with the power to “shoot fireballs, fly at breakneck speeds, and really light it up.”

Meanwhile, Jamie Bell’s Ben Grimm is said to be “a rare breed [of] brawn and heart,” and “rock-solid in more ways than one,” with “a stone body [which] gives him epic strength and makes him virtually indestructible.”

We might also note that at no point does the official website refer to the four heroes by their traditional superhero names of Mr Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch or The Thing, which would suggest these names are not used in the film. Not that this is by any means unusual in modern superhero films: anyone who’s been out to see ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ yet may well have noticed that new heroes Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were never referred to by these names.

‘Fantastic 4′ hits UK cinemas on 6 August.

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Picture Credit: 20th Century Fox