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One of the things that makes Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps so thrilling for longtime comic book fans of the FF is that it marks the first time that we’ve gotten to see a comic book accurate version of Ben Grimm on the big screen. That’s something that the team involved in creating the visuals for the movie took very, very seriously indeed.

“The notion of Jack [Kirby] being able to define the Thing over the 100 or so issues that he drew of the Fantastic Four, to me, that’s one of the most sacrosanct designs that exists in comics,” Marvel Studios head of visual development Ryan Meinerding said during the Marvel: Comics to Screen panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2025. “He got to work on it for so long, and perfected it into something that’s so iconic.”

Translating that iconic look into the CGI reality of the movie was challenging, Meinerding admitted, and First Steps executive producer Grant Curtis agreed.

“The Thing’s brow is a very unique thing to shoot cinematically, because — as you guys can imagine — where the camera is, or where the lighting is, affects how he looks at all times… That was one thing that was big in R&D, was not only Ryan designing the movie’s version of the Thing, but also lighting him appropriately.”

The problem was, it turns out, that the brow ran the risk of obscuring what proved to be the key to bringing the character to life for the audience. “It just became a function of raising the brow, for the light to be able to hit his eyes a little bit more,” Curtis continued. “You really get Ebon’s performance through the eyes. That’s what we were trying to really, through all that R&D, we were trying to figure out — Matt [Shakman, director] was trying to figure out, how do we keep Ebon’s eyes? Because we knew if we could keep his eyes, if we could see those great blue eyes, we would keep the Ben Grimm humanity. That’s what it came down to.”

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in theaters now. Complete with Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s eyes, thankfully.

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