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After decades of insisting on showing us every character’s origin story, it seems that Hollywood has finally figured out we don’t always need it. Superman starts with Superman already known as Superman, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps starts with the Fantastic Four already being fantastic. But skipping over the bits we already know means that the cast had to figure out for themselves exactly how their characters felt about being changed forever.

While promoting the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the cast was asked about how they handled starting in the middle of their characters’ stories rather than the beginning. “I don’t know,” explained Vanessa Kirby, who plays Sue Storm/Invisible Woman in the MCU. “I think for me, personally, I really wanted to make psychological sense of where exactly they were. Where we were meeting them. [Director] Matt Shackman always said, you know, this isn’t an origin story. We’ve chosen not to go down the route of just making a movie about how they got their powers, but after.”

While we’re glad that we didn’t get another rehash of how the Fantastic Four got their powers, it did mean that the cast had to do a little work for themselves to get in the right mindset of the characters. “So we had to know the before and we also had to know exactly what happened in that accident. So I think we all… we explored that deeply about how individually horrifying it was but also the collective experience and that was really meaningful.”

And it wasn’t just the origins of their powers that the cast had to sort out. They needed to know what was going on in their relationship together before the movie started, particularly the marriage between Sue Storm and Reed Richards. “Also, how our relationship had been was really critical, and how in love they were, because it was you meeting them as they were getting to know each other and falling in love. It was ten years on from their meeting.”

It wasn’t just Kirby who had something to say about the hidden origins of Marvel’s First Family in the MCU. Pedro Pascal chimed in to say that “Reed and Ben partied really hard in college.”

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is out now in cinemas. 

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters