Sometimes, I come up with an idea, and I just won’t let it go. Sometimes, I slowly massage it over more than a decade, and it ends up becoming a feature-length documentary. In the case of my latest foray into the YouTubeVerse, it became a 25-minute-long visual treatment for a movie featuring intellectual property for which I’ll like never get my hands on, like the Fantastic Four.
I don’t usually waste my time conjuring up the equivalent of fan fiction for existing IP. I’m far too busy writing spec scripts that are only very thinly veiled versions of my real life experiences. But from out of the ether one day, maybe several months ago, maybe more than a year ago, I started writing a treatment for a Fantastic Four movie reboot that could take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (I have a Google Doc first created in January 2021 but I think it might actually date back to a comment responding to a friend’s Facebook post, where I kinda mind-dumped my thoughts on this idea.)
The only other time something like this grabbed me and wouldn’t let go until I wrote it out was when I outlined the entire plot and first-issue script for a proposed Batman/The Crow team-up mini-series, and went as far as to have a talented friend/comic pro draw the first few pages, but realizing I had no “ins” at DC nor any idea of the current state of The Crow comic license, it just kind of lived on my computer and that’s it. (For the record, I still think it’s one of the most solid things I’ve ever written and would make an awesome comic.)
Anyway, back to Marvel’s First Family: I am far from the first person to put forth the idea that the best way to make an awesome Fantastic Four movie is to set it in the 1960s. But especially in the context of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s a window of unexplored territory there, a perfect place to introduce a team of super-powered explorers and adventurers who somehow disappeared decades before the Avengers formed. Especially after seeing how much midcentury aesthetic has been infused into the TVA sets for the Loki Disney+ show, it just makes me want to see the same applied to the stars of the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.
After blurting out the initial concept into the aforementioned Google Doc, I eventually found the time (after finishing a screenplay that, for once, actually was not based on my life at all, thinly or otherwise) to flesh out the plot details, and ended up with a three-page treatment. But what was I going to do with that? Send it to Kevin Feige or Jon Watts? It doesn’t work that way. I thought about just posting it as a blog, but, um, no one reads blogs anymore (so that begs the question: who’s reading this?). But I do have this YouTube channel that has more than 200 subscribers and that always needs new content. So, I figured, I’d just film myself pitching the movie. Easy peasy, right?
No, because of course, I can’t just do something simple. I ended up probably spending 30+ hours over two weeks (after spending an afternoon shooting the green-screen footage in my garage) editing this thing, finding the right music, sourcing way more graphics than expected (because the video ended up being almost half an hour, not 10 minutes like I originally planned), creating a Jack Kirby-inspired virtual background with animations, and compositing other special effects. All in the service of trying to make a 25-minute video of me talking to a camera about my silly ideas for a Fantastic Four movie more palatable.
And now I’ve written another 700-odd words on top of all that. So all that’s left is for you to watch the video and justify all the work I put into the dumbest things. Imagine if I used my powers for something that actually contributes to society and doesn’t just put 25 minutes more of geeky “content” onto YouTube for Google to monetize.