The New FANTASTIC FOUR Movie Changes Mr. Fantastic’s Powers
One of the things that has occupied the attention of nerds over the years is the question of how various superheroes' powers work. In the Marvel Age of comics there has been many a nod to science in explaining the hows and whys of stuff readers might have taken for granted in the past, and one of the things that I loved was how shrinking/growing powers were explained. Take Ant-Man/Giant-Man, for instance. Where does the mass come from when he grows? Where does the mass go when he shrinks? The explanation that Marvel writers came up with: Hank Pym's Pym Particles open up a door to a dimension of mass, where the extra mass can be sent when shrinking or from where extra mass can be gained when growing. It doesn't really make sense but it's a fun and silly handwave that answers a basic question.
Similar mass questions must surround Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic, the stretching leader of the Fantastic Four. In order for Reed's elongated limbs to actually work well they must add mass as they stretch. If you stretch out Silly Putty you'll see it gets weaker in the areas where it's most stretched, and that would, we assume, happen with Reed unless he was getting mass reinforcing himself.
The new Fantastic Four film will be addressing how Reed's powers work - or at least the film's website is addressing it. Here's the explanation:
This has caused a little bit of an outcry, as the canonical comic book version of Reed Richards is basically a man made of taffy, and it's even been implied that he has to expend some effort to maintain his shape (which makes no sense because that would imply he becomes a blob when he sleeps, which he doesn't). I actually kind of like it, and part of what I like about it is that it still makes no sense, but it sounds like good science hoo-hah. What's more, I think that the rest of the team's powers can be sort of explained with the exact same 'science' (although, for the record, Reed is the only one whose powers are explained at all) - the idea that the Human Torch and the Invisible Woman also warp space around them to create fire and become invisible/project force fields works for me. The idea that The Thing is doing the same is intriguing, and it could mean that his rocky exterior is permanent because of some sort of lack of control/a problem with how he's manifesting these same powers. it makes sense that all of the team members would be altered in the same basic way, and it's fun that the same basic alteration presents itself differently for each of them.
I actually doubt this explanation for Reed's powers will even be particularly important in the film, and the only thing I can see it changing is that enemies can no longer put Reed into taffy-pullers to stretch him out against his will (this happened in the comics). I'm into it, and I think this sort of bullshit psuedo-science is in the spirit of the original comics, where cosmic radiation gave our heroes their powers. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were just using the faddish scientific buzzwords of their time to quickly explain these cool characters, and that's how you should approach a new version of them.
