The Marvel Cinematic Universe may have begun in 2008 with Iron Man, a billionaire playboy genius and philanthropist who fights injustice. But over the course of 17 years and 37 movies, the MCU has not only brought scads of comic book heroes and villains to theaters,

The first attempt at making a film about the superheroes was an extremely low-budget affair that was shot, abandoned and mostly forgotten about in the 1990s.

This new “Fantastic Four,” coming a decade after the doomed reboot of the forgettable mid-aughts originals, throws us right into the action, essentially skipping the team’s origin story and opting ins...