We’ve seen Ebon Moss-Bachrach wear suits in The Bear well before he inked his big MCU deal for Marvel’s Fantastic Four reboot. Moss-Bachrach will play Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, in The Fantastic Four: First Steps which hits theaters on July 25th, 2025. It’s a very different kind of suit he’ll be wearing, one that Marvel fans are probably dying to see.
The thing about The Thing is that we haven’t seen Moss-Bachrach in his superhero costume. In fact, we’ve hardly seen any official footage from The Fantastic Four reboot. Marvel did show scenes for the upcoming MCU movie at D23.
That clip leaked online after the event but didn’t give us any scenes featuring the four superheroes. Instead, we saw the characters in their regular suits, probably before they got their iconic superpowers. That’s not a spoiler. We’ll probably get a first teaser trailer for Fantastic Four in the coming months, where Marvel will have to show at least some of the four characters using their special abilities.
The image below is a spoiler, as it gives us a look at Marvel’s new version of The Thing. Someone took a set video of Moss-Bachrach’s new “face,” which promptly leaked online.
If you hate Marvel spoilers of any kind and want to avoid seeing The Thing until you watch the movie, you’ll have to avoid what follows below.
Of all four heroes, The Thing is the only one whose appearance changes permanently after the team is exposed to cosmic radiation. The Thing has an orange rock-like body, which gives him incredible strength. Meanwhile, the other three Fantastics will only change their appearances when using their powers.
The Thing will give Marvel similar headaches to the Hulk versions we’ve seen in the MCU. Marvel will have to use lots of special effects to make Moss-Bachrach look like The Thing.
So far, we’ve already seen two versions of The Thing in Fox’s Fantastic Four movies, so that’s another problem. Marvel will have to find a way to make the MCU Thing stand out from the other variants. That’s what Sony and Marvel had to do with the Spider-Man suits, too. They had to be different from the non-MCU Spidey versions.
That’s what makes this particular hero “costume” so exciting. I’m as curious as any fan to see what the MCU’s Thing will look like, just as I was interested in Harrison Ford’s Red Hulk. After all, getting these superheroes to look right is incredibly important for the success of these movies. It’s why we’re always excited to see costume designs leak.
Thanks to the set photo/video leak that made it to Reddit and other social media, I no longer have to wonder. I have a general idea of the bulky, stoney superhero that will appear in the MCU next July.
The leaked video suggests Marvel might be going for practical effects rather than CGI for The Thing. That sounds exciting until you realize that Moss-Bachrach would have to wear a massive suit to make it happen.
That might be impractical for the needs of the film. The Thing would also be part of plenty of action scenes that will involve hopefully exciting fight sequences. Digital special effects might be much better suited for that. Then again, Robert Downey Jr. did wear Iron Man suits. Moss-Bachrach might do the same thing for the scenes that don’t involve fighting.
It’s unclear if it’s Moss-Bachrach wearing The Thing mask on the set. It’s definitely a person under that mask. We could be looking at some sort of stand-in that will be used for CGI later. I’m speculating about as much as anyone at this point.
As for the actual scene the cast was preparing, it’s unclear what’s happening. The Thing still seems to have the astronaut suit we saw in the leaked Fantastic Four footage.
Again, that footage showed the four characters before they got their powers. They were embarking on some sort of space or multiverse mission. Also, they’re clearly coming from a different reality than Earth-616. The first trailer will make that immediately clear.
That said, I don’t expect Marvel to keep the powers of the Fantastic Four secret for too long. We’ll probably see them in trailers well before the film hits theaters.
