Details Emerge On Major 'Fantastic Four' Deleted Action Sequence With The Thing

To some it may seem like continuing to shine a light on the failure of Fantastic Four is beating a dead horse. But where Fantastic Four stumbled lies a fascinating look into the studio filmmaking process as executives and the director keep playing the blame game and more details about the troubled production come to the surface.

The latest bit of information on Josh Trank's comic book reboot involves a description of a major action sequence that was cut out of the film, something that Fantastic Four could have used much more of in the final cut. This particular sequence involves many of the shots of The Thing that we recently highlighted from the trailers which ended up not appearing in the movie at all.

Find out what we know about the Fantastic Four deleted scene after the jump, but beware of spoilers!

Entertainment Weekly has continued to dig into Fantastic Four, and they just recently came up with details on a scene where The Thing (Jamie Bell) was dropped from an airplane to fight insurgents for the American government. While many seem to think that the "one year later" jump in time was added to fix deleted scenes, that big leap forward was always part of the story. However, we were still meant to see a little more before that jump ahead.

In the movie, following the accident that gives the Fantastic Four their superpowers, Reed Richards (Miles Teller) escapes the government facility holding them and researching what went wrong on their trip to Planet Zero (besides losing Victor Von Doom and leaving him presumed dead), prompting Ben Grimm in his new rocky form to feel abandoned and betrayed.

Tim Blake Nelson's government character uses this vulnerable moment to his advantage to make Grimm useful by turning him into a super soldier, sending him on missions for the United States government. Eventually his friends would follow in his footsteps as well. We get a taste of this element in the final cut of the movie, but only in quick cuts while Nelson is giving a presentation to the military about what his new superpowered soldiers can do.

But there was actually supposed to be a whole sequence where we seen an entire mission that The Thing is sent on, and that's where the cut shots from the trailer come from. The sequence took place at a Chechen rebel camp very late at night, with a crew beginning to mobilize with heavy weapons for some reason.

But then out of nowhere a siren goes off, and the crews look to the sky and see a stealth bomber (which goes against the reason for the vehicle, but whatever) flying overhead, and it drops some kind of payload as it flies by.

This object smashes into the ground, but it doesn't blow up, so it's not a missile. It's The Thing, and he just made a huge crater in the middle of the camp, and he emerges out of the dust and debris, impervious to anything the rebels can fire at him. He moves "slowly and deliberately" taking on the rebels who are stupid enough to try and stop them before they realize their attacks are futile and make a run for it, only to be picked off by emerging Navy SEALS, who are working hand-in-hand with The Thing. The two share an acknowledgement of a job well done, but only briefly before being whisked away back to the base.

This undoubtedly would have been a cool scene to see play out, but the film's lack of action is just one of many huge problems that are present in the final cut. And when we hear why this scene was cut, we learn even more about the troubles behind the scenes and why Fantastic Four had such a hard time coming together in any cohesive manner.

Depending on who you talk to, some say Trank was indecisive about whether or not he needed the scene and ultimately decided it didn't add anything to the movie, adding to the argument that the filmmaker didn't know what he wanted.

Others say Trank always wanted the sequence, but had to cut it when the studio started pulling back on the planned budget. Trank had already done previsualization for the scene to allow digital artists to create the effects, and when Fox realized the movie needed more action, they agreed to finance it. But reportedly Trank was not allowed to participate in the filming of the sequence, which resulted in hand-held style footage that didn't match the previsualization that had already been done nor the visual style of the rest of the movie. And so that's when the sequence was cut.

It's just yet another example of the crazy clashing that went on between the studio and Trank, showing that both of them were equally to blame for the debacle on Fantastic Four. At this point, Fox could make some money if they released a real director's cut of this movie and put an end to this argument once and for all. But that's probably not going to happen.