Fantastic Four Reboot Casting: Who Should Play Marvel's First Family?

The Thing

What went wrong last time... Michael Chiklis worked well as the Thing for the gruff, tough guy bits in costume, but his human Ben Grimm was a bit lacking. Ben should be ruggedly handsome (and have hair). Going forward.. Coming straight off of his gigantic performance in The Dark Knight Rises, Tom Hardy would make a great choice for The Thing. We know that he can do big, brutish action and he definitely looks the part of the human Ben. So long as he could do a good American tough-guy voice and let loose a little bit with the role (and be the butt of Johnny Storm's jokes) Mr. Hardy would be the perfect man to call in for clobbering time.

But a discussion on a rebooted Ben Grimm certainly doesn't end with the choice of actor. One of the biggest points of contention among fans regarding the reboot is whether to continue the tradition of suiting up The Thing's actor in prostheses, or whether he should be replaced with a motion-captured CGI stand-in. Great things have been done with Mo-Cap since the first pair of FF films were released, so it's not unreasonable to expect the studio to opt for this route. However, there certainly is something to be said for having a real man in a real costume on set that the other actors can see and feel. The quality of The Thing make-up/effects could very well make or break a movie like this, so it will certainly be interesting to see what is decided in the next two years.