A Rock Called "Jennifer" Was Used As A Stand-In For The Thing On THE FANTASTIC FOUR Set, Reveals Director

A Rock Called "Jennifer" Was Used As A Stand-In For The Thing On THE FANTASTIC FOUR Set, Reveals Director

Discussing his approach to bringing The Thing to life in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, director Matt Shakman has revealed that a real rock named "Jennifer" was used as a stand-in on the reboot's set...

News
By JoshWilding - Jun 02, 2025 11:06 AM EST
Filed Under: Fantastic Four
Source: Empire Online

While the trailers for The Fantastic Four: First Steps have generated plenty of excitement among fans of Marvel's First Family, we've seen surprisingly little of the team's superpowers. 

There's been enough to confirm they'll be portrayed in a comic-accurate fashion, but will Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben do anything truly spectacular? That depends on how much filmmaker Matt Shakman has embraced the source material, but when it came to The Thing, realism was key.

The Fantastic Four movies from the mid-2000s brought the Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed superhero to life with a practical suit. The 2015 reboot, meanwhile, used VFX, but much of what makes The Thing his iconic self was lost in translation. 

The Fantastic Four: First Steps' take on Ben will also be CG, but he so far looks more in line with what you'd expect from the character. It turns out the key to portraying him in an authentic way was using a mixture of performance capture, a stand-in wearing a practical suit, and an actual rock that the crew named "Jennifer."

Shakman tells Empire Online, "We went out to the desert and found a rock that looked exactly how we thought The Thing should look, and we filmed it in every single shot that The Thing appears in in the movie, under every lighting environment."

Ebon Moss-Bachrach was also on hand to discuss his approach. "It’s a little bit heady to think about all the hundreds of people that are helping animate this character. I just had faith that they would make my performance so much cooler. I’m very, very happy with the way Ben looks."

"He’s a Lower East Side guy," the actor added. "A lot of this character was a homage to his father, and that, to me, is very meaningful."

Tickets for The Fantastic Four: First Steps are expected to go on sale later this week. In the meantime, we have some fantastic new logos for the movie, which you can check out below. 

image host

Set against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world, Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps introduces Marvel’s First Family—Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) as they face their most daunting challenge yet.

Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, they must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). And if Galactus’ plan to devour the entire planet and everyone on it weren’t bad enough, it suddenly gets very personal.

Paul Walter Hauser, John Malkovich, and Natasha Lyonne have been cast in mystery roles. Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom is rumoured to appear, though that's surely a given with Avengers: Doomsday on the way.

Director Matt Shakman worked with both Avatar: The Way of Water co-writer Josh Friedman and WandaVision's Cam Squires on The Fantastic Four: First Steps' screenplay, with Eric Pearson (Black Widow) later coming on board for a final polish.

The movie is set to be released in theaters on July 25, 2025.

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FrankenDad
FrankenDad - 6/2/2025, 11:47 AM
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TheVisionary25
TheVisionary25 - 6/2/2025, 11:52 AM
Man , moviemaking can be weird lol…

Kidding aside , this rock was likely used as a texture reference for the character which makes sense imo.

Regardless , I’m all for whatever gets the best result in their minds and so far I think The Thing looks good!!.

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SonOfAGif
SonOfAGif - 6/2/2025, 12:07 PM
It's wild to think that when the MCU began we as fans knew we wouldn't see the X-Men, Spider-Man, or The Fantastic 4 crossover with the other heroes such as The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy. Now fast forward 17 years later and we have gotten to the point where the Fantastic 4 have entered the MCU along with X-Men characters and Spider-Man. It's been a roller coaster guys. And we are so lucky to have experienced this and still get to experience this.
Goldboink
Goldboink - 6/2/2025, 12:20 PM
@SonOfAGif -

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SuperCat
SuperCat - 6/2/2025, 12:17 PM
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AC1
AC1 - 6/2/2025, 12:26 PM
I'm really looking forward to this and I think EMB is an excellent choice for Ben, but I do hope they add just a bit of a gravelly effect to his voice in post. It doesn't have to sound like a full on growl or like he's gargling gravel or anything major like that, but EMB has a very "smooth" sounding voice and it feels a bit disconnected coming from a guy made of rocks based on what we've seen from the trailer and stuff so just adding a subtle bit of "texture" to his voice would really help make it all feel more cohesive.
KennKathleen
KennKathleen - 6/2/2025, 12:30 PM
@AC1 - we've been spoiled from every outing of how The Thing has spoken in everything up until now. He NEEDS THE ROCKY TONE.
TheVisionary25
TheVisionary25 - 6/2/2025, 12:32 PM
@AC1 - I get yah…

I do like them just using his regular voice though since it just makes him feel “human” underneath all that.
AC1
AC1 - 6/2/2025, 1:46 PM
@TheVisionary25 - Yeah I like the human quality as well, I wouldn't want anything over the top that detracts from that. I'm just thinking along the lines of a tone of voice that sounds a little more husky. I wouldn't even want anything as extreme as voices like Al Pacino, RFK Jr, Christian Bale's Batman - think Clint Eastwood, Kurt Cobain, Scarlet Johansson; just that tiny bit of vocal texture which is totally natural in loads of people's voices and is pretty easy to effect if even it's not a natural quality of someone's individual voice. EMB has a *tiny* bit in his own voice anyway, just would've liked him to exaggerate it slightly, or for them to add something like that through sound mixing in post.
TheVisionary25
TheVisionary25 - 6/2/2025, 2:45 PM
@AC1 - that’s fair
OrgasmicPotatoe
OrgasmicPotatoe - 6/2/2025, 12:56 PM
...wait, so they genderswapped the Thing ?! OH HELL NAH !!
AgentofSH1ELD
AgentofSH1ELD - 6/2/2025, 1:18 PM
@OrgasmicPotatoe - More of a race swap no?
spr0cks
spr0cks - 6/2/2025, 3:21 PM
That image (and I know it's been used in other comicfare - even Superman) of {insert-superhero-here-pulling-ship], makes absolutely NO sense at all.

The Thing stands at about 6' tall - maybe 6'5 (In this movie he looks even shorter).
Which means he has about 3-4'of his total height underwater there, and the fact that he's standing and pulling that ship means they're that close to ground or thebottom of the shore, and that the shore is therefore that shallow at that point.

What ship in the world has (only) a 3'-4' underwater hull?
The Underwater Hull of a ship would typically be between 60-85% of the total Hull height - depending on whether the ship is fully loaded with cargo - in order to maintain bouyancy and balance.

That ship is a freakin' cargo ship and the waterline shown on it (The red line) would mean you have some 100-200' of hull underwater - which would either mean the Thing has 100' long legs, or the ship is scraping and digging through the bottom of that shoreline.

It looks a cool image, for sure.
But it's dumb as hell if you stop to think about it.

The one in Batman V Superman where he was pulling a ship in ice made a bit more sense because he was standing ON TOP of the ice and the ship seemed to have been stuck in the ice as he was pulling it through the ice, so no issues with how much of it was under the water/ice line. (the only problem there was, how solidly frozen was that ice that it could support him pulling (with equal and oppposite force and more) an object big enough to break through the ice. But then again you don't really want to get into the silliness of Superman's super-power mechanics, so let's just leave that one alone....)
StSteven
StSteven - 6/2/2025, 7:23 PM
@spr0cks - While I take your point and totally don't disagree (about the whole water depth thing), as someone who grew up with having a boat (just a small 18-footer that my family and I would take out on the lake on the weekends), I can recall there being a number of launches where it was shallow enough for you to back your trailer in and launch your boat and then increased significantly in depth after that, so maybe that's the case here (kinda looks that way). We've only seen like 1-2 seconds of that scene so we don't really know what actually happens there but maybe Ben has to swim out to grab the chain (because it's likely laying on the bottom), and then swim back with it until he can stand and then start pulling the ship until it gets to the dock or grounds or whatever. I guess we'll just have to see. Either way it looks like a pretty impressive scene and a good display of his abilities. I mean, picking up a VW is one thing, bringing a cargo freighter into port is an entirely different thing altogether.
spr0cks
spr0cks - 6/3/2025, 3:52 AM
@StSteven -

RE : " as someone who grew up with having a boat (just a small 18-footer that my family and I would take out on the lake on the weekends), "

Key phrase here being "small 18-footer" (boat).
Yes, you could bring out a boat from shore to water out of the back of a truck at just about any lake.
You most DEFINITELY wouldn't be able to bring a cargo/freight ship to port to just about any shoreline.
Cargo ports are very specifically chosen and constructed to have deep beds to accomodate the underwater hulls of cargo ships. And specifically more so for when they get fully loaded with cargo.

It's also the reason why if you live by a coastline with a shipping port (like I do in Vancouver), you can't just bring cargo ships to shore if there's no available docking and unloading port available to take them. And you'll usually see a line of cargo ships farther out in the sea, essentially parked, where the shore is deep enough, while they wait for a space to opne up to be unloaded (or loaded). The crew then take a smaller boat to come to shore while they wait to bring their freight in.
Bring a ship that size to a shoreline that's too shallow, it will essentially tip over and go aground. And you'll pretty much lose all the cargo it was carrying.
Again, if this was, or is a cargo ship waiting to get to port and suffered a mechancial problem then it wouldn't be that close enough that you could drag it by walking to the shoreline like he is. Chances are all the way up to the literal edge of the water where it should dock, the water is as deep as the ship's underwater hull depth (deeper in fact).....BY DESIGN.
The only way what they've shown up there works is if he's pulling that ship from dry land all the way inland and is standing on solid ground with a chain long enough to reach it out to sea (which is another problem here. the longest chain is likely the anchor chains that are typically not that much longer than the underwater hull depth. Again,...by design).

Don't get me wrong.
It looks cool as hell.
But it's also DUMB as hell.
Docking ports for cargo ships are very specifically deep by design.
Shipyard docks (Where ships are constructed) are shallower, but they have special constructions to trolley the finished constructed ship out to the water where it drops off steeply enough to accomodate the underhull.
StSteven
StSteven - 6/3/2025, 11:34 PM
@spr0cks - Well hello fellow North American! You're absolutely right that having a little 18' rec boat is in no way like what we're seeing in that clip. And I totally agree with everything that you are saying about harbors and docks and such (in fact I think that your experience kinda helped my point, which was basically that it's not like he walked out from the beach into the water on a gradual decline, it obviously much have been a steep and sudden drop off).

And sure the chain (like you said presumably the anchor chain) is not going to be super long, but from that (very brief clip) it seems to be long enough to be a believable anchor chain (although I'm by no means an expert in the anchor chains shipping freighters). My guess is that like I said in my previous post, the ship is in trouble (for whatever reason) and he swims out to the ship, dives down and picks up the chain, and heads back to where he can get a footing and pull it into dock.

Now, I totally get what what you're saying, and if what I just described is what actually happens, it's going to be one of those "suspension of disbelief things", meaning that given the likely length of the chain he might have to swim pulling the ship until he can get footing. But then we're talking about a nearly indestructible guy made of rocks who can go toe-to-toe with the Hulk, so there's that. Plus, we've only seen like 1-2 seconds of that scene, so we really don't know how it actually plays out. But you bring up some very valid points, so it will be interesting to see how real the filmmaker keeps it. Either way, I'll be there for it. Cheers!🍻
StSteven
StSteven - 6/3/2025, 11:50 PM
@spr0cks - Actually upon retrospection of my previous supposition of how that scene actually plays out, it would make more sense if the F4 get the distress call about the ship, they jump into the Fantasticar (which is actually revealed to be able to fly "Back to the Future" style because, seriously, Reed can build spaceships but can't make a flying car?) and they fly out to where the ship is. Ben jumps out of the car into the water and sinks to the bottom (because he's made of rock), grabs the chain, and then proceeds to walk along the bottom pulling the ship into harbor. Now, of course, we're going to still have to do that whole "willing suspension of disbelief" thing as to how long he can hold his breath, but this actually seems like a more reasonable play for the scene, as opposed to Ben swimming out to the ship.

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