As is so often the case with Marvel Studios movies, many scenes shot for The Fantastic Four: First Steps ended up on the cutting room floor. Natasha Lyonne's Rachel Rozman might have been one of the biggest victims of any cuts, though poor John Malkovich's Red Ghost will never see the light of day.
As for Paul Walter Hauser's Mole Man, it appears he was also meant to have a little more to do in the movie. Talking to Variety about her desire to explore Sue Storm's evolution into the villainous Malice, Vanessa Kirby teased a very dark exchange between the Invisible Woman and Harvey Elder we didn't get to see.
"There was a line within a scene that isn’t in it anymore with Mole Man – who I absolutely love," Kibry explained. "I’m so excited that we might get to do more with him if we get to do any more of this, because Paul [Walter Hauser] is amazing. But in it, she said something like, 'I could give you an aneurysm if I wanted to in two seconds.'"
"In the comics, Sue uses that threat quite a lot: 'I could put a force field in your brain and give you an aneurysm. I could put an air bubble inside of you and kill you in an instant,'" she continued. "These powers are also really lethal and really dangerous. But these four have chosen to unite the global community and be a force for good."
Kirby added, "She’s made this decision, but at her fingertips, she could be lethal. It felt so real to me that somebody that’s trying to be a force for good also has the capacity, like we all do, for the light and the dark."
In a separate interview, The Fantastic Four: First Steps seemingly elaborated on this scene between Sue and Harvey, confirming that a key exchange between them in Subterranea was missing from the final cut.
"I had a scene with Mole Man going down into [Subterranea] at the very beginning of the movie," she shared. "Sue goes and kinda kicks back and has a drink with him. Well, she can't because she's pregnant, but he pours her water, and she wishes it was whiskey. I just loved it."
"It was so fun to shoot. We went into the mines, all the way up to the North of England to shoot it and it just represented Sue's working life and the fact she interacts with all these supervillains...and she's emotionally in tune with them."
Much has been said about The Fantastic Four: First Steps' "deleted scenes," though it's not unusual for Marvel Studios to leave entire subplots on the cutting room floor (for better or worse). In the case of this movie, it appears the studio wanted to make sure it didn't stretch too far beyond the two-hour mark.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is now playing in theaters.