The Thing has been brought to life on screen a few times over the years, both with a practical costume and as a motion-capture VFX creation. In The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Ebon Moss-Bachrach plays the ever-lovin' blue-eyed superhero, and this version is far more comic-accurate.
As Entertainment Weekly explains, the MCU's take will be VFX, but there was a crucial practical element on set.
Moss-Bachrach wore a gray motion-capture suit with green dots for many scenes, while some costumes had "different body extensions" to better help him portray the character. There was even a stand-in who wore a Thing costume, helping the actor's co-stars to remember how much space he takes up and give them something to act against.
"I've never collaborated with so many people — literally hundreds of people, between the animators and the designers. It was a real team effort," the actor tells the site. "Even though a lot of it is motion-capture and created in animation, all of those costume pieces were built. We always had a suit on set that was the actual proportions so we could see how it would all fit."
"It was an ongoing and never-ending kind of dialogue between me and the designers and the VFX people. It was a unique experience. I felt like the brain: I would make creative choices, and then we'd circle back, and they'd make it happen," Moss-Bachrach continued.
"I was deeply, deeply impressed by the seriousness and the dedication that all the designers had to make this man compelling and human and inhuman all at the same time."
The Fantastic Four: First Steps star also found a way to relate to Ben Grimm on a personal level. Moss-Bachrach also praised the practical Yancy Street and how being immersed in that benefited his performance.
"Jack Kirby wrote this character [of Ben Grimm] as a bit of an homage to his father, and to the streets that he grew up on," he explains. "I'm a New Yorker, and I've spent a lot of time on Essex Street, on Delancey, on Clinton."
"So it does feel like home to me, and the production did a beautiful job recreating that. It was so cool to walk down and see the hat seller and the fish seller," Moss-Bachrach added. "I was shocked that we were outside of London because it fully felt like the Lower East Side."
It's also not lost on the actor that there's a loose connection between The Thing and his character in Netflix's The Punisher, Micro. "I think it's cool that Micro is named David Lieberman, who takes his last name from Stan Lee. Then Ben Grimm is this Kirby amalgamation. So, in my brief two portrayals of Marvel characters, I've hit the two big guys. It's a deep honor that I take to heart."
While some fans are unhappy with what they've seen of The Thing (the MCU's Ben is smaller than in some comic books, but the same size as he's been portrayed in others), all signs point to Marvel Studios doing right by the hero.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is set to be released in theaters on July 25, 2025. Check out some new stills from the movie below.