The Thing’s Thing: Should Fox Cover Up Ben Grimm’s Boulders?

In 1995’s Mallrats, Brodie Bruce asked Stan “The Man” Lee an important (to him) question: “The Thing – is his dork made of orange rock too?”

Stan replied with a bewildered look, “It’s a superhero secret.”

Well, not anymore, Mr. Lee.

Thanks to new posters and stills from TV spots in the last week, we have a clear look at The Thing, Ben Grimm in his transformed form, from Fantastic Four, the reboot hitting August 7, 2015. He is indeed made of orange rock… everywhere. We can see that, because he doesn’t have any clothes on at all. No pants, no shorts, no speedo, nothing.

It’s an odd choice that raises a few questions. Now, we’re not saying there’s a straight-up orange rock penis shown – there isn’t – but the choice to have that reveal has to be a conscious decision. Indeed, on posters released this week, there he is, still pants-less – though the posters tend to use some well-placed shadows to obscure things.

Jamie Bell’s The Thing is also featured in a Denny’s commercial, wherein he is ostensibly hungry and going to eat. The orange rocks didn’t obscure his ear canals, his eyes, his nostrils, or his mouth. So, the very real question here is simply: does Ben Grimm still have a digestive system? If he no longer has external genitalia, and will be depicted completely pantsless throughout the movie once transformed, that would seem to imply that no, he no longer has the ability to digest anything. It is strange that his transformation would close up holes from which to release undigested waste material, but not close up the holes he uses for senses or to take in new material.

Why are we so hung up on “superhero sex organs,” as The Man said in that film twenty years ago? Well, it’s something called suspension of disbelief. In good fantasy and science fiction, things don’t happen from an absence of rules. There are rules unique to that particular fiction, that particular universe, and everything happens within those rules. You believe a man can fly, or stretch, can cover himself in flames or turn invisible or be turned into a giant rock monster because the rules of that universe allow it. There are explanations, things like science experiments gone wrong, or interaction with a sun foreign to them, or simply being born with a mutated gene, and that’s fine. What suspension of disbelief should not cover in good fiction is mundane, everyday things. There’s no point, in analyzing film footage and still shots and posters, that anyone viewing this fiction should be steered to asking questions about urination and defecation. Because of this odd creative choice, we are.

Now, maybe things here will be addressed in the film – it doesn’t come out for another month, and none of us have seen it. Perhaps Ben Grimm now gets life-sustaining energy from some form of photosynthesis, or from cosmic rays. Perhaps he can’t eat anymore, another smack in the rocky face that shows how his transformation pains him. Maybe in the film, he walks around with no clothes because he has ceased to look at himself as any form of human, something Grimm has struggled with in many comic book stories.

Nonetheless, none of that seems necessary or like it would add anything to the fiction. Maybe he can’t taste anymore instead of just not being able to eat – that would be more torturous, as he’d still have to eat to live but couldn’t enjoy it anymore. None of this makes as much sense as simply putting a pair of pants or shorts on him.

So what can and will Fox do about it at this point? Probably not much. Special effects are a lofty, expensive proposition. Digitally adding in clothing to every scene The Thing appears in is simply more trouble than it’s worth. Maybe the reasoning behind this decision will be addressed at the FOX panel Saturday night at Comic-Con. It’s not hard to imagine a fan lining up and asking about The Thing’s thing.

Or hey, maybe this is all setup for the sequel, and we’ve just discovered the full title: Fantastic Four 2: Ben Grimm Gets Pants.

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