When fans think of The Fantastic Four, they think of Doctor Doom. But when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby first thought up The Fantastic Four, the first villain they came up with was Harvey Elder, aka The Mole Man. First introduced in Fantastic Four #1, The Mole Man was the leader of a subterranean society of monsters who broke free to the surface on more than one occasion to conquer it for the oppressed, half-blind creatures he cared for. Now, director Josh Trank will introduce The Mole Man – played by Tim Blake Nelson – to the world of live-action cinema for the very first time in his rebooted Fantastic Four movie, according to Hollywood Reporter.
Sort of.
Tim Blake Nelson, on the other hand, is a veteran character actor and a damned good director in his own right (watch Eye of God if you ever get the chance, trust us), having co-starred in O Brother Where Art Thou?, Minority Report and Lincoln. He also played another Marvel supervillain in the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk, but Samuel Sterns – aka “The Leader” – has since been abandoned by Marvel Studios even though the Louis Leterrier film effectively acted as his origin story.
Will The Mole Man rise to attack The Fantastic Four with his army of monsters in Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four, or will he be a side character who, like The Leader, is only being set up to play the bad guy in future installments? We’ll find out when the new Fantastic Four hits theaters on June 19, 2015.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
