Reed has better equipment at the Baxter Building so they go there to analyze their powers and see what can be done. Reed says he has to modify the collectors since it was them that caused the objects to explode in space. Meanwhile Johnny wants to join the Avengers. Sue insists they have to stay together. She reveals that during her initial chase of Kragoff he taunted her by saying Hydra recognized together the FF were a threat to Hydra so they set up the mission knowing it would break them apart. That's why they have to stay together, they're stronger as a family. The others are skeptical but stay silent.

Meanwhile Kragoff is approached by a mysterious stranger representing an "interested party" and offers assistance in destroying the FF in the form of improved collectors that will only affect Reed et al (technobabble explanation as to why). Reed has just figured out how to safely extract the tesseract energy from their bodies when Kragoff is spotted in Central Park. The FF fly in and it's a trap (of course). During the fight the FF realizes their powers are weakening and the collectors ready to explode and destroy the city. Reed tinkers with the new collectors and is faced with a choice. He could either extract the energy and shoot it off into space like before leaving the FF alive but unpowered, or stabilize it for them making their powers stronger but permanent. Kragoff must be stopped, no matter the cost. So Reed goes with the second option. He pulled most of the raw tesserect power from Kragoff and the apes to fix the FF. Kragoff is taken away in a SHIELD portable cell. Reed apologizes to Ben but Ben shrugs it off saying, "It's no big Thing, Stretch." Everyone celebrates.

Post-credit sequence: a message is slipped into Kragoff's cell. "Those who fail me, will meet their Doom." The cell explodes.

The base's CO, Ivan Kragoff, says it's time to get ready for a mission. It's your basic search and destroy with a drone. Ben is taken to a secluded area for privacy and the mission begins. Johnny decides to double check the mission intel since someone else put it together and realizes there was a good chance the intel was wrong. Kragoff refuses to abort and keeps everyone out of the drone room. Johnny, Reed, and Sue all try on their own to stop the mission. Again doing a little foreshadowing, Sue tries to be stealthy, Reed uses the computers, Johnny gets loud and obnoxious to get Ben's attention. They all succeed but it's too late, Ben took out the target and on the confirmation fly-by we find out that it was a wedding party or friendly troops or something like that. Ben is in shock and Johnny decks Kragoff. Kragoff hits back hard which brings Ben into the fight and KOs Kraggoff with one punch. It's clobbering time! Fade to black.

Present day. Master Sergeant Sue is presenting a briefing. Those Oort Cloud objects have been pulled towards the Tesserect for decades but have been coasting since it was returned to Asgard after the Battle of New York. It's believed the energy could be harvested using collectors on a space ship. The energy could be used to power weapons or even create enhanced humans like what was done with Loki's scepter. Kragoff is there too and makes a snide comment about how her brother and friend got discharged instead of thrown in the stockade. Someone notices there's something off with the data and says the objects are closer than they first thought. Kragoff whispers "Hail Hydra" to Sue and runs to the launching pad where other Hydra agents are preparing for blast off. There's a chase scene with Sue nearly stopping Kragoff several times but he escaped. He's alone since Sue killed the other agents. A general is worried Hydra will get the energy for themselves. Sue says, "No he won't. I know a guy." (Yes, an Ant Man reference.)

Cut to Richard's Industry HQ in New Mexico. Ben is coping with PTSD by throwing himself into his new job as head of security. Johnny has the dual role of social media manager and head analyst. They're celebrating another successful year and how the company has improved since Ben and Johnny joined. They're a bit sad Sue didn't come with them, but her career was more important. Suddenly Sue comes in and explained what happened. Reed designed both the ship and energy collectors. Like any comic book scientist he already made a version 2 he planned to use to study the objects after the initial mission. The four of the blast off after Kragoff. The FF are back together!

Cut to space where Reed et al caught up to Kragoff. There's a brief dog fight and everyone opens up the energy collectors. All the collectors are filled and Kragoff tries to ram Reed's ship. There's a malfunction, energy arcs everywhere. The objects explode and since the tesseract is the Space Gem, both ships are teleported to Earth. The ships crash several miles apart in the Amazon. Kragoff's ship winds up in a drug lord's private zoo and the energy transforms him and a gorilla, baboon, and orangutan who got out of their cages to investigate. Yes, the bad guy for this movie is the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes. Why? Because Doom has been the villain in every other FF movie and it's time for a change.

At Reed's ship everyone gets out and discover their powers. Reed blames himself for not installing enough shielding around the collectors. Sue takes charge of the group because they still have to capture Kragoff. There's a fight that spills over into a town the drug lord's henchmen join in. News media is already there because of the crashes and get pictures of everyone's faces. Kragoff sets up a disaster in the "stop me or save the civilians" trope. The FF work together to save the town while Kragoff and his apes flee. The US military arrives and extracts the FF.

Great post. I've had this idea about how I'd fix the Fantastic Four for the Marvel Movie verse. This is as good of a time as any to share it. (I was in a hurry so please forgive the misspellings, change in tenses, and other grammatical mistakes.)

We open up with replaying the climax from Captain America where he and the Red Skull are fighting because we have to establish that this is a Marvel movie. RS grabs the tessaract and gets beamed up into space. Advance the clock one year to the Oort Cloud, a spherical shell of icy objects that surround our solar system. The planetoid Sedna is on the inner edge of it, that's how far out it is. The beam hits some ice chunks or a comet or something and they clump together and change course towards Earth.

Advance the clock again to a few months before the Winter Soldier. We see Sue, Johnny, Ben, and Reed laughing and talking in the mess hall of a military base. Sue is a Technical Sergeant in the Air Force. Ben is a pilot who made the transition from flying jets to piloting drones. Johnny is a data analyst (several times the comics have pointed out Johnny has above average intelligence, he just doesn't use it). Reed is still a scientist. We use this scene to establish personalities and do some foreshadowing. Together they already have the nickname of Fantastic Four. Reed and Sue are dating. Sue feels that her gender makes her invisible to the brass and she could have made Master Sergeant if it weren't for the sexism still in the military. Ben calls everything a "thing" and only Reed knows exactly what he means. Reed is a contortionist and used his talent in school to hide from school bullies. Johnny likes the heat and has a screen name with Torch in it.

On a personal note, for me the 90s was a formative decade. Lost my grandparents. I escaped the hell of high school and suffered through the hell of freshman college. Had one of my childhood dreams come crashing down. Became politically aware. Flirted with internet addiction. Discovered a new professional dream. Became an adult. Got my first job. Lost my first job. Moved far away from home. Dabbled with consulting. And if we're going to include 2000 in the 90s, experienced the beginning of the dot-com collapse. So for me it was pretty eventful for better or worse.

What? No mention of Transformers Beast Wars or other CGI shows like Reboot. How about how Star Trek universe expanded with DS9 and Voyager?

That aside I thought this was pretty insightful. I would consider the 90s to be a decade of contemplation since it was the last decade of the millennium and as a breather from all the stuff that happened this century. There's nothing wrong with wanting to take a break. In an 8 hour work day you get an extra hour for lunch so why not after 8 decades with a theme we just take a look back and ahead? It was a time to sit back and relax without many of the excessive as seen in other decades? (Yes I know this is an oversimplification and anyone could point out a few things that were excessive in the 90s, but I think those things are uncommon and/or small when compared to other decades.)