An aspect of 2015's Fantastic Four that I found quite interesting was their attempt to explain some of the gang's largely arbitrary superpowers in a more coherent way. While their 2005 incarnation had them be subjected to some cosmic energy cloud, the new movie derives their powers from the energy present on some cross-dimensional planet. But it tried to give some more or less reasonable (or at least focussed) explanations for some of their powers.
- It has Victor von Doom being thrown right into the very energy of Planet Zero and thus becoming to some degree one with it and able to control it.
The others, or rather Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm in particular, are subjected to that energy to a lesser degree but coherent to their actual powers and seem to get merged with their environment while transporting back to earth (in a bit of an transporter accident reminiscent of The Fly):
- Ben can't close his door and it fills with rocks, leading to the rock-like Thing.
- Johnnny's chamber gets blasted by flames, leading to the autoigniting Human Torch.
- But with Sue it's already a bit more vague. When she gets blown away by some kind of energy wave from the transporter, I could imagine her having something to do with energy or rather electromagnetic radiation. Is this deduction correct so far or was this explained a little more elaborately in the movie?
But the source of Reed's stretching power is quite a bit less clear to me. There isn't anything in his transporter cell during the transportation to suggest such a mutation, but when he awakes on earth he can already stretch himself. So what exactly was the source of Reed Richard's stretching powers? Did I miss anything and it actually was explained a little clearer in the movie? Or was there maybe even some scene in the script that clarifies this a bit more but ultimately got deleted? Or does the source material provide some additional hints as to how this worked?