Criticized for lacking clean structure and an ending that makes sense, Fantastic Four originally had an action seen that was intended to smooth-en out the transition from the third act of the film to the fourth act of the film.
A scene involving The Thing attacking a military base by air can be seen in various trailers, but it appears nowhere in the film. This isn’t too surprising when considering that trailers are often cute before film editing is finished, but according to an Entertainment Weekly article the scene was meant to bridge the gap between earlier sequences and the “One Year Later” time jump.
Entertainment Weekly also revealed what the scene was and why the scene never made it into the final cut of the film. It’s a scene where The Thing, who’s now working for the U.S. government, invades a Chechen rebel base and takes out the enemy mercenaries allowing U.S. soldiers to move and finish the job.
Director Josh Trank was initially forced to cut this scene before production even began to reduce the film’s budget. However, Fox executives later realized the film needed more action sequences and agreed to finance the sequence, but they did so without the involvement of Trank. Leaving Trank out resulted in the footage, shot by a different unit, looking too so differently from the rest of the film that in the end it had to be cut.
The trailer with some of the cut footage can be seen towards the end of the trailer below.