The original “Guardians,” somehow, bucked that trend, building toward this third installment, which feels like a true climactic chapter, made more so by director James Gunn heading off to steer the ship at Marvel rival DC (which, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Yet no amount of star power (or talented unknowns, for that matter) will lead to victory for a film that fails to master the delicate art of introducing a team of superheroes, which remains perhaps the most daunting challenge in the comic-book-movie realm, 15 years into the hit-laden run that Marvel launched with “Iron Man.” Marvel’s long-awaited take on a “Fantastic Four” movie is now scheduled for 2025, and has kept the internet abuzz of late with casting rumors. Neither entirely worked (although the first did well enough to merit a sequel), which was why attention almost immediately turned to Fantastic Four, as well as X-Men, when Marvel regained those rights through parent Disney’s acquisition of Fox’s entertainment assets in 2019.

Twentieth Century Fox, which wound up with movie rights to the quartet, adapted Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s flagship comic in 2005, then rebooted it a decade later.

As “Guardians of the Galaxy” caps off an improbably successful trilogy, the ragtag heroes carry several lessons for the granddaddy of Marvel super-teams, Fantastic Four, as the studio embarks on a third stab at getting that foundational title right.

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