Dr. Reed Richards, a genius but timid and bankrupt physicist, is convinced that evolution was triggered millions of years ago on earth by clouds of cosmic energy in space, and has calculated that one of these clouds is soon going to pass near Earth. Together with his friend, the gruff yet gentle astronaut Ben Grimm, Reed convinces his equally brilliant but conceited MIT classmate Dr. Victor Von Doom, now CEO of Von Doom Industries, to allow him access to his privately owned space station to test the effects of exposure to the cloud on biological samples. Von Doom agrees, in exchange for control over the experiment and a majority of the profits from whatever benefits it brings. He brings aboard his beautiful chief genetics researcher (and Reed's ex-girlfriend from MIT) Susan Storm and her hot-headed brother Johnny Storm, a private astronaut who was Ben's subordinate at NASA but is his superior on the mission.