Just last week there were rumors that Josh Trank's upcoming Fantastic Four was such an unmitigated disaster that Fox was considering burning the whole thing down, scrapping the release and starting over from scratch. I never put much stock in those rumors, although the complete lack of ANY marketing materials for a major tentpole feature less than eight months away was more than a bit suspect.
Yesterday, Fox attempted to quiet the naysayers by releasing the first teaser for the film, conveniently while most of the east coast was trapped in their homes by a mountain of snow. Why they didn't save this reveal five more days and air it during the Super Bowl is beyond me.
Well it hardly looks like an unsalvageable mess, but that's mostly because it doesn't really look like much of anything at the moment. There's a lot of vague voiceover about discovery and risk, some moody shots of our four leads not doing much in the way of superheroics, and...that's about it. They certainly want us to know that this is a SERIOUS MOVIE, which might be a bit of an over-correction from the previous attempt at the franchise. Still, a lot remains to be seen.
What do I like? The homegrown version of Miles Teller's contraption looks cool. For some reason I was under the impression that they weren't going to space this time around, but that last image certainly looks like another planet to me. Perhaps it's a different dimension? I dig that our brief glimpse of Michael B. Jordan flaming on appears to just be a guy covered in flames, as opposed to when Chris Evans turned into a molten human. It's a nice and simple differentiation, and it looks classier. I also like the design of The Thing (at least from behind), although I wish he was a bit bigger, more Hulk like.
What do I not like? I realize that all the humor in the old Fantastic Four fell horribly flat, but I wish this movie didn't look so damn dour. Also, I assume that we're getting a version of Reed Richards as a child prodigy, but for a guy named Mr. Fantastic he looks awfully young. They all do, which isn't helped by a shot of Jamie Bell playing Little League. Also, more Kate Mara please!
Oh, and fuck you SO HARD for replacing the "A" in Fantastic with the number four. Seriously. Can we officially call a moritorium on this shit? For a movie that so desperately wants to be taken seriously, that title treatment is beyond childish. From now on, if you're gonna start shoving numbers into your titles, I'm gonna start pronouncing those titles as written.
Fantfourstic hits theaters this August.
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