It’s strange that we haven’t seen any footage from Josh Trank’s The Fantastic Four. Not necessarily strange in a bad way. Just… unusual. As we recently pointed out, both Ant-Man and The Avengers: Age of Ultron have teased fans with full-sized trailers, while their fellow 2015 release, The Fantastic Four, has kept it very quiet. For a while, I thought this was just because the movie wasn’t ready to be shown. CGI on The Thing, the Human Torch, Mister Fantastic and Dr. Doom could have been causing delays. Except, now someone with serious geek cred claims to have seen it. Here’s what they said.
Matthew Vaughn is making the rounds promoting his upcoming film Kingsman: The Secret Service. Vaughn, as you may recall, is a 20th Century Fox guy, having helmed Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class, and also helping develop X-Men: Days of Future Past before handing the reigns back to Bryan Singer. Well, Vaughn told Flickering Myth that he’s actually seen Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four, and shared his opinion on the finished product:
I’ve seen the movie. It’s good. I thought Chronicle was a fantastic movie and [Josh] Trank has gone off and done his version of Fantastic Four. If you like Chronicle, then you’ll like this. We’re all backing Josh Trank’s vision. And hopefully the world will like Josh Trank’s vision."
The Chronicle comparison came up yesterday when we reported that a Reddit user who claims to have worked on The Fantastic Four also said the movie is "good" and that it feels like Chronicle 2. Now, that created a bit of a backlash in our comments section from people who said they want Chronicle 2 to happen, but they want a FF movie that feels like Fantastic Four! That’s hard to argue against.
It’s noteworthy that Matthew Vaughn thinks The Fantastic Four works, and that he’s willing to go on the record to support it. It’s possible he’s being a "company guy," of course, but I trust Vaughn’s opinion, and want to believe that he legitimately supports Josh Trank’s vision.
What this suggests, though, is that there’s more than enough footage available to cut a trailer. Or a short clip? Something that can be shown to fans to give us more to talk about than just, "Where is this movie, and why haven’t we seen any footage yet?"
