We’ve spent months and months waiting for anything even resembling a sneak peek at Josh Trank’s upcoming The Fantastic Four, and for months we’ve been disappointed. But now, after all this time, 20th Century Fox is finally ready to show off Marvel’s first family’s return to the big screen. The Fantastic Four trailer has arrived.
In this superhero reboot – erasing the continuity established in 2004’s Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - we find director Josh Trank taking a page out of the Amazing Spider-Man book and reintroducing us to the titular team. Strongly influenced by Marvel’s Ultimate Fantastic Four comics, the new movie finds Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Sue Storm (Kate Mara), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) caught in the middle of a science experiment that sends them through another dimension.
And we get a number of outstanding looks into that other dimension in this sci-fi-heavy trailer, which looks a LOT more like the roots of the Fantastic Four comic than we were lead to believe. There are image of Reed Richards (Teller) wandering through a massive laboratory. We see the Four in spacesuits, suffering through what we assume is a botched mission (that eventually grants them their powers). And we get ACTUAL looks at the heroes morphing into their super-powered beings. Well, Johnny (Jordan) and Ben (Bell), at the very least.
This trailer is far more promising than anyone could have hoped, and it’s somewhat amazing how an effective teaser clip like this can automatically swing the fanbase back to the side of a franchise they have been begging to embrace. This is an expertly cut trailer, that teases the exploratory tone of the feature, establishes who the team is, and leaves us wondering about a few major things. Like Doom. Where is Doom? Is that Doom in the closing scene of the film? We’re told "answers" are coming. Not soon enough!
Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey (who narrates this first trailer), and Tim Blake Nelson co-star in the film, which will be in theaters on August 7th. For now, what do you think about the trailer?
