Fantastic Four Teaser Trailer is Not as Terrible as Many Hoped
Other PopGeeks writers might share their takes on this new Fantastic Four teaser trailer with you, but, look, I’ve been a comic book nerd forever, so I’ve got stuff to say.
As a nerd, interacting with other nerds, I’ve rarely seen a geek movie wished more ill-will than director Josh Trank’s upcoming Fantastic Four film.
Part of that is that there’s this utopian nerd desire to have all Marvel properties under the big umbrella of Marvel Studios, because Marvel Studios makes the best Marvel movies and it would free the studio to have big crossovers that evoke the “shared universe” concept that helped make Marvel popular in the first place.
Fine theory, but the real Hollywood is a bit too complicated and it probably isn’t happening any time soon. Also, as the trailer makes sure to rub in our faces, it’s from 20th Century Fox, the same studio that brought us X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is as good as any Marvel Studios movie and better than most.
The other problem seems to be with having black actor Michael B. Jordan play Johnny Storm. Some of that seems to be a comic book nerd obsession with continuity, but there are also less lovely objections mixed in there that show we really don’t live in a post-racial world yet.
But here’s the trailer, and it’s proof that despite the whining they shot the damn film anyway and it’s going to come out, like it or not.
And what we see actually looks promising. Although the narration at first made me think I was watching one of those car ads with Matthew McConaughey, the images show a relatively faithful take on the Ultimate Universe Fantastic Four.
A gifted young Reed Richards sends a toy to another dimension. He gets sent to a think tank with other gifted kids and grows up there working on perfecting his device to explore this dimension. He meets fellow brilliant scientist Susan Storm. At some point Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm get involved, this isn’t that clear. And of course the journey goes wrong, probably because Doom screwed it up.
I’m sure that all over the internet people who had unrealistic expectations that the story would be about Reed and his group stealing their own spaceship to beat the Commies to the stars are howling, but readers of the Ultimate version are nodding along.
The trailer is very coy about showing us the group using its powers, but the quick glimpses we get look okay.
So, there it is. It’s a real thing. It’s coming out Aug. 7 this year and complaining won’t make it go away. So maybe it’s time to be open-minded about it and give it a chance. If it’s terrible, we still have the comics.