The (Movie) Trailer Park: Fantastic Four

I know it’s been a while since I’ve been able to post, dear readers, but today I have been brought back to document something… fantastic. (Or hopefully fantastic.) Today we finally have the first trailer for Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four! Hit the player to watch this long overdue look at Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Sue Storm (Kate Mara), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), and Jamie Bell (The Thing)!

-Did I just watch the trailer for Interstellar? I mean, that’s sorta what it felt like. This movie looks SERIOUS, which is a contrast to the family fun that is typical of the Fantastic Four comics. Josh Trank’s taking his Chronicle approach (which obviously worked for that movie) and applying it to the first family of superdom. But there are a lot of questions to be asked about this trailer.

-It looks like we saw examples of everyone’s abilities, save for Sue’s invisibility. (Unless of course… she was invisible and I just didn’t see her. MIND BLOWN.) Reed’s stretchiness has a dramatic moment, as does Johnny’s flaming-on (in a hallway though? DUDE.). And of course the Thing is in full effect, even in shadows. He’s hella-rocky in this version, as opposed to the rounder (and smaller) Michael Chiklis edition from the prior flicks. Even still, is this a superhero movie? Or a sci-fi adventure?

-Reed Richards does gadget stuff. He is clearly smart.

-Sue Storm sits at a computer and does stuff. She is clearly smart.

-Ben Grimm likes to play baseball. He is clearly dumb.

-Johnny Storm like to work on his car inside the house. He is clearly dumb.

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Seriously. He’s inside a house, not a garage. We all see this, right?

-Where are the villains? I’m just assuming that our absent Doctor Doom is narrating this “evil” warning to our heroes. We’re also supposed to get Tim Blake Nelson as the Mole Man, so this movie should not be short on nefarious foes. And there better be foes, or else the Thing won’t get to yell “it’s clobbering time” and punch someone. Because that needs to happen EVERY TIME.

-I’ll say this, it does appear that Trank is going SPACEY on us here. Landscapes with weird rock formations and pillars of light? That either describes Middle-Earth or another planet. I’m hoping for the former, but will settle for the latter.

-For all the delays and production issues surrounding this movie, I’ll say this: the trailer is fascinating, if nothing else. I’m interested in a superhero movie that doesn’t squarely set itself in the superhero genre. And one minute and fifty-five seconds in, that’s what it appears we have. What do you think? Is your cosmic-interest piqued?

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Fantastic Four opens on August 7th, 2015.