It’s been eight years since the Silver Surfer and his antics ended the short-lived run of Fantastic Four movies, but 20th Century Fox are back to have another go, this time with Chronicle’s Josh Trank helming the show. Very little has been seen or heard about this movie, due for release this coming August, but a trailer dropped yesterday, so lets have a look at this thing:
After opening shots of a city and some mountainous landscape, we see this shot, where you can just about make out “Grimm Salvage” on the building. This must be the business owned by the family of Ben Grimm, future rock monster. the camera pans up to the sky. This whole trailer has a very astral feel to it, spending a lot of time in space or looking at it. 
Seeing a muscle car racing through a field gives me a J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek vibe, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. From the rest of the trailer, my money says that’s Johnny Storm doing the driving. We’re also treated to a very sombre narration (I think from Reg E. Cathey, more on him later) talking about mankind’s strive for improvement, it’s importance, and the potential cost.
Here’s some SCIENCE! You can tel, because something is sparking. That’s what happens in science, don’t ya know. I liked the cut from the car driving to a model car being tested on.
These are the kids doing the science. Judging by the glasses, this is probably a young Reed Richards looking apprehensive, and a young Ben Grimm with his fingers in his ears.
And this is them now they’ve all grown up, still doing science, but on a much larger, going-into-space scale. The synchronised pods facing different directions is a nice visual, but I doubt the practicality.
And here we have my biggest problem with this trailer. This is a room of serious-faced people, looking stern at probably some kind of briefing. It’s a fairly standard scene you’ve seen before, no big deal. So what’s my problem? Well, my issue is that I had the exact same expression on my face whilst watching the trailer. From the little that I know of the Fantastic Four (never read the comics, kind of seen the two movies from the 2000s), these things are ridiculous. Let’s look at the super powers these guys get: 1. Invicibility plus forcefields. Fine, no problem. 2. Flight, whilst on fire. OK. Hmmm. I suppose so. 3. Being a big rock. Righty-o. You’re starting to lose me. And 4. The ability to stretch oneself. Like a toy. A stupid toy. You add all these things together, and you get a film that really shouldn’t be serious at all. It should be fun. Silly, even. There should at the very least be some inclination towards comedy. This is not Batman. You cannot make this story realistic, and I do not think it’s going to work.
But they’re trying anyway, so let’s meet the team: First up it’s Miles Teller (I’ve not seen Whiplash yet, so I’ve got no reason to not hate the guy after Divergent) as Reed Richards. It’s too early to say if he’s good casting or not, but as yet I’m unconvinced. Giving him stretchy powers seems like it’d just make him a prank-playing asshole.
Here’s Kate Mara as Sue Storm, the future Mrs. Richards and Invincible Woman. I like Mara, so no problem here, I’m just trying to think if she’s ever had a role that didn’t involve an awful lot of her time spent staring at computer screens…
…because here she has a great deal of them. Loads, in fact. This just seems greedy.
Potentially my favourite member of the team, with potentially my least favourite casting, it’s Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm, presumably the son of a salvage magnate and soon destined to be the hero of geologists everywhere. Much has been made of the casting of Bell, who is almost the polar opposite of the much more compact figure of Michael Chiklis. Depending on where they go with this, Bell could end up trying his hardest in a role he’s just not right for. We’ll see. What I’d pay a great deal of money for, however, is seeing The Thing do ballet. Make it happen, people.
And finally, easily the best casting of the bunch is Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch. Jordan has worked with Trank before on Chronicle, and I have a lot of faith in him nailing the cocky character that helped propel Chris Evans into superstardom. Also, here he is working on a car, hence why I think he’s the one driving it earlier. Consider this his Megan-Fox-in-Transformers introduction.
This is the aforementioned Reg E. Cathey, playing the father of Johnny and Sue, Dr. Franklin Storm. Cathey is a character actor you may recognise from the likes of The Wire and House of Cards or, if you’re like me and haven’t seen those shows, you’ll no doubt know him from S.W.A.T. and The Mask. Seriously, I recognised him from there. Yes, I’m ashamed.
Miles Teller, going into space. Clearly, nothing is going to go wrong.
Or not. Kate Mara looks concerned. Something is going down.
Yep, this is not a scene from a safe and successful mission.
We get a little of the respective powers in the movie, sort of. Here’s The Thing, waking up from becoming a fossil.
Uh oh, Kate Mara looks concerned again. I hope she gets more to do in this movie than just looking worried all the time.
Flame on. But in the distance. And in a corridor. Seems an unusual place for this to happen. I get the feeling someone is going to regret not having this hallway installed with fire extinguishers, or at least a sprinkler system.
Big explosion or giant Sue Storm forcefield? Probably the former. Either way, nothing good is going on here.
From the figure, this could be Toby Kebbell as Victor von Doom. It’s names like that which assure me this should most definitely be a lot more fun than it looks. Also, Kebbell is awesome, so whatever he’s doing here, I’m looking forward to it.
Here’s a closer look at the visuals for Invisible Woman’s forcefield – looks too hazy and blurry to me – and Human Torch’s flames. Instead of the flame-in-human-form look, here it’s more like he’s a man literally on fire, which should be easier for people at home to copy. Please don’t try this at home, kids.
We don’t really see Invisible Woman’s invisibility powers (or do we? Maybe she’s in every scene and we just don’t know it.) but we do briefly get a minute glimpse of Mr. Fantastic doing the ridiculous and stretching his arm, off screen. I’m pretty sure it’ll be a bit more front-and-centre in the actual movie, but this is the best screen grab I could get, sorry. Apparently in order for Reed Richards to perform this feat he also needs to try really, really hard to poop.
This screen represents the second most worrying thing about the movie (the first being the tone, the third being some of the casting): putting a number 4 in it. This is not the 4th Fantastic Four movie in this franchise. It is not in 4D. Therefore, they are legally not allowed to insert the number “4” into their title as though it was some kind of blinged-up vowel. No. Stop it. We’re not in the early 2000s any more, and dammit I won’t stand for this nonsense.
And one more for the road, here’s a nice hero shot. Shockingly, given this is from a camera sat on the ground, angled up at the sky behind out actors, this wasn’t positioned directly behind Kate Mara. Clearly, Trank hasn’t learned enough from Jos Whedon’s work with Scarlett Johansson.
The Fantastic Four is due for release in August 2015.
What did you think of the trailer? Have you started caring about the film yet? Had you forgotten it was coming out, or just hoped everyone else had instead? Let us know in the comments.