Fantastic Four: First Steps Teaser Drops

Look, I don’t have a proper image of the Fantastic Four in my image library. I forget why this one is here, unless I once posted their review of the Roger Corman-produced one that got buried. In fact, I think we need to get a few things clear before we go into this just released teaser for The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

• I am not a fan of the Fantastic Four. I’ve tried to get interested in Marvel’s first family, even seen parts if not full versions of all four cartoon series I’m aware of and the movies and of course the comics. I just can’t get into it and I wish I could figure out why. I’m just not into them.
• I know this is a teaser, not even a full trailer. Before the usual suspects get on my or anyone’s case, any of us who reviews this reviews it as “this is what the marketing people think will get us excited for the movie”, not “this tells us what the movie is about”. The teaser that dropped today only tells us a bit about the look of this series.
• This isn’t set in the regular Marvel Cinematic Universe because of reasons. I don’t know what those reason are so I can’t fully judge them, and my theories are a bit wild as to why they’ve decided to play games with the multiverse, which many MCU fans are sick of because so far Marvel Studios have shown they don’t understand what makes a good use of the multiverse. That hasn’t stopped them on going full in on it with Loki and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness.
• We will be taking the current actions of Marvel Studios and the MCU in find when it comes to whether or not this has promise. While the movies were doing amazing when Paramount and Universal (who still had the Hulk license but was more willing to play nicely than Sony has been with Spider-Man) were the distributors, things have slowly decayed under Disney, which has gone further and further away from Walt Disney’s dream and is now a brand that bears little to no resemblance to its origins even when it isn’t outright hostile to them. As for the FF’s movie history…it already isn’t very good, but I think we know that it can always be worse. They have a mountain to climb.
• Like any review, these are my opinions. They may not be yours but if you wanted your opinions you’d be reading your site…which would be odd because you should know your opinions. I’m not going with any group here. I have a vague idea of what anyone else thinks because I haven’t watched an actual review by anyone else before seeing this. What you’re getting is all me factoring in all the biases I just listed.

Now that the disclaimer fest is out of the way, let’s look at this “retro-futuristic” teaser. This isn’t the usual not-616 Marvel movieverse. What will happen here?

Admittedly I do like the retro-futuristic look. So few science fiction goes back to this “what if the 1950s better predicted the future” idea. There’s plenty of steampunk and cyberpunk, but I can only think of three productions that anyone might have heard of, and I’m stretching with the failed Constant Payne pilot. Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow is very dark visually to hide the new special effect style flaws while the Fallout game franchise uses it as a stop point in their alternate post-apocalyptic world. As a fan of this seldom-touched style I am glad to see it in use, though a better homage would involve the comic’s origin year, in the 1960s.

I’m guessing the focus of this movie, at least as subplot, is Ben Grimm struggling to deal with his transformation into the ever-loving, blue-eyed Thing, which is in keeping with Ben’s early character arc and still comes up now and then because it’s not how most people would want to go through life. It’s certainly not a new idea, but it’s more than we know about what Johnny’s arc will be. He’s barely in this. Sue seems to be the one holding things together, the heart of the team, as Reed struggles with what he’s done to his family trying to win the space race, which is how the series got started. This early in the FF’s career, because all the first movies is their origin story and not moving on to a seasoned team dealing with a new or returning enemy who isn’t Doctor Doom. Seriously, I’m glad to see Galactus pop up because, outside of Tony Stark playing Victor Von Doom in the MCU now, it’s someone @#$# else from the FF’s villains roster…and he’s not a gas cloud like his last live-action appearance.

Nice nod to Herbie the robot. I think by now the internet knows that his replacing the Human Torch in the 1980s Fantastic Four cartoon was due to Johnny being planned as a solo film and thus it was rights issues, not the usual whinny parent groups, that got him replaced. They gave him a 1950s makeover, which I have mixed feelings about but it’s nice that he’s not a pariah like other robots from my childhood favorites. Poor Zark.

Am I interested in this movie? Not really. Outside of a setting I wish got more love and attention Pedro Pascal is still a terrible choice for Reed. He doesn’t look the part at all, and when you got everyone else right it tends to stand out even more how little he resembles his comic counterpart. Compare him to Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Richards, Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm, and the CG covering for Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who isn’t quite a match in human form for Ben, either, but the voice he was okay on for what we saw. We also know that there’s a gender swapped Silver Surfer because someone did a wikisearch to add more estrogen to the movie (though I showed the right way to do that as well). I’m not into the continued misuse of the multiverse because they don’t want to fit the FF into the MCU properly. Also, I started by mentioning I have never gotten into the Fantastic Four no matter how often I’ve tried. If I do watch this, it will be on TV or streaming not only because of my current lack of finances but because I just don’t care beyond the retro-futuristic setting, and while I want to push for more of that it’s not enough to get me into this movie even if I had the funds. So even if this breaks current MCU trends on quality, the adaptation quality continues to be the low levels that Marvel Studios have put out since Disney acquired Marvel because it was successful, only to ditch everything that made it successful as Bob Iger continues to show he knows nothing about making good entertainment.

I wish them luck because I want more good movies out there, but I am not teased. Now I can go see what everyone else is saying.