I Really Want To Love The New ‘Fantastic Four’ Trailer But Something Is Off

There is much to enjoy in the first teaser trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and yet I find myself wavering. What is it about this trailer that leaves me just a little bit cold? It’s hard to put my finger on it, so I’m just going to list off what I like and what I don’t like and see if during the writing process I can’t stumble on something closer to the truth.

I really like that this movie is going for a retro-futuristic Jetsons-style vibe. I’m a big fan of the retro-futuristic aesthetic and it’s something we haven’t really seen in the MCU. It also feels true to the early comic books, which is nice.

The interiors and exteriors are great, the cars are cool. I dig the vibe, though I think there’s a part of me that worries that vibe will be glossed over too much by the MCU vibe, the glossy formulaic feel of all these films that at once unites them under a single banner and makes even the most unique style feel . . . samey somehow.

I’m mostly onboard with the casting choices here. I think Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Thing, Julia Garner as Silver Surfer and Ralph Ineson as Galactus are all inspired choices. But while I’m a huge fan of Pedro Pascal in many things, I feel like Pascal is simply in too many things these days. He’s great but he’s everywhere, and Pascal mostly plays a version of Pascal, whether that’ Joel in The Last Of Us or Mister Fantastic. (He was adorably different in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent).

I’m not sure if Vanessa Kirby as Susan Storm is a good choice or not because I’m not particularly familiar with her work. The jury is still out on all these choices, of course, having not watched the movie yet.

The trailer is weird for other reasons. Thing’s lines are weird. Was the bit about adding garlic supposed to be funny? Or maybe a little shout out to The Bear, a show about a restaurant in which Moss-Bachrach stars? I kept waiting for a punchline. It just seems like a weird bit to include in a trailer. Tonally, the trailer just feels off. I like the look of the movie, but the tone seems at once overly trite and overly dramatic, which leads to a bit of whiplash.

Maybe I’m being cynical because I’m just too jaded at this point. Years of disappointment will do that to you. The MCU has been in a bit of a slump, to put it mildly, and while I enjoyed Deadpool & Wolverine, it was hardly the triumphant return to form that many have touted it as (please kill the multiverse). Then again, this easily looks like a much better offering than past Fantastic Four efforts, so I’ll try to stay upbeat and not let my skepticism get the better of me . . . or my optimism. Here’s the trailer:

The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters on July 25th. Before that, Captain America: Brave New World releases next week. I’ll be going on opening day and reporting back with my thoughts.

Update: I must quote a reader who notes: “to me it looks like an AI trailer where someone typed in “fantastic four, retro future, wes anderson vibe”. I think this is exactly right, a perfectly succinct way to describe what feels so off about the trailer.

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