Fox’s forthcoming Fantastic Four reboot has the potential to either revitalize a franchise that has historically underperformed, or to demonstrate that Fox still lacks what it takes to get Marvel’s first family quite right. Fans of the Four have been eagerly awaiting – or, perhaps, dreading – new information on Fox’s next Fantastic Four movie, and the latest trailer for the late summer movie might assuage some fears, even as it raises others.
The newest Fantastic Four trailer isn’t drastically different from the previous version that gave us our first look at the Four. It does, however, give us more of a view of the Human Torch and the Invisible Woman using their flashy powers. At around the 1:17 mark of the video below, viewers can catch a glimpse of the (adoptive) brother-sister pair at work.
It looks, at least, like some previous predictions of perhaps a twisted version of the Fantastic Four have proven to be unfounded. It also seems like director Josh Trank will indeed be realizing the Fantastic Four in the darker tones that he previously promised . Trank said earlier that his vision of Marvel’s First Family would blaze a different trail from previous movie incarnations, that the new Fantastic Four would not rely upon a “kitschy, overly comic-book world,” and the looks we’ve gotten so far of the reboot in action would seem to bear this out.
But is the darker, more serious tone the correct way to handle the Fantastic Four ? Even with just a few glimpses of the Four in action, longtime fans of the Marvel series are crying foul. Their complaint: the Fantastic Four has always been a bright, fun, family-oriented property, likely more akin to Pixar’s The Incredibles or Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy than anything we’ve seen in the previews so far. It remains to be seen whether this new, darker take on the Fantastic Four will fly with the fans.
It also remains to be seen how fans will take to the liberties Trank took with the Fantastic Four. Trank took Johnny and Sue Storm, who are biological siblings in the Marvel comics, and turned them into mixed-race adoptive siblings. That, of course, inspired the requisite wave of complaints from fans that want to see faithful recreations on the screen of what they’ve already read on the page. Trank, though, says that the movie explores exactly what it is that makes a family, and that the adoptive element won’t change the core of what makes the Fantastic Four so fantastic.
Fantastic Four opens later this year, and Fox is hoping that it will finally turn into the second successful franchise that the studio licensed from Marvel. The studio’s X-Men franchise has seen solid box office returns , but the Fantastic Four have consistently underperformed. The new, more serious take on the property is a big bet for Fox, but the studio seems confident in Trank’s vision, as there is already a Fantastic Four 2 slated for release a few years from now.
[Image via YouTube.]