I was expecting it during the Super Bowl, but Marvel just dropped the first teaser for Fantastic Four: First Steps, the film more than any other they hope will get the good ship SS Total Box Office Dominance back on track. 

 

They did a whole ass live launch event with the cast this morning, giving us our first look at the new new Fantastic Four. The teaser, with its kitschy midcentury style and borderline cheesy emphasis on family is…cute.

 

I do genuinely love the aesthetic. Setting this film in the 1960s was the right call, it immediately doesn’t look like any other superhero movie in recent memory, let alone Marvel movie. And the cast looks strong, led by Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm. I especially like how tactile Ben Grimm looks as The Thing. He actually looks like a talking pile of rocks, it’s immediately the best The Thing has ever looked on film (they used a practical suit at least part of the time). 

 

But I’m not like…bowled over. Mainly because I have no sense of the stakes. Oh, New York is in trouble? When isn’t it? I think the Superman trailer did a better job telling me up front what is at stake, from Clark’s actual, physical health, to his budding love for Lois Lane, and THEN showing me imperiled people for Superman to save. And that is slightly a problem for Fantastic Four, because these two films open two weeks apart in July. Maybe it will turn into a Barbenheimer situation, and they’ll both feed the other’s box office, but comic book movie fans are not usually that, er, cooperative. 

 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate this teaser. The Thing looks great, Johnny Storm’s “flame on” looks great, Sue Storm’s invisibility looks the best. That’s another power set that has never really looked good on film, used for cheap, body-ogling jokes in the 2000s films, and just plain badly realized in the disastrous 2015 Fant4stic Four. Here, Sue’s invisibility power actually looks quite beautiful, the little we get to see of it. There is obviously a lot of care and thought put into this film, how everything should look and feel, and I do like the emphasis on family, because the Fantastic Four are the “first family of Marvel”, and that’s never really translated on screen, either.

 

Which is why, maybe, this teaser doesn’t have to push so hard. Fans WANT this to work, they have always wanted a viable cinematic Fantastic Four. The bar is so low, if the movie just doesn’t suck, it’s a win. (Superman is more or less in the same boat.) And it doesn’t look sucky, I’m just not sure what the hook is besides “finally, we may have gotten this right”. That’s no small thing given how bad Fantastic Four movies have been in the past, but it’s also not enough. Not in the long run. It works for a teaser, to show us how good this movie looks, how good the cast looks, and gives a sense that maybe this time it’s right. 

But eventually, I’m going to want a little bit more than just power displays and fire raining down on Manhattan (when doesn’t it?). I do think, though, if Marvel can deliver a decent film, it will go a long way to restoring their reputation with audiences. People just want to see good movies, if you give them a good Fantastic Four movie, they’ll go nuts. And I’m hopeful that beyond the production and character design, there’s a good story here, good enough to not only give the Fantastic Four their cinematic due, but to anchor Marvel into their next phase and beyond the OG Avengers. When it comes to the Fantastic Four, the hunger for good movies has been there all along, but we’ve never been served a full meal. As Ben Grimm says, The Fantastic Four: First Steps might have some zip.