‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ trailer has arrived
Marvel’s first family has taken its first steps all over again.
On Tuesday, Marvel debuted the first teaser trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps. This is the third onscreen incarnation of the iconic superhero family in 20 years but the first within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Watch the trailer below.
Slated to arrive in theaters on July 25, The Fantastic Four: The First Steps is set decades before the events of the Avengers saga in a retro-future version of the 1960s. “It’s a lot about the space race and about voyaging out there,” director Matt Shakman (WandaVision) told Entertainment Weekly during last year’s San Diego Comic-Con. “So First Steps is partly to do with that idea about exploration.”
“The comic was created in the early ’60s, really at the same time that the space race was starting, so it is infused with that idea of looking to the stars and dreaming of a future where we would be space travelers,” Shakman added. “And so I really wanted to take all of that great stuff from Apollo 11 and just imagine that instead of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, it was the Storms and Ben Grimm and Reed Richards heading off into space.”
The First Steps includes an enviable cast of Emmy Award favorites and television stars, including Pedro Pascal (an Emmy nominee for The Last of Us) as Reed Richards, Ebon Moss-Bachrach (an Emmy winner for The Bear) as Ben Grimm, Vanessa Kirby (an Emmy nominee for The Crown) as Sue Storm, and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things) as Johnny Storm. Emmy winner Julia Garner appears as Silver Surfer, while Ralph Ineson (Game of Thrones) plays villain Galactus. Also starring in the film are Emmy nominee Natasha Lyonne, Emmy winner Paul Walter Hauser, and Emmy winner John Malkovich. Of the supporting cast, only Malkovich is shown briefly in the teaser.
Previously, the Fantastic Four was adapted for the big screen by 20th Century Fox, initially with Ioan Gruffudd, Chris Evans, Jessica Alba, and Michael Chiklis in starring roles (Evans memorably reprised his Fox franchise take on Johnny Storm in last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine) for two films: Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007). In 2015, the Fantastic Four was rebooted again with a cast of up-and-coming stars, including Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell. But that film was savaged by critics and audiences and very publicly disowned by director Josh Trank, who posted on social media about how the movie was taken away from him during production mere hours before it debuted in theaters. And that’s not counting B-movie king Roger Corman‘s infamous take on the Fantastic Four in 1994 that was never released in theaters but has subsequently been widely bootlegged.
The hope for Marvel and its fans is that things go better this time. “One of the things we decided early on was not to do an origin story,” Shakman said of his approach. “One of the ways we’re making it our own thing is we’re not telling the story of them going up and being changed, and starting our story [there]. There’s a lot of well-known narrative that leads into that moment, right? And then you’re making up your new story starting basically at the end of the first act, and we thought, ‘Well, let’s just start this thing off on a completely new foot. So we are beginning after that.’”
In keeping with what Shakman previously teased, the film’s official synopsis suggests First Steps presents the first family’s “most daunting challenge yet.”
“Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, they must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). And if Galactus’ plan to devour the entire planet and everyone on it weren’t bad enough, it suddenly gets very personal.”
The Fantastic Four rather famously fights Doctor Doom in the comics and those prior film adaptations. But the villain likely won’t appear in The First Steps. However, considering Marvel announced former Iron Man star and Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr. would play the character in future MCU movies, expect him to get to know the Fantastic Four rather intimately in future installments and other cinematic universe entries.
Watch the trailer above.
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