Finally, the teaser trailer for Josh "Chronicle" Trank's new take on **Fantastic Four **you've been waiting for is here. It's definitely darker than the Chris Evans / Jessica Alba / Ioan Gruffudd / Michael Chiklis era, and it's bound to get you excited.
Featuring Whiplash's Miles Teller as Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic, House Of Cards' Kate Mara as Susan Storm / Invisible Woman, Fruitvale Station's Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm / Human Torch and Billy Elliot himself, Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm / The Thing, the fourth live-action Fantastic Four film – you'd forgotten this one, hadn't you? – has Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes' Toby Kebbell as Victor Domashev / Doom.
It’s a teaser in the grand tradition – its almost avowed dedication to keeping the big reveals at elongated arm’s length may leave you with more questions than answers – but its serious, sombre tone will almost certainly be nothing like you were expecting from a movie featuring a bloke who has orange rock for skin. And, after rumours of a troubled production, it’s all distinctly promising.
Starting with a shot of New York, and a sonorous voiceover (“How did we get this far? Human beings have an immeasurable desire to discover, to invent, to build…”) that clearly isn’t meant to be any member of the youthful team of superheroes, but which may be Wire veteran Reg E. Cathey as Professor Storm, the teaser bombards us with images that are a world away from the primary-coloured, poppy world of the previous let’s-not-talk-about-those Fantastic Four movies, or the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby comic book that launched Marvel back in the early 60s.
Instead, the template here seems to be the Ultimate Fantastic Four, so you get much younger versions of Reed Richards, Sue Storm, her adopted brother Johnny, and Ben Grimm, an emphasis on hard science (the four intrepid explorers are not transformed into superheroes by heading into space, as per the original comic, but possibly into another dimension), and a muted, more realistic pallet. Tonally, and visually, this is more redolent of that other rebooted Fox franchise that places the emphasis on smarts, Rise/Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes.
And the emphasis is on holding back, on confounding expectations. So we only hear one member of the FF – Teller’s Reed Richards – speak. There are no costumes in evidence. We only see brief glimpses of the powers the quartet gain after their incredible journey – Jordan’s Human Torch flames on in a corridor, Bell’s The Thing punches his way out of what looks like a transformation cocoon, there seems to be a glimpse of an invisible force-field courtesy of Sue, and in a closing shot, Reed’s arm does seem to be changing shape. Though it’s so quick, that could be a bit of a stretch.
And when, at the trailer’s end, the dirty one-third of a dozen are assembled, we only see them from behind. It’s an unorthodox end to an unorthodox, but effective, trailer, and it makes us think that Trank, the wunderkind behind Chronicle, is heading in the right direction.
Plus! Trank and his team have also unveiled a teaser poster in honour of today's trailer, which you can check out below.
Now all you have to do is come back at 2.15pm GMT for an exclusive interview with Josh Trank and Simon Kinberg...
Fantastic Four is released in the UK on August 6, 2015.