Opinion

Fantastic Four: why I can’t get over this Marvel trailer

5.2.2025

Translation: Elicia Payne

A large part of me didn’t want to expect much. I didn’t want to believe the hype. And yet this trailer swooped me off my feet faster than Galactus swoops up planets. Is this a return to Marvel’s former glory – or just a one-off?

I admit it, I was ready to judge this teaser trailer and dismiss it with disappointment. Multiverse? Meh. Another new incarnation of the Fantastic Four? If we must.

But then came this trailer – and within seconds, Marvel had me so hooked that even Spider-Man would be jealous.

What we see here is not a lame remake of the original story. And no overloaded MCU link either. No, this looks like Marvel at its best – with style, character and a dash of 1960s sci-fi magic. I want more of it. Much more.

And preferably right now.

A hype! Am I right?!

Yup, I can’t contain my excitement. Maybe because my Marvel love has noticeably waned in recent years and I’m craving something that finally grabs me as a fan again.

The new trailers for Captain America: Brave New World or Thunderbolts, for example, look nice, but lukewarm camomile tea is also «nice». And the pompously staged return of Robert Downey Jr. as the great Avengers adversary Dr. Doom? I still have a healthy dose of mistrust when it comes to him.

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The Fantastic Four: First Steps, on the other hand, feels exactly how the Fantastic Four should feel: retro, but modern. Classy, but not too serious. Bold but intimate. If this really is the tone of the movie, then this could finally be the version we’ve all been waiting for.

Or at least I have.

When I tried to share my enthusiasm with the editorial team, it was hard to get the spark across. My colleague Philipp Rüegg said «the Fantastic Four aren’t a big deal for Marvel anymore,» and it left me wondering.

What happened to the Fantastic Four?

Here’s a crazy story for you. It used to be different. Back in the day, the Fantastic Four was Marvel. Period. Because when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created them in 1961, it wasn’t just the start of a new superhero team. It was the beginning of the entire Marvel universe as we know it today. What’s more, they were the face of it. The foundation. Well into the 70s, in fact.

Multicoloured and unmistakable: the early Fantastic Four in the 60s.
Source: Marvel Comics

What was different about them? Unlike DC’s Superman or Batman, the Fantastic Four didn’t follow a rigid heroic code or superhuman ideal. They weren’t icons you looked up to – like the people in the new Superman trailer do. They were «just» a family. A dysfunctional but lovable family that argued, failed, but always came back together. That’s what made them so special – they felt human. So relatable. Tangible.

Different.

This set them apart from the competition, and their influence on Marvel’s superhero roster remains undeniable to this day. At the same time, their success was also the commercial engine that drove the Marvel universe in the first place. Without the Fantastic Four, for example, Spider-Man or the X-Men might never have existed in their current form. The blueprint for their rise in the late 70s and 80s was already there – Marvel just adapted it slightly, perfected it here and there and freshened it up with outsider or racism debates.

But at its core, everything always revolves around characters with human problems and worldly concerns who only became superheroes by chance. That’s the classic Marvel formula. And it began with the Fantastic Four.

X-Men also revolves around a dysfunctional family and minority, who in the end are really just looking for their place in the world.
Source: Disney+/Marvel Animations

How Marvel let its once most important team be forgotten

But my colleague Phil wasn’t entirely wrong: with the rise of Spider-Man in the late 70s and the X-Men in the 80s, the light on Fantastic Four actually began to dim.

While Spidey became a global figurehead and the X-Men captivated a new generation with darker, more adult themes, the Fantastic Four remained stuck in their 60s era in terms of style and content for a long time. By the mid-2000s, but at the latest when the MCU exploded, they were only a marginal phenomenon compared to Iron Man, Thor or the Avengers.

No wonder, then, that later attempts to bring the team back into the limelight seemed more desperate than inspired. Like the unnecessarily gloomy, overproduced version from 2015, which pretty much tramples on everything the fantastic family actually stands for? Best not to to even mention it.

Back to old strengths

With The Fantastic Four: First Steps, on the other hand, Marvel seems to be celebrating the origins and values of comics – which I’m all for celebrating. It’s clear from the teaser trailer that they’ve understood what makes the Fantastic Four special: a touch of nostalgia, a pinch of adventure and a good dose of sci-fi charm.

Enter: H.E.R.B.I.E., or Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-type, Integrated Electronics. He serves as an assistant and is apparently a pretty decent cook at the Baxter Building.
Source: Disney/Marvel Studios

The very first images exude this wonderful 60s optimism, somewhere between Jules Verne romanticism and Fallout retro-futurism – but without the dystopian hangover. Instead of cracking MCU slapstick and Disney Channel humour, the trailer focuses on atmosphere and an adult cast. Instead of a multiverse overloaded with complexity, there’s a world that stands on its own. And then there’s the music by Michael Giacchino, which rounds off the whole thing on a wonderfully classical note at the end of the teaser. Glorious.

But the detail that completely knocked me off my feet? The Thing! It looks exactly as it should. Not an overly intellectual, «realistic» reinterpretation. No CGI swamp of Uncanny Valley hell. It’s simply Ben Grimm in all his chunky, stony glory – as if he’d tumbled straight out of the comics. If that’s not the stuff great movies are made of, then I don’t know what is.

I always thought the design of the Thing was something you just couldn’t exactly recreate from the comics because it would look ridiculous – but here we are, and I LOVE it!
Source: Disney/Marvel Studios

Folks, this could finally be another Marvel moment that doesn’t just leave me shrugging my shoulders. I can’t wait to barge into the movie theatre on 25 July. What about you?

Header image: Disney / Marvel Studios

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Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.

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