With a title like The Fantastic Four: First Steps, is it any wonder that the first trailer reveals Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm and Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards are expecting a baby? The impending arrival of a super-powered spawn is just one of the many intriguing reveals from the Marvel Studios picture ahead of its hotly anticipated summer release on July 25.
The newly released trailer suggests that the film, directed by WandaVision’s Matt Shakman from a script by Thunderbolts writer Eric Pearson, takes place over an extended period of time. At various points, Sue is shown revealing her pregnancy, sporting a more advanced baby bump, and then peering down into a crib. It remains to be seen whether or not she’s staring down at Franklin—a formidable toddler in the comic books with powers of telekinesis and telepathy who once had Agatha Harkness, currently portrayed by Kathryn Hahn in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as a nanny.
Footage featuring Kirby, Pascal, Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn as Sue’s brother Johnny/Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, a.k.a. The Thing, makes clear that this is no origin tale. “We all know the story. Four brave astronauts all head up into space and come back forever changed,” a TV host character named Ted Gilbert (played by Mark Gatiss) says. “Our city, our planet owe a debt to these intrepid souls. And while we can never repay them, we can certainly celebrate them.”
By this point in the retro-futuristic 1960s, this family of superheroes have saved the world many times over. Skipping the early days of their reign is a relief for those familiar with Fantastic Four’s past franchise attempts, which often delve into this very territory.
Following an unreleased Roger Corman–produced feature in the 1990s, the Fantastic Four were reintroduced via Tim Story’s critically panned, but financially solvent 2005 movie starring Chris Evans, Jessica Alba, Ioan Gruffudd, and Michael Chiklis as the titular clan. Less than a decade after its 2007 sequel, Josh Trank took the story for a spin with a 2015 feature led by Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell that was an unmitigated flop.
This next attempt at a film adaptation also enlists Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser, and John Malkovich. Meanwhile, Ralph Ineson plays the villainous space god Galactus, who appears only as a shadowy planet destroyer in the latest trailer, and Julia Garner is Silver Surfer, who glides on a floating surfboard above Earth while she threatens her adversaries: “Your planet is now marked for death.”
But leave it to Kirby’s expectant Sue Storm to bring a dose of hope. “We will face this together,” she declares in the trailer. “We will fight it together—as a family.”
