The days are inching closer to a summer showdown between two seminal superhero icons. James Gunn’s Superman will be the centerpiece of DC’s year, with an entirely new cinematic universe potentially hinging on its reception. Meanwhile, it was 2019 when Disney completed the purchase of 20th Century Fox’s IP library, taking along with them the rights to the X-Men and The Fantastic Four. That acquisition has been proceeded by Marvel Studios slowly and cautiously integrating the two properties into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But the time is nigh for The Fantastic Four: First Steps to debut and initiate Marvel’s first family into the most popular Marvel entity of all time.

In the teaser trailer, released in February, our first look at The Fantastic Four was somewhat brief, going over the broad strokes of the main heroes’ personality while withholding quite a lot in terms of visuals and plot threads. The recently released full trailer goes deeper than that, showing more of the glimpses we saw previously, but further explaining the story and stakes. If nothing else, while a Fantastic Four film has still yet to be a home run in live action, this promises to be a spectacle and the grandest adaptation of these characters yet:

This doesn’t have to do with anything significant, but I’ll just say that The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) dragging a ship by its chain is not only an incredible visual, but carries that pulpy and otherworldly energy that defined the 60s comics. Does it make sense that he’s not sinking into the ocean here? Not really. Do I care? In a superhero movie, if the moment is cool enough without betraying its story, I can forgive a lot…

Also, as an aside about the trailer itself, I’m not in love with the execution of the preview’s final moments. I’d say the first two thirds of the trailer is a fun watch, but then it just kind of fizzles out as they capture a couple of concerned-but-generic quotes from Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal). It’s like they didn’t know how to end this with an exclamation point before the title card, so they just tacked on what they could and called it a day. To be fair, however, the stinger after the title card of Galactus stomping through (presumably) New York was a great touch.

With that said, the trailer itself is mostly good and effectively introduces a well-known comics arc. That being the introduction of the Silver Surfer, who arrives here to do the bidding of the planet eating Galactus. It’s probably the peak of the trailer, as the Surfer gracefully descends to the street, the loud echoes of her voice spliced into the scene as she gives the Fantastic Four forewarning that Galactus is on his way. There’s also a really nice shot of the four heroes lined up together here, The Thing in particular looking quite eye-catching in his oversized suit. It just looks right – it looks like The Thing to me, and it looks comic accurate. I know some have had an adverse reaction to his appearance, with some complaints over how bizarre the mo-cap technology makes him seem. But looking bizarre and out of place is like THE WHOLE POINT of the appearance of the character.

The story itself, the looming arrival of the group’s most powerful villain, is simplistic as a premise but could show more layers of depth in the final product. The takeaway is that Reed Richard’s experimentation has signaled something to Galactus that has led to earth becoming a target, although we don’t yet know the details on what has led to this. To utilize Galactus as the main villain in the group’s first feature, when he can easily be saved as the final adversary in a concluding chapter, is a risky endeavor. But I suspect that this is merely our introduction to Galactus and that his appearance here will likely lead to a significant role in the upcoming Avengers films, but time will tell.

But, while it seems like a small victory, it can’t be overstated how big of a deal it is for Marvel Studios to even display the confidence to go for the jugular with Galactus right off the bat. This is a character that first appeared in live action in Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), where he was depicted as a damn space cloud. That was a very different era that was more adverse to sillier comic book concepts – to make nothing of the budgetary constraints and the lack of technology to bring these worlds fully to life. Marvel has an opportunity to rectify those past films, but they will also come under even greater scrutiny due to their resources and market dominance. In other words, there aren’t a lot of useful excuses for this film not to work, which will play into how harshly audiences are willing to critique it.

There’s a great deal of pressure on this movie, and it is tasked with satisfying so many different opinions and expectations. This makes even analyzing the trailer an incomplete exercise since we don’t know how much the previews are withholding and if those withholdings will extinguish our collective worries and reservations with the film. Regardless, I did notice that this trailer featured more vivid colors, and in general, there was less of that filtery sheen that I criticized in the teaser trailer. While we don’t get an abundance of footage on how these characters will be portrayed, the vibe I get from Vanessa Kirby is she’ll be a lively and bold Sue Storm/Invisible Woman. I have less of a read on Pascal as Reed or Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm. At first glance, these performances do seem like they will be different interpretations than what we’re used to with these 2 characters, but to what extent and if they will still be praise-worthy performances is yet to be seen.

We haven’t witnessed much of Pascal’s performance other than short soundbites. How this performance plays out in full scenes is up in the air, but there is growing concern from audiences that this version of Reed won’t be totally convincing in terms of his scientific intellect. But the Catch-22 of that is that since there isn’t much shown of Reed’s personality in either of these previews, I think it’s unfair to condemn the performance until it’s seen in context. For all we know, the incomplete impression of Reed is just a circumstance of the marketing withholding much of the movie’s content. It’s certainly possible that the filmmakers and Pascal understand Reed’s personality and character arc, as well as the balance needed to hit to depict a man who is a charismatic czar in the world of science, but whose personal shortcomings become easily apparent once he’s forced to relate to human emotion.

The very introduction of Sue being pregnant is at least a significant amount of evidence that this is perhaps the direction the film could be going in, as both Reed and the team must evolve to truly become a well-functioning family. All in all, I do think some aspects of the film’s marketing is a bit awkward, but that doesn’t really confirm that those same shortcomings will carry over to the movie itself. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bottom falls out of this film, wouldn’t be the first time for The Fantastic Four, but this is still the most promising an adaptation of this property has ever appeared.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps will have its greatly anticipated grand opening on July 25th, 2025.