First Trailer and Poster for Dark, Gritty FANTASTIC FOUR Reboot Have Arrived

From its start, Fox's Fantastic Four reboot has been plagued with bad press. The movie only exists so that rights to the franchise don't revert to Marvel Studios. Certain parts of the Internet freaked out when a black actor was cast as Johnny Storm. There have been reports of director Josh Trank being, um, less than professional on set. Doctor Doom has been turned into an Occupy-esque blogger.



The first trailer for Fantastic Four arrived on Tuesday, and there's good news and bad news.

The good news? This reboot, at least based on the trailer, doesn't look anything like the disaster we've been expecting. It's hard to go wrong with actors like Miles Teller, Kate Mara and Michael B. Jordan. The tone of the film seems to be a hybrid of X-Men: Days of Future Past with a touch of patron-saint-of-gritty-reboots Christopher Nolan thrown in.

The bad news? This isn't Fantastic Four. Not the Fantastic Four fans have known since 1961, that is. While the previous two Fantastic Four movies got a ton of grief for being cartoony, Fox's reboot has swung too far in the opposite direction. Trank never got to make the sequel to Chronicle that he had envisioned — Fantastic Four is looking like that sequel with new branding.

I don't want to get too down on this film. Like I said, the trailer looks good. It looks promising. There's a ton of talent in this film. Trank is directing the second Star Wars standalone movie and Mara is testing for the first Star Wars standalone. These are all pop culture figures who are going to be on the scene for a long time. Maybe Fantastic Four is going to be good ... we're just going to have to get used to this new version of the franchise.

Fantastic Four opens on Aug. 7. The movie star Teller, Mara, Jordan, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell.