Fun fact about me: the first ever movie that I watched in theatres was Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. My parents aren’t big on movie theatres, so the reason I went was because I had won a writing competition in the local newspaper and had received two free tickets to the movies. All that to say I have a soft spot for the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer, whose show I also watched growing up. Yes, that’s a real show. So, you can imagine I was pretty excited to see what the MCU’s attempt at the Fantastic Four would be.
The first thing that struck me was the colour grading. As many have complained, the colour grading in almost every MCU film outside of the Guardians trilogy has been very dull. In that sense, this was a breath of fresh air. It reminded me a bit of the colour grading used in the early sitcom portions of the WandaVision series. It’s just nice to see colours again even though I think that by the end of the movie when they’re zapped into the regular MCU, we’ll end up losing it again.
It’s a minute long-teaser so it’s hard to get a great grasp on things, but from what was shown, you definitely feel like the characters are Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben. Seems like a fickle thing, but if you go watch the trailers for Fant4stic (and the movie itself), I’m not sure that’s necessarily the case. There were long enough shots of Johnny and Ben to get a feel for them matching up to the expectations people would have for those characters. Sue is a little harder to read but to see her and reed talking together just felt right. Can’t say I felt the same way when I was watching Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba playing these same characters.
The powers, or at least the ones they showed, looked good! The design on The Thing is different from what’s been done in the previous movies but I think it has personality and works well. Fire effects are some of the most refined VFX we have today so it doesn’t surprise me that The Human Torch looks good in movement although I will need some better stationary looks to make up my mind. The Invisible Woman effects are maybe the ones that gave me some pause. Especially, when she’s using more of her psychic powers, it seems that they’ve settled on more of a shimmer effect. Not sure how that’ll come off. For SOME reason, we get no stretch content.
Tidbits: The Fantasticar looks… great! And most importantly, Galactus looks like Galactus (at least from the back)! See Marvel? Sometimes, the home runs are that easy.
Looking forward to more Fantastic Four content in the coming months leading up to the movie. Get me photos of the Silver Surfer!!
GCReaction
This trailer is easily getting a heart reaction from me. Nothing here to really blow you away or make your jaw drop, but given the track record of both the MCU lately as well as Fantastic Four films of the past, doing a good job is an achievement in and of itself. Fingers crossed that this is a sign of more good stuff to come!
