The whole point of a poster, or a trailer, or any piece of a film’s marketing is to get you excited to see the finished product. So the whole point of a new Fantastic Four poster should be to get you excited to see the Fantastic Four. But that’s the not the approach 20th Century Fox is taking. The newly released poster for Fantastic Four presents the entire cast with their back to the audience, looking at a lightning bolt. The message is clear: lightning is WAY more interesting than these guys.
If we sound cynical, it’s because we’re frustrated. The Fantastic Four are some of the most beloved, celebrated and influential comic book characters in history. They’ve had three films now (if you include the infamous, unreleased Roger Corman version), and all of them have been pretty lackluster. The upcoming reboot has a solid director (Josh Trank, Chronicle) and an impressive cast (Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell), but nothing we’ve seen so far instills much confidence.
Related: Watch the First Trailer for ‘Fantastic Four’
The first trailer for Fantastic Four could have been the trailer for practically any sci-fi or superhero movies, and now the poster can’t even be bothered to either show off the characters clearly, or even tease them properly. It looks like the Fantastic Four are shunning us, too cool to care that an audience is watching. The title characters are looking at something else, which guides our eye directly to it, and what do we get when we look? A lightning bolt. A generic spire of light that – like the trailer – could be anything.
Is it a natural phenomenon? A supervillain’s attack? All we know is that the Fantastic Four are vaguely interested and not very emotional about it. Look at their body language. There’s no excitement, fear or even interest. If we had to guess what they were thinking, we’d guess they were thinking, “Yup, that’s a lightning bolt.”
We want this movie to be great. We would love for this movie to be great. But in the absence of any evidence that implies that the new Fantastic Four movie might actually BE great, we can only be frustrated… and hope for the best.
Here’s that poster of a lightning bolt, with the Fantastic Four looking at it. The movie comes out in theaters on August 7, 2015.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
