By Ian Gabriel Trinidad
On Friday, Marvel Studios unveiled the first full trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the latest addition to the ever-growing Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
The film, set to be released on July 25, 2025, will introduce the much-awaited superhero team to the MCU and set the stage for their eventual entry into the main canon in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday.
First steps into the MCU
As confirmed by Marvel, First Steps is set in a different universe from the rest of the franchise.
Specifically, it takes place in a more technologically advanced 1960s, with an aesthetic heavily featuring retrofuturism and the American Space Age.
“Four brave astronauts head up into space … and come back forever changed,” the trailer begins, summarising the superhero team’s origin.
Like in the comics created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, scientific genius Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), his wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Sue’s younger brother Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), skilled pilot and Reed’s college roommate, embark on a mission into outer space, where their rocket passes through a cloud of cosmic radiation.
After coming back to Earth, the team discovers that the radiation gave them powers: Reed gains the ability to stretch his body, Sue is able to bend the light around her and become invisible, Johnny can engulf himself in flames and fly, and Ben gains superhuman strength and durability, but his body has mutated and become rock-like.
The trailer thus suggests that the story will begin after the Fantastic Four become heroes to an adoring public.
The scene continues, with Sue revealing at dinner that she is pregnant with their first child, Franklin, a mutant in the Marvel universe with powerful reality-bending and psionic abilities.
Comic book buffs are already theorising that his appearance may play a role in the introduction of mutants to the MCU, a development suggested by the recent Avengers: Doomsday cast reveal video, which indicated that actors from 20th Century Fox’s X-Men films will return for the blockbuster event.
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Galactus appears
Marvel’s newest trailer then continues with the Fantastic Four gazing up as flaming objects fall from the sky and the Silver Surfer appears (Julia Garner).
“Your planet is now marked for death,” she announces ominously to onlookers.
Eagle-eyed comics fans are predicting that, unlike 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the reboot will feature Shalla-Bal, the lover of the original Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd.
Regardless, the appearance of the Silver Surfer heralds the arrival of Galactus, a giant cosmic being who consumes planets to sustain his existence.
The Big Bad has not yet been fully revealed in the trailer, but sneak peeks – a shot of his head looming over the city and a clip of him walking past a building – have shown that his appearance and size will be more comic-accurate than in the previous iteration.
Tantalisingly, viewers are also given a taste of the Fantastic Four in action.
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