Breaking Down the Cosmic Secrets of Fantastic Four: First Steps’ First Trailer

This morning Marvel gave us our long-awaited first look at The Fantastic Four: First Steps, its retro-suffused spin on the comics publisher’s legendary First Family. As well as introducing us to the team, and one of their greatest threats, the trailer is packed with nods to the history of the FF in the comics, modern and classic. Here’s just a few things we spotted.

Welcome to the Baxter Building

The trailer opens to Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) and Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) introducing a guest into their home in the luxurious confines of the Baxter Building: a staple of Marvel Comics’ New York skyline since it was first introduced in only the third issue of Fantastic Four back in 1962, at the time the building was meant to be the first publicly acknowledged superhero HQ in the Marvel universe. The Baxter Building has faced more than its fair share of trials and tribulations over the years (including its first infamous destruction at the hands of Doctor Doom in 1985’s Fantastic Four #278, making the way for an extensive, even bigger remodeling), but the MCU version is already looking pretty slick.

Family Dinner, HERBIE Style

After Reed makes a point to his guest that the team still makes time for family dinners—and it becomes clear we’re hearing the navigation of the Fantastic Four’s lives as a public entity, contemporary celebrities of their time—we cut to a few first as we see one such dinner being prepared. There’s a lot of good details here, like our first look at Andor‘s Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the transformed Ben Grimm/The Thing, and a really good look up close at the textured ribbing on the team suits. But above all, we get our first look at HERBIE the robot in action!

HERBIE was not originally a comics creation: the small android, whose name is an acronym for “Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-Type, Integrated Electronics,” was actually made for the 1978 animated series The New Fantastic Four, after the series was unable to include Johnny Storm as a member of the titular team due to rights availability. An assistant built by Reed and the Xandarian (i.e., the home of the Nova Corps from Guardians of the Galaxy) Master Xar to help the team search for Galactus, HERBIE transitioned over to the comics just a year later in Fantastic Four #209.

The Future Foundation

Before we get into the team’s origins, we briefly see Reed set up an elaborate, massive chalkboard filled with equations—it’s presumably somewhere in the Baxter Building, as you can briefly see the team’s space suits in the background. One element from more recent comics we know will appear in the movie is that Reed has, in the wake of the team’s rise to public prominence, established an entity known as the “Future Foundation.” In the comics, the organization is a relatively recent thing, created by writer Jonathan Hickman in 2010. Part philanthropic exercise, part rotating superhero team, the Future Foundation was essentially a broader corporate extension of the Fantastic Four themselves: a research group meant to advance the Fantastic Four’s scientific causes on a societal scale, safeguarding the future of the planet through both R&D and with a roster of affiliated superheroes and allies to work alongside the Fantastic Four.

Marvel-1

As we flash back to the fateful mission that gave the team their powers, we get a brief glimpse of a fabulously old-school, tri-pronged rocket ship. This is First Step‘s answer to Marvel-1, the vessel that took Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben to orbit for their test flight gone wrong. Built by Reed himself—and seen as part of the team’s origin story in the very first issue of Fantastic Four—Marvel-1 was ultimately destroyed during the accident, crash-landing in Ithaca, New York, after its shielding failed and its crew were bombarded with cosmic rays, transforming them into superpowered mutates.

As we hear Reed reflect with Sue about everything that happened in the accident, we also get to see a brief glimpse of Sue’s invisibility kicking in for the first time, disappearing in Reed’s arms. It’s interesting to note, however, that while we see a lot of superpowered weirdness in this trailer, we only see Sue, Johnny, and Ben in action—Marvel’s seemingly keeping Reed’s stretchy abilities, and just how they’ll look, close to its chest.

Back to Yancy

We cut to Ben walking down dark city streets in one of his trademark looks from the comics—his early “disguise” to hide his rocky appearance, in the form of a trench coat and fedora—before he’s confronted by archival footage in a TV store’s display of his former human appearance prior to the test flight. As well as giving us a rough seasonal setting for the film (you can see Halloween jack-o’-lanterns on the storefront steps behind Ben), this also appears to be another famous location from the comics in the form of Yancy Street. Ben grew up on the street surrounded by the impoverished, and, alongside his older brother Daniel Grimm Jr., was roped into the upper echelons of the street hoods of the Yancy Street Gang.

Ben himself would lead the gang as a teen after Daniel was stabbed in a conflict with a rival gang, but was pulled away from the group when he relocated to live with his aunt and uncle after his parents’ death—not returning to Yancy Street until after his transformation.

Their Powers Combined

In continued voiceover, Sue reassures Reed that despite what has happened to the quartet, they’re still who they’ve always been and are here for each other, as we cut over a montage of some intriguing shots. We see Johnny “flame on” and shoot off into the atmosphere, and we see Sue in the midst of a ravaged city street, projecting her force fields (it’s giving contesting the point with a well-timed Invisible Woman ult in Marvel Rivals, to be honest). The shot of Sue in particular, while it might be of any old incident the Fantastic Four has showed up to combat, does seem somewhat evocative of the iconic cover to Fantastic Four #1, with the team battling a giant subterranean creature controlled by the villainous Mole Man as it emerges through a street. We know that, obviously, the issue is going to be a key inspiration for the film, but what if we see that moment recreated, rather than the movie simply taking the origin story from that issue?

A Fantastic Ride

After an ominous shot of a shower of asteroids seemingly heading straight for New York as the team watches from afar, we cut to this gorgeous first look at the Fantasticar in action. A flying car that was also first seen in Fantastic Four #3, it’s had multiple versions and designs over the years, and can usually split up into multiple smaller vehicles for non-flying members of the team to utilize. Here though, it’s a slick classic roadster ripped right out of the ’60s. Don’t worry though, it still flies—Marvel debuted the first look at the Fantasticar at San Diego Comic-Con last year, when it was floated into Hall H ahead of a showing of early footage from the film.

Who Is Being John Malkovich?

After a few more quick action shots, we get another very intriguing image with zero context: our first look at John Malkovich’s role in the film, looking haggard and aged and absolutely covered in long white hair. It’s impossible to say from this single shot just who Malkovich is playing in the film. Visually, he draws a parallel to the obscure Fantastic Four villain Ivan Kragoff, aka Red Ghost, a Russian scientist who combats the Fantastic Four with at trio of mutate “Super Apes” (Mikhlo, Peator, and Igor) who he’s experimented on to give superpowers in similar cosmic-ray-based experiments to the ones that gave the FF their own. Given the earlier potential connection to the battle on the cover of Fantastic Four #1, he could be a new version of Mole Man, even if he looks nothing like any of the character’s comics appearances. Hell, he could be Mephisto for all we know.

If This Be Doomsday!

The trailer climaxes with the tease of all tease though, with the shadow of Galactus the Devourer (played by geek icon Ralph Ineson!) descending over Manhattan. No weird gas cloud here: this looks like a faithful recreation of the iconic Jack Kirby design, impractically giant but endlessly stylish hat included, as the ginormous cosmic entity prepares to do what he does best and nibble on a planet for its precious life energies. Interestingly, we get two shots of Galactus back to back—one with his ginormous form shadowing New York, and a second with him looking over at the Statue of Liberty, where he looks… well, a little smaller. It might be freaky perspective, but it also might just be that we’ve seen Galactus depicted at various inconsistent scales in the comics before—with it eventually being established that not only can Galactus change his form and size at will, but as a nigh-incomprehensible cosmic entity, he actually appears in different physical forms to different species unlucky enough to bear witness to him.

The Next Beatles

The trailer ends on a shot of the whole Fantastic Four together, wearing their costumes, with the team logo in the background. This is clearly a public unveiling of the team in some form, because the moment isn’t a reference to the comics, but real-life ’60s culture: the arrows on the set pointing towards the team are a nod to the set design from the Beatles’ legendary first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, the band’s public debut in America. Suffice to say, in Marvel’s version of the 1960s, the Fantastic Four probably are worthy of the infamous “the next Beatles” moniker.

There’s a lot we don’t really see in this first teaser for First Steps. Like we said, there’s no look at Reed’s powers in action, and while we see Galactus, we don’t see his herald, Julia Garner’s Shalla-Bal. And there’s not a hint of any potential connection between this take on the team and their most iconic comics foe, Doctor Doom—and however they might be connected to Robert Downey Jr.’s take on Victor. Time will tell, but for now, we at least get a pretty solid picture of the retro-period charm that Marvel wants to suffuse this movie with.

We’ll find out just how well it holds up when The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters July 25.

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