Marvel's Fantastic Four Finally Looks Fantastic

After years of cinematic false starts, misfires, and one particularly bleak reboot we’d all rather not talk about, The Fantastic Four is officially joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The new trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps has just dropped, and it's not just another glossy hero reel—it’s a surprisingly human peek into Marvel’s so-called First Family. Think cosmic catastrophe meets crib-shopping.

By now, most of us approach new Marvel trailers with the same energy we reserve for late-season Netflix shows: dutiful curiosity, mild dread, and the faint hope that maybe—just maybe—this one will matter. The upcoming Fantastic Four film, slated for July 2025, might actually qualify.

This isn't just another Phase Six puzzle piece. It’s a tonal pivot, a stylistic anomaly, and, crucially, a cast that suggests Marvel is trading in spectacle for texture. The trailer isn’t loud. It’s strange. It leans hard into golden-age sci-fi aesthetics and domestic weirdness. And beneath the candy-coloured Jetsons vibe, there's a feeling Marvel hasn’t evoked in a long time: actual curiosity.

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The Trailer: What We Know

Marvel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps trailer doesn’t just reintroduce us to Marvel’s First Family—it drops us right into their existential crisis. Set in a sleek, retro-futuristic 1960s Manhattan (think Mad Men meets cosmic horror), the nearly three-minute teaser offers our first look at Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby’s Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn’s Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Thing. It’s not an origin story, and thank Galactus for that. This version of the Fantastic Four has been around for years—celebrated, understood, and very much exhausted. But now they’re about to face something even the most elastic of brains can’t calculate: parenthood… and planetary extinction.

The trailer drops a surprising emotional beat early: Sue Storm is pregnant. It’s a clever way to literalise the film’s title, “First Steps,” while hinting at the MCU’s future. In the comics, Sue and Reed’s son Franklin is an omega-level mutant with reality-warping powers—and his arrival could nudge Marvel’s multiverse in wild new directions. But before they can hang mobiles over his crib, there’s the small matter of Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer. No longer the chrome-plated stoic of the 2000s films, Garner brings eerie gravitas to the role as she descends to Earth with a simple, bone-chilling warning: “Your planet is now marked for death.” Cue ominous shadows, sky-splitting storm clouds, and the unmistakable stomp of Galactus.

Directed by WandaVision’s Matt Shakman with cinematography by Jess Hall, First Steps isn’t afraid to lean into both the cosmic and the kitsch. Pascal’s Reed is all tortured genius and floppy charisma, while Kirby gives Sue Storm both steel and softness. There’s a hint of classic Spielberg in the domestic stakes colliding with intergalactic peril.

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This isn't your typical "we’re a team, let's save the world" setup. The trailer smartly leans into what makes the Fantastic Four different from every other group of spandex-wearing do-gooders: they’re not just a team, they’re a family. And that comes with emotional stakes that go deeper than city-wide destruction. There’s a moment in the trailer—blink and you’ll miss it—where Reed and Sue gaze into an empty crib, prepping for the arrival of a superpowered baby. It’s subtle, poignant, and, dare we say, kinda beautiful.

The Bigger Picture 

Scratch the surface, and you’ll find a film that’s positioning itself as a linchpin for the MCU’s next act.

The ‘First Family’ title isn’t just chronological—it’s symbolic. This is Marvel returning to its roots, both literally and creatively. Before the Avengers, before mutants, before Thanos snapped his way into pop culture, the Fantastic Four were Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original experiment in flawed, familial superheroes. They weren’t gods. They argued. They vacationed. They raised children while saving dimensions.

Which brings us to Franklin Richards. The baby glimpsed in the trailer isn’t just a prop—he’s potentially Marvel’s most powerful character, a multiverse-level threat tucked inside a crib. If this film threads that needle—making the cosmic feel domestic, and vice versa—it could quietly set the tone for everything leading into Avengers: Secret Wars.

Galactus, unlike Thanos, doesn’t make moral arguments. He’s not here to balance anything. He eats. He arrives. You survive—or don’t. That makes him more terrifying. And maybe more relevant. What does a team of scientists and siblings do when they can’t negotiate their way out of apocalypse? This is the story Marvel seems finally ready to tell: not just how to save the world, but why it’s worth saving in the first place.

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The question is: can the movie stick the landing? The trailer walks a tightrope between family dramedy and cosmic apocalypse, and that tone will either be its secret weapon—or its undoing. Previous attempts at Fantastic Four have failed not because the characters weren’t interesting, but because no one knew what kind of story to tell with them. This one seems to know: a family caught between a birth and the end of the world.

Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theatres on July 25.