The Fantastic Four: First Steps
If I had one complaint about the recent Superman, it wasn’t about the movie itself, but the marketing that led up to the release of the film that seemed like an attempt to map out almost every moment from the film. Perhaps without context at times, but by the time we got multiple trailers and loads of exclusive “scenes” released, it was all way, way too much.
Now, Marvel’s Fantastic Four is doing the exact same thing.
I know that these studios are desperate to get people into theaters for these hugely expensive, very important tentpole movies, but it’s getting ridiculous. Fantastic Four has already had a number of trailers and is now releasing individual scenes that are ruining everything from good jokes to key plot points.
A new clip circulating today reveals a major plot point and scene in the film, and even if it happens early on, that doesn’t make it any less bad to show now. Since I already saw it, I’ll talk about it here. So Marvel-induced spoilers follow:
The scene is a clip of a press conference that has Reed talking about how they went to space and confronted Galactus directly, asking what he wanted, presumably in exchange for leaving them alone. He says he wanted their son, which was “too high a price.”
We knew they went to space, and we saw the last few seconds of this scene before, but this is way more than that. I will overlook the idea of them having a child as a spoiler, as that’s one thing that’s been said in even the basic trailers, but the rest of this? And what it shows? Why? And we’re still two weeks out, so there will no doubt be even more of this flooding social media.
This is not a new trend. Yes, we just saw it with Superman, but even in the last year or two we have:
- Deadpool and Wolverine revealing probably half its cameos during its marketing lead-up.
- Thunderbolts using its finale reveal that the team is the “New Avengers” as actual marketing the same weekend the movie was released, ruining the (at the time) surprising final moments of the film.
- The most baffling example of this to me is Captain America: Brave New World, which had an entire marketing campaign based around the president transforming into Red Hulk, but the way the movie was written, that was meant to be the climactic “surprise” twist. Just…what?
I get it, but I don’t get it, and as an actual fan of this genre, and someone who, like almost everyone, is online all the time, this practice is increasingly annoying. Fantastic Four is even doing crazily early previews, like showing the first 30 minutes to some people for half-formed impressions meant to create good buzz, but also set expectations a month before the movie’s out. It’s all a mess, and for Fantastic Four specifically, we still have two weeks for it to get worse from here.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy