Extra, Extra!: Fantastic Four's New Poster Revealed

In which I report on the latest in entertainment news.

Well it's about time that Fox started to remind people that they have a Fantastic Four reboot coming out in less than five months.  The way that they're carrying on about it, you'd think that they didn't have all that much faith in its box office prospects.  Since they released the first trailer for the movie over a month ago, there'd been no marketing push for the film: no additional trailers, no in-theaters presence, no poster - until now.

Not only do we get a poster for the film, but this last weekend marked the first time that I actually saw a trailer for it in an actual movie theater.  They seemed to be doing so well with the movie - between the more than solid-looking cast and redoubled focus from the franchise's first outings in 2005 and 2007 - until the story details started coming out.

I was behind the color-blind casting of Michael B. Jordan as the Human Torch, even if the public at large seemed to be divided by it.  Then they lost me with the absurdly young baseline age for the team, especially when you consider that the Fantastic Four are basically a nuclear (pardon the pun) family with the Invisible Woman and Mr. Fantastic acting as the parents.

28-year-old Miles Teller (Mr. fantastic) is best known for playing 16-year old Peter in Divergent / Insurgent and college freshman Andrew in Whiplash.  32-year-old Kate Mara (Invisible Woman) is best known for playing teenagers on American Horror Story and House of Cards.  Both 29-year-old Jamie Bell (Thing), 28-year-old Michael B. Jordan (Human Torch) and 33-year-old Toby Kebbell (Dr. Doom) have spent their careers playing younger characters than how "Comics' first family" are often portrayed.  And then there's that whole mess with Dr. Doom being a blogger instead of a diplomat / businessman...

Fox has been doing some awesome things with X-Men - enough that I'd rather them hold onto those film rights at the moment instead of handing them back over to Marvel - but everything about this Fantastic Four remake seems wrong.  It's too dull, too serious and looks too much like The Dark Knight.  Its baby-faced cast is too young and the characters seem horrendously misinterpreted to appeal to the teenaged demographic.

I'll still see it, and still hope that they knock this one out of the park, but I can't say that I can muster up much enthusiasm for it.  Marvel parent Disney is doing everything that they can in order to tank the movie - including halting the Fantastic Four comic and withholding the merchandising rights from Fox - and even Fox seems to want to sweep this one under the table and get everybody talking about X-Men: Apocalypse as soon as possible.  We'll just have to wait and see how this one turns out in the summer of Ultron.

So what are your expectations for the new Fantastic Four movie?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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