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The first images from Josh Trank’s The Fantastic Four have arrived, officially, and we’re pleased to see them, even if they are behind the scenes images.
Collider, who debuted the pics, spoke to Trank and writer Simon Kinberg at length, who addressed the lack of promotional material for the film and spoke about his inspirations.
Speaking about the perception that the film is in trouble, Trank and Kinberg spoke about how they made a conscious decision to keep as much of the film’s plot hidden as possible, citing JJ Abrams’ secrecy as an inspiration.
“I think a lot of that stuff is stemming from the fact that we’ve consciously decided to not release anything official,” said Trank. “This isn’t like The Avengers…this movie, we really want the audience to have the proper reaction to this material seeing it for the first time. You’ve really got to put your best foot forward. You can’t just leak an image to strike up a conversation. You want people to see something that has thought behind it. And the teaser should do just that. With conversations online, you can’t really control it. If I was painting a picture I wouldn’t want to take a picture of a single paint stroke. I’d rather show people what it looks like when it’s done….I want the material to speak for itself.”
Trank also noted some pretty interesting inspirations for the movie. “I would say that the science fiction of it is a big thing that sets it apart from most of the other superhero genre films. I’m a huge David Cronenberg fan, and I always viewed Fantastic Four and the kind of weirdness that happens to these characters and how they’re transformed to really fall in line more with a Cronenberg-ian science fiction tale of something horrible happening to your body and [it] transforming out of control. And the potential for a hard sci-fi take on that material makes me really excited
“…maybe the biggest influence for me in terms of an overall view and communicating tool to the various department was Scanners or The Fly. In terms of the feeling of what these powers are. Because the drama speaks for itself in terms of the script or the story but the look of the movie and the feel of the movie has to be more evocative.”
Another exciting new discovery is that composer Philip Glass is working on the score with Marco Beltrami, while Trank and Kinberg confirm that the film is influenced by the Ultimates storyline.
“I think The Ultimates is probably our biggest influence because it’s the younger Fantastic Four,” explained Kinberg. “And a lot of the science specifics are there. And a lot of the means of transformation we took from those books…there are influences really from the beginning of what Kirby and Stan were doing in the 60’s all the way up into the present day. This is an origin story in many regards and it is inspired by The Ultimate Fantastic Four as much as anything else.”
There’s a lot more in the interview, including discussing how Miles Teller, Michael B Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell came to the project, and it’s well worth a read.
What do you think? We’re definitely on board with not seeing the whole film in trailers before it even comes out, we love the cast and we’re excited to see a different spin on superhero movies. If you were sceptical about this movie before, has anything here made you more optimistic?
Fantastic Four is set to be released on 7 August 2015. You can buy Josh Trank’s Chronicle on Blu-ray for £9.75 at Amazon.co.uk and find out more on the comics that have inspired the film by picking up our 100 All-Time Greatest Comics bookazine now!
