So Much 'Fantastic Four' Trailer Footage Didn't Make It Into the Movie
20th Century Fox has some explaining to do.
The results are in, and Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four movie is an even bigger bomb than we predicted. Way before it managed to scrounge a puny $26 million on its opening weekend, rumors of its impending doom were widely reported. The nail in the coffin was Trank’s own now-deleted tweet denouncing the movie and blaming its failure on studio interference. Looking back at the trailer and comparing it to the final cut of the movie, it’s easy to see how much home surgery went into this fiasco.
Granted, a lot can change in a blockbuster between the first teaser and the final picture, but this many discrepancies is just nuts:
- I wonder where this car is going. If you checked out the movie this past weekend you didn’t find out. It looks to be the same car that ends up ruined — again, not in the final movie — in this recently released B-roll footage.
- Looks like Ben Grimm is good at baseball, but you’d never know by watching the movie.
- Before you go thinking that Johnny is giving the car above a little tune-up, he isn’t! This is the car he races and crashes, but for some reason we didn’t need to see him hard at work in the garage.
- Sue is bummed because Johnny seems hurt. Not in the final fight though.
- Do you like this awesome long corridor flame-on shot? The trailer is the only place to see it.
- Here’s where things get a bit interesting. This shot is in the movie, but see the red stuff below them? It’s mysteriously green in the final movie. See more of that in the second trailer here.
- Reed Richards confronting Doom would have been an awesome tete-a-tete. Sadly, we didn’t get any of that.
- This hero shot of the titular four staring up at Dr. Doom’s never-explained inter-dimensional wormhole is in the movie’s climax, but for some reason there’s an airplane caught in the middle in this image and it’s missing the final halo effect at the top of the portal seen in the actual movie.
The first official trailer does stick close to the final cut at times, but there are still a few outliers in the mix despite being released four months before the release of the final movie.
- More of Ben’s American pastime skills left on the cutting room floor…
- …And again.
- More of the red inter-dimensional rivers that were changed to green in what is seen onscreen.
- The Thing never gets ahold of Dr. Doom for this fairly epic shot during the final battle.
- Where’d this stealth bomber go? Who knows? Go ask Josh Trank.
- And where did this shot of The Thing dropping into battle go? What’s the deal, 20th Century Fox?
The obvious conclusion to draw here: Fox gave Trank the keys, told him to go to town … and then was decidedly displeased with the particular town he chose. Looking at the spectacular amount of cuts to the early version of his film, it’s easy to side here with Trank. Whatever he thought was going to happen on Fantastic Four didn’t. The fact that the final version was such a bungle in this case speaks well for its beleaguered director.
