20th Century Fox continues to play it quiet with marketing for the Fantastic Four movie reboot, but that may change closer to the film's actual theatrical release. In the meantime, we have fresh images from director Josh Trank's superhero feature to offer - a batch of screenshots that includes one proper look at Jamie Bell (Snowpiercer) as the transformed Ben Grimm a.k.a. The Thing.
The Fantastic Four reboot script by Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past) takes it cues from the Ultimate Fantastic Four: the contemporary run of the F4 comics, where the leads acquire their powers by going to a different dimension (as opposed to the traditional space flight origin story that was carried over in the 2005 Fantastic Four movie). Characters such as Ben Grimm, Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Sue Storm (Kate Mara), and Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) will be younger in this 2015 film version, for that same reason.
The 2015 big screen version of the Fantastic Four team's most Hulk-like member was glimpsed from behind during the film's teaser trailer, while a photo that was taken of the movie's international banner offered a sneak peek at the character's actual face. Below, you get the clearest look at Ben's rocky form yet, along with new pics of the foreign dimension that the main characters travel to (and Reed Richards' elongated arms sometime in the aftermath of him making that journey).
Check out those images below, courtesy of Empire:
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Generally speaking, most fans would probably agree: The Thing looks much better in Trank's film than he did in the 2005 Fantastic Four movie... in still form, anyway. The F4 film reboot has a whole decade of improvements in CGI and VFX technology to draw from - including motion-capture tech, which was used to create the transformed Ben Grimm on this project. However, it remains to be seen if Trank's feature can make elements like The Thing or Mr. Fantastic's stretching powers come off that much cooler onscreen that previous attempts managed.
That's the challenge facing the Fantastic Four reboot in general: making this property resonate with moviegoers in a time where (increasingly) every superhero movie has to stand out as something unique and special (in order to get enough attention). The potential is certainly there for the new F4 to fly high - whether or not that potential will be realized, that's another matter.
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NEXT: Why the Fantastic Four Characters Needed to Be Updated
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Fantastic Four opens August 7th, 2015, Deadpool on February 12th, 2016, X-Men: Apocalypse on May 27th, 2016, Gambit on October 7th, 2016, Wolverine 3 (not the official title) on March 3rd, 2017, Fantastic Four 2 on June 9th, 2017, and some as-yet unspecified X-Men film on July 13th, 2018.
Source: Empire