New Fantastic Four Poster: Does it work?

Today Fox released a brand new poster for their team, The Fantastic Four. While the casting seems to be interesting, the look at the third attempt at bring the group to the screen seems to take a dark tone.

While I appreciate what they seem to be trying to do, it seems as though the artist is trying to capture the look of superhero movies past, liken to "The Avengers" group poster, "The Dark Knight" or even "X-Men: Days of Future Past" group shot. The only thing missing for the group is individual posters of each team member.

I know that I am in a very LOW minority here, but not being one to have read the comics before I saw the movie (I love superhero movies just not much of a comic reader) I actually really enjoyed the second (the first being in 1994, nearly 20 years ago from this one and nearly 10 years before the last one, at least they are consistent) incarnation of the group.

Ioan Gruffud looked the right age I would expect a leader of a group of superheros to be, serious but a bit of a mad scientist way about him. Chris Evans, in the first role that I ever saw him in, brought in a fun daredevil aspect to the group that was interesting and different from the other superhero movies at the time which were all dark and brooding. Some humor, but nothing overt. Jessica Alba was... cute though she did seem to look a bit young for both Mr Fantastic and Dr Doom, and Michael Chiklis was FANTASTIC as Ben Grimm, aka The Thing.

I think the thing that makes me most nervous about the new group is The Thing. Michael Chiklis spent 3 hours getting into the 60 pounds of prosthetics it took him to become the superhero, and fought incredibly hard for it not to be made CGI. With this new incarnation, I fear that the character will look too CGI to the point that he looks fake and will seem less human.

While it is ok to have things like fantastic creatures, to make someone comepletely CGI can detract from the film, especially if the majority of the time was spent with him like that. It being an origin film from the look of the trailer, I am not sure that this is the case, but it also being a superhero film I wonder.

And while I am always one for diversity, I wonder how the fact that two siblings are of different color. I hope that it isn't not mentioned at all, but at the same time I don't want a large portion of the storyline to be based around that. A brief summation of that they have different parents or that one was adopted would suffice. Perhaps it was Johnny, and because he was always looking for attention of the perfect "actual" daughter he acts out. Just a suggestion. Or because she was adopted she wants to act like the perfect daughter, good grades and a scientist to live up to her parents expectations.

This can go both ways, I know from personal experience.

Another thing for me is that they look so young. With the original cast I could believe that these people were scientists, well respected and in the case of Dr Reed could lead a group of people that were still trying to make sense of their powers. With these folks I feel like some of them are just graduating high school.

This movie is up against some big contenders this summer, with "The Avengers: age of ultron" coming out, "Jurassic World","Ted 2", "Ant-man" a new "Mission Impossibe" the list seems endless. I can't help but wonder if this movie will live up to the others.

I will most likely end up checking this newest addition out, but at least in my opinion I am going in with some weary thoughts in the back of my mind. But who knows, maybe the group will surprise us all and come out fantastic.

One can only hope.