MarvelBlog News for February 9th, 2025

On Tuesday, Marvel released its latest trailer on an unsuspecting public, who promptly lost its collective mind in euphoria.

Yes, this has been a really good week, and we’ll discuss why in MarvelBlog News.

It’s Fantastic

Let’s get right to it. Here is the trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, one of Marvel’s three releases this year:

You’ll notice that according to YouTube, this clip already has more views than Marvel has YouTube subscribers (21.2 million).

That’s part of the story right there. Demand for this trailer has overwhelmed the internet.

As proof, here’s an article from The Hollywood Reporter.

According to their data, people watched the trailer 202 million times during its first 24 hours in release.

That’s obviously far behind the record-setting 365 million for Deadpool & Wolverine, but Marvel never expected that.

Instead, the hope was that fans would give The Fantastic Four a chance despite the shaky history of this film franchise.

Consumers have apparently decided that Marvel deserves a chance here since it didn’t make those other three movies.

All Marvel really needed was a fresh start, and it appears to have gotten that.

First Steps is the last of the three MCU titles coming out in 2025, but it’s facing the biggest uphill battle of the bunch.

Captain America: Brave New World isn’t a slam dunk at the box office by any stretch, but it’s the fourth Captain America movie.

Then, we have Thunderbolts*, which isn’t a sequel per se. However, the film unites characters from across the MCU.

In a way, Thunderbolts* is the amoral version of Marvel’s The Avengers.

While I don’t expect box office on that level, the concept seems likely to succeed based on early social media reactions.

The Fantastic Four isn’t in that position, as these are entirely new characters in the MCU.

Even worse, the reception to the last two Fantastic Four movies fell somewhere between “meh” and “YIKES!”

So, Marvel must be thrilled with what’s happened.

Wait, What’s Happened

Let me be clear that trailer views don’t necessarily equate to box office success.

There is some corollary, though, at least with the most popular titles.

Generally speaking, high trailer views reflect a heightened interest in a film.

Of course, as I mentioned, Marvel has one of the strongest social engagement farms of any business in the world.

Thus, I’m always a bit hesitant to make a big deal out of these lofty 24-hour numbers.

This instance is different since other factors are involved. For starters, Marvel hosted a livestream of the trailer reveal.

That’s a bit unusual in and of itself, but the studio has done it previously.

The Fantastic Four livestream proved the most popular of all Marvel titles to date.

Also, there’s a new tracking metric called social volume. It’s basically how much people discuss a trailer.

In the case of The Fantastic Four, it attained 500,000 in social volume faster than any Marvel trailer to date save for Deadpool 3.

Then, we circle back to the number itself, which does stand out as THE “best Marvel Studios has ever seen in traffic for a non-sequel movie.”

About the Trailer

Most importantly, the reception was glowing. Lots of articles along these lines have appeared online. And there are videos, too.

The most important aspect here is the retro vibe, which you cannot help but notice.

As a reminder, The Walt Disney Company owns Marvel. That’s important here, as that trailer is VERY Disney.

Have you ever watched the movie Tomorrowland? Or visited Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom/Disneyland?

Are you familiar with EPCOT, at least during its early days? This sort of retro-futuristic sensibility was wildly popular then.

As The Simpsons once joked, it’s “what the people in 1964 thought the world would be like in 1987.”

That’s very true to form here, as the Baxter Building features a robot butler named H.E.R.B.I.E.

The little droid appears here, and Marvel has cleverly given him a spinning tape for an eye. That was a form of storage in the 1960s.

Touches like this permeate throughout the trailer, which makes this feel as much like a Wes Anderson film as Marvel.

The world-building is thorough and immersive. You’d fully believe that this was Earth’s first superhero astronaut team.

The other charming part of the retro vibe is that it brings the very idea of the Fantastic Four full circle.

I presume you’ve watched Pixar’s The Incredibles and The Incredibles 2.

Director Brad Bird based these characters on the Fantastic Four.

So, we’ve already seen a variant of the same idea in a Pixar animated film.

Now, we’re getting a live-action version of the nuclear family…if they’d suffered radioactive poisoning.

Based on this clip, I think that Marvel has overcome years of turmoil in getting the project off the ground.

First steps looked well-considered and deeply detailed. I’m officially excited!

Marvel Miscellany

You’ll see more of The Fantastic Four tonight, as Marvel will offer a Super Bowl ad.

Based on the company’s recent marketing tactics, I’d expect a different clip than what we’d seen, but I’m just guessing.

Variety also lists Thunderbolts* as “a safe bet” to have a Super Bowl trailer.

As a reminder, some ads play during the pre-game show, as that’s a much cheaper move.

Don’t be surprised if Marvel splurges since it needs a drama-free 2025 release schedule.

Then again, it’s not a shock if Marvel markets one of its two titles in the pre-game show to save money.

Tens of millions of potential movie-goers will still be watching.

The other First Steps controversy involves the poster, which Marvel swears isn’t AI-generated.

If a human did this, I…probably wouldn’t give them any big assignments from now on.

The other “big” news this week is that Sony pulled its June 27^th Marvel movie from the schedule.

Since nothing was filming at Sony, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody.

Sony is out of the superhero business, save for Spider-Man, Venom, and related content.

 

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