The Silver Surfer Crashes Dinner in Final “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” Trailer
The final trailer for director Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps has arrived, and in it, the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) arrives just before the Four are about to sit down for dinner and proves she’s one of Marvel’s mightiest buzzkills.
“I herald his beginning,” the Silver Surfer says, floating on her cosmic board, looking quite regal, albeit made of a galactic glaze. “I herald your end.” The beginning she’s heralding is that of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), the world-eating supervillain who’s coming to Earth to chomp away. Which, of course, will be everyone’s end. It’ll be up to the Fantastic Four—Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) to save the day.
The final trailer offers a bunch of new footage, and one running gag—Ben’s refusal to say “It’s clobbering time,” a line from “the cartoon,” as he tells one stranger on the streets of this retro-futuristic New York. By the end of the trailer, it’ll be Johnny Storm, taking Ben on a villain-busting trip across the sky, begging his buddy to say the line.
The trailer also reemphasizes one of the film’s main themes, that perhaps more so than any other superhero group, including the X-Men and the Avengers, the Fantastic Four are a family. Reed and Sue are husband and wife, Sue and Johnny are siblings, and the four of them together are not only a family, but they are considered Marvel’s First Family. The Fantastic Four first burst onto the pages of Marvel Comics back on August 8, 1961, created by the legendary duo of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.
The retro-futuristic look of The Fantastic Four and the earwormy theme song have already set Shakman’s vision for his first MCU feature film apart (he directed Marvel’s excellent first Disney+ series, WandaVision). His team includes composer Michael Giacchino, cinematographer Jess Hall, production designer Kasra Farahani, and set decorator Jille Azis, all of whom contributed to the Jetsons-meets-Mad Men look. The film is also chock-a-block with practical effects, like the robot H.E.R.B.I.E. (Humanoid Experimental Robot B-Type Integrated Electronics), which was an actual animatronic android that zoomed around the set on wheels, and the production team build two models of the Fantasticar, one of which had a real interior for the performers to sit in.
“We knew that we’d be on another Earth, so we had a chance to reinvent what the ’60s looked like,” Shakman recently told Entertainment Weekly. “I was really interested in imagining the Fantastic Four being astronauts. Instead of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin going to the moon, what if it was Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben who were really the first to go into outer space, the first to push those boundaries?”
They pushed the boundaries and came back forever changed. Now, they will be a huge part of the MCU going forward—the Fantastic Four are set to appear in Avengers: Doomsday, which will see the return of Robert Downey Jr., now as the iconic Marvel villain, Dr. Doom.
But first, we’ve got to be reintroduced to Marvel’s First Family in First Steps. Fans have been waiting a long time for The Fantastic Four to make their Marvel Cinematic Universe debut, ever since Disney acquired 21st Century Fox way back in 2019. At long last, they’re finally here.
Check out the final trailer below. The Fantastic Four: First Steps arrives in theaters on July 25.
Featured image: Julia Garner as Shalla-Bal/Silver Surfer in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.
