Fantastic Four Trailer: Detailed Breakdown

The new Fantastic 4 trailer opens on a number of stock footage-type shots of New York's cityscape, a mountain vista and the Grimm Salvage Yard while Johnny Storm's father talks over them all, setting the mission statement for the team.

It's worth noting, perhaps, that there doesn't appear to be any basis in the comics, either in the 616 or Ultimate Universe, for the Grimms to run a salvage yard. Then again, most of what we know about Ben Grimm's aunt and uncle (who raised him after his parents died) comes from their retirement years in Arizona.

It's all about science and discovery. Mark Waid called the team "Imaginauts" during his run and that seems to be a bit of what we're seeing here.

At 0:17, I'm pretty sure Orion is in the night sky for what it's worth. His belt is pretty distinctive.

Then we get more stock footage, now of an old car driving through the country, as Johnny's dad continues to talk about the human need to discover and to invent. That's when we start to see something a bit more plot-applicable: a science lab.

A makeshift one, anyway, where young Reed and Ben are waiting for...something loud?

I'm willing to bet little Reed is trying to teleport a toy car. It seems Trank had said something about that, which I think is a scene from Ultimate Fantastic Four. The schematics in the war room later appear to be what I'm presuming is the teleporter.

Here's what appears to be the final machine, presumably the ultimate result of Reed's childhood experiments, especially since the wire mesh hanging over their heads looks vaguely like a more formal version of the setup seen above.

The white suits are vaguely reminiscent of the Future Foundation suits that the team have been wearing occasionally for the last few years, but more than that they just kind of look like a streamlined version of astronauts' suits. That's likely the real inspiration.

And...yeah. Lots of decorated military personnel looking at what we assume to be Reed's specs. Apparently this is a government contract now. Maybe why Reed sided with Tony in Civil War?

Next, we get Reed, apparently very happy to see all this sciencey-stuff. Again, probably a safe bet that it's his life's work come to fruition. Either way, nice to see somebody smiling here in spite of what's a fairly dour tone for the trailer.

Sue definitely seems like science-y Sue from the Ultimate Universe -- no surprise since the producers have been open from the start about the fact that this is heavily influenced by that version of the mythology.

Is that Latveria? I mean, yes, I know that in the real world that is a real place and not Latveria. But in all of these maps on the walls, there's a red dot somewhere in Eastern Europe. Could that be Doom's kingdom?

Looks like it. You see that red lettering at the bottom left? That says "23.21.190.125," and if you plug that in to your Internet browser, you get a Wikia entry for Latveria (try it with different browsers to get different results).

Probably a safe bet that she's trying to track the source of a hack? It would make sense with both the map and what looks to be an IP address. 

We also see Ben and Johnny in their elements -- Ben playing baseball (For Easter Bay or Oyster Bay's team?), and Johnny fixing up a car (not the one from the cornfields earlier).

Prep for mission.

Five explorers, not four. Six, in a different picture provided by a commenter below.

It doesn't look like those are the same white suits from before, though...so are these different experiments? Is one of those guys in the darker suit Doom?

Could this be a rescue mission to save whoever it is in the white costumes after something goes wrong? The dark blue certainly have more of an FF vibe than the white.

That's Sue and Johnny's dad who's running the machine. Who wants to guess there's some drama to be mined from him blaming himself for whatever happens?

And...yeah, that's Reed. So the people in the blue/black/gray suits are the FF and likely Doom.

...But Sue isn't there? She's just kind of watching?

That means at least two extra bodies in the machine, or one if you count Doom as part of Team Richards ("RICHARDS!"). Is Reed the only one actually IN the machine when it goes off, and his family and friends are in the peanut gallery and just get irradiated? How does that work?

...Not well, apparently. That looks a lot like blood, so maybe some of the people involved in the experiment don't fare well.

Apparently the airplane Bane destroyed in The Dark Knight Rises got better.

What is Reed wearing here? It's clearly not normal clothes but it doesn't look like any of his earlier "uniforms." And being brown and seemingly having leather doesn't seem like as scientastic as he likes.

The Thing bursts out of an actual pile of orange rock, rather than being transformed to a rock-like creature. This reminds me a bit of that Aventures of Superman issue that did a riff on the FF's origin and eventually gave us the Cyborg Superman.

Then we see Sue mourning...somebody. Ben? Doom? In any event, it certainly doesn't look like Reed from the hair, and they certainly look...err...close. That could be the whole "surprising relationship" that's been rumored.

Also...is that the Negative Zone? The dark landscape and bright sky just seem very alien compared to the rest of the trailer.

And...yeah. She gets more blonde as the trailer goes, it seems.

Then we see Johny light up...right after a look at...some kind of containment suit?

Just for context: I'm guessing that energy wave at 1:11 is the teleporter and not Sue's powers, especially since we see a similar but less-dramatic effect earlier in the trailer when Dr. Storm turns it on.

That said, it's a HUGE blast with quite a radius. Could we see future FF characters being created by that explosion, not unlike in The Flash?

We get a shot of the explorers in the white suits (three of them, anyway) in a nasty-looking spot, and then a shot of one of their faces (behind a mask), but I can't tell who it is. That's followed up by a man single-handedly facing off with a handful of soldiers, though, so...is that Doom? Was the man whose face we saw possibly facing an explosion also Doom?

Certainly when he's facing off with the soldiers, he looks like he has a helmet or metal mask.

We see Johnny and Reed in that same (Negative Zone) nasty landscape, and Reed apparently using his powers (but not on camera) for the first time.

Then..."Be ready for what's coming," and a body strapped to a table with its face clearly covered. That's gotta be Doom.

And...what's with the plane being transported down to the FF here? It certainly looks like it's following the beam of light down, anyway. Is that the same plane from earlier?

Senior Staff Writer Russ Burlingame also contributed to this story.