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It’s finally here. We now have our first look at the ultra-secretive Fantastic Four reboot, and as promised, there’s a good deal of Cronenberg and a sense of scientific discovery in the scenes presented.

We don’t really get a great look at the team members utilizing their powers beyond a few brief glimpses, but perhaps that’s for the next trailer.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Fantastic Four, a contemporary re-imagining of Marvel’s original and longest-running superhero team, centers on four young outsiders who teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe, which alters their physical form in shocking ways. Their lives irrevocably upended, the team must learn to harness their daunting new abilities and work together to save Earth from a former friend turned enemy.

Does this assuage your fears regarding the movie? Is the tone too dour?

Fantastic Four, which stars Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell, will be released on August 7th.

Photo: Collider

More so than any other comics-based film, the Josh Trank-helmed reboot of The Fantastic Four, has been a divisive prospect for fans. The veil of mystery and the lack of anything official emerging from production – not even a set photo – coupled with many out-of-context descriptions (ex: Doctor Doom is an angry blogger!) have led to much justified worry.

Tonight, Steve Weintraub over at Collider is finally pulling back the curtain a bit, as the site has released an interview with Trank and screenwriter Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past), where they discussed the secrecy surrounding the production, the recent re-shoots, and some of the visual influences that are imbued into the newest adventure of Marvel’s first family.

On whether the lack of any concrete information is a sign the movie has “issues”:

Trank: I think a lot of that stuff is stemming from the fact that we’ve consciously decided to not release anything official.  This isn’t like The Avengers.  Even when the first Avengers came out, there were four other movies that people were familiar with.  The suits and the tone and the look and the feel.  So they could release those things or drop them on Twitter.  With Simon on the X-Men movies, there were other movies that came before the last X-Men movie so Bryan [Singer] could feel more confident in tweeting teases of what’s to come.  But this movie, we really want the audience to have the proper reaction to this material seeing it for the first time.  You’ve really got to put your best foot forward.  You can’t just leak an image to strike up a conversation.  You want people to see something that has thought behind it.  And the teaser should do just that.  With conversations online, you can’t really control it.  In this day and age people have come to expect that artists are going to give everybody information on Twitter about what they’re doing, but not every artist is like that.  I’m not really like that.  If I was painting a picture I wouldn’t want to take a picture of a single paint stroke.  I’d rather show people what it looks like when it’s done.

On setting The Fantastic Four apart from other superhero franchises:

Trank: I would say that the science fiction of it is a big thing that sets it apart from most of the other superhero genre films.  I’m a huge David Cronenberg fan, and I always viewed Fantastic Four and the kind of weirdness that happens to these characters and how they’re transformed to really fall in line more with a Cronenberg-ian science fiction tale of something horrible happening to your body and [it] transforming out of control.  And the potential for a hard sci-fi take on that material makes me really excited.  I don’t really see that kind of potential and that kind of take being implemented on any of the other superhero movies that seem to be coming out in the next few years.  Superhero movies have become a genre unto themselves and I didn’t really grow up on superhero movies.  I grew up on genre movies before superhero was a genre.   I don’t know if there are Blockbusters [the video chain] anymore, but there would probably be a superhero section.  And this would fit more into the science-fiction, or horror, or even drama sections of the Blockbuster.  And that’s just kind of the way I look at it.  I want it to feel like it’s its own thing.

Kinberg: One thing that’s unique to it is that it’s always been about a family.  Most comic book superhero movies are about a superhero protagonist or a superhero group.  But they’re ever really exploring what it is to be family.  And when I first read the comic that’s what was so compelling about it.  I think the reason it’s endured this long, the powers are great, but the defining thing is the surrogate family.  That’s something we really spent a long time talking about and putting into the film.  I think that will differentiate us as well from all of the different superheroes and superhero groups out there.

Regarding any specific comic runs that this film is pulling from:

Kinberg: Yeah, I think The Ultimate Fantastic Four is probably our biggest influence because it’s the younger Fantastic Four.  And a lot of the science specifics are there.  And a lot of the means of transformation we took from those books. As you’ll see a little bit in the trailer and a lot in the movie, there are influences really from the beginning of what Kirby and Stan were doing in the 60’s all the way up into the present day.  I’ve done it both ways from adapting a specific story-line like Days of Future Past or jumping off like in First Class and using more of the mythology of the characters without necessarily adhering to an existing plot line.  This is an origin story in many regards and it is inspired by The Ultimate Fantastic Four as much as anything else.

And while they were tight-lipped about the plot, this is what Trank was willing to release insofar as story-specifics:

I would just say that this is a modern telling of how these four iconic characters came together and came to be.

Be sure to check out the entire interview on Collider, which goes into detail regarding casting for the new team and their discussion of what composer Phillip Glass (!!!) will be bringing to the production.

The Fantastic Four, which stars Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell, will be released on August 7th.

The first trailer for Steven Spielberg‘s The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn has been released. Above, we’ve embedded the trailer.

What do you think about this first peek at the footage? The adaptation of Herge’s beloved Tintin series hits theaters December 23rd.

Here’s more about the film: “Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures Present a 3D Motion Capture Film ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish. Starring Jamie Bell (“Billy Elliot,” “Defiance”) as Tintin, the intrepid young reporter whose relentless pursuit of a good story thrusts him into a world of high adventure, and Daniel Craig (“Quantum of Solace,” “Defiance”) as the nefarious Red Rackham.” (Via i09)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Some colleagues and I were lucky enough to be invited to an advance screening of the new film starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schrieber, and Jamie Bell, Defiance. In 1942 a small group of Jewish resistance fighters established a community deep in the forests of western Belorussia, offering protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Within two years they numbered more than 1200 - it was the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in perhaps any war in history.

Their leader, the charismatic Tuvia Bielski (played by Daniel Craig) told his story to author Nechama Tec two weeks before he died in 1987, and she went on to write the book (published by OUP) on which the new film is based: Defiance - The True Story of the Bielski Partisans.

The film itself didn’t disappoint. As well as all the action you would expect from a war movie, there was also the human story of the hundreds of fugitives that were rescued, as well as the story of the Bielski brothers themselves. I’m not ashamed to admit that I shed a few tears in that cinema! Below is an extract from the book.

Tuvia was not interested in military glory. To live, to keep his people alive, to bring more Jews into the otriad, these were his goals. He would avoid talking to the non-Jewish partisans about his main preoccupation: the saving of lives. To them he presented himself as a guerrilla fighter and continually repeated that he had come to the forest to wage war against the enemies of the Soviet Union, the Germans. And when Panchenko suggested that they cooperate in anti-Nazi moves he readily agreed.

Their joint military ventures began in the last quarter of 1942 and continued into the second half of 1943. Although such anti-German moves were initiated by Panchenko, the two otriads each carried the same burden. Publicly Tuvia continued to emphasize his personal commitment to anti-German activities. In reality he and his group were under pressure to participate. A refusal could have endangered the very existence of the Bielski otriad. Russian partisans would not have tolerated an unwillingness to fight, especially not from Jews whom they suspected of cowardice. At this early stage, all forest dwellers were united in their hatred toward the Germans and their collaborators. These feelings of hostility were supported by equally strong ideas that it was important to fight their common enemy, the Germans.

Russian partisans were very belligerent when they talked about their enemy—killing Germans was equated with patriotism. Hero worship was common. How much of a hero a person was depended on how daring and life-threatening the person’s opposition was to the Nazis. But this high value placed on fighting the enemy did not correspond to actual combat; their belligerence was merely verbal. Inevitably, however, these favorable ideas about guerrilla fighting came with a devaluation of those who could not wage war. Nonfighters were subjected to ridicule and contempt. The disheveled and hungry ghetto runaways in particular were sometimes greeted by Russian partisans with a sneering, “Why did you work for the Germans instead of fighting?”

The forest was pervaded with ideas that fighting and causing damage to the Germans and their collaborators was good. Even young ghetto runaways after they were accepted into a Russian otriad would soon become strong advocates of the “wage a war ethic.” In their case, as with others, the admiration of anti-German fighters came with a disapproval of non-fighters.

One of these young Jewish partisans admits, “I looked at the Bielski otriad with its one thousand Jews, most of whom could not fight, and thought: ‘So what? But they do not fight!’ I believed that they should have fought the Germans. As a Russian partisan I felt self-important.” The idea that waging war against the Germans was more important than saving lives was implicitly accepted by many others. And while the degree of such acceptance varied, to some extent it was always there. Indirectly, support for this ideology sometimes had tragic consequences. The actions of known Jewish partisan fighters reflect this attitude. Dr. Icheskel Atlas, Alter Dworecki, and Hirsz Kaplinski each distinguished himself as an outstanding partisan leader. Each courageously battled the enemy. By the end of December 1942, they had all been killed in action.

During their short careers as partisan leaders, the three operated in and around the huge Lipiczańska forest. With its jungle-like growths, islands of swampy terrain, and irregular, poorly built country roads, this forest promised safety to many of the persecuted. Lipiczańska forest became home for both Jewish and Russian partisans. It also became a haven for ghetto runaways, many of whom were older people, women, and children. Small family clusters or units of unattached fugitives were scattered all over this forest. Disorganized and unprotected, these groups lived in primitive bunkers. Some would beg for food from surrounding farms; the few who had guns would get their provisions by using force. Still, the very few who brought some money or valuables with them would exchange these for food. Unaccustomed to life in the forest, many fugitives were attacked by unruly partisan bands and robbed of their meager belongings, and some were murdered in the process. Without the support of a large group like the Bielski otriad many died from cold, starvation, and epidemics.

Defiance will be in UK cinemas from January 9th and will be in US cinemas from January 16th.