These Rejected FANTASTIC FOUR Movie Posters Are Badass
Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four was such a big turd. Even the marketing leading up to the films’ release was lackluster. I bet fans would have been a lot more excited about seeing the film if Fox would have released posters like this!
These are illustrated posters that were created for the film by artist Dave Rapoza, and for some stupid-ass reason, Fox didn’t end up using them in their marketing campaign. Rapoza apparently helped Fox with some original ideas for the posters of the film and he recently posted them online.
Talking to io9, the artist explained that he was approached by his Art Director Neri Rivas to work on the project because of a series of X-Men portraits he had created in a comic book style. He said, “They were throwbacks to my old favorite versions of all the X-Men from the early 90s and the posters were done with retro colors and were sort of made to look old.” He went on to talk about his process of creating these awesome posters:
“We learned as the job went on that they would most likely be in regular street clothes for most of the movie, but I also wanted to have fun so I just designed whatever I thought they should look like. I had a feeling that the Thing might want to show his face in the final movie, I’m glad they didn’t go for that, but that’s why in mine I wanted to show the actor’s face in mid-transformation. Basically, it’s mostly guess work on my part for the outfits and their appearance.
“I really wanted to nail down an energy I really hadn’t seen from the Fantastic 4 so far. I don’t have a lot of love for making everything dark and gloomy with the super-serious vibe, so I wanted to counter the aggressive mood with some lighter colors.
“Everything is mood to me. I want to show whatever I think is the coolest aspects of the characters, if it is about characters in the movie, and show that above all else. I always think back to when I was a kid and the feeling I had playing with action figures, making my own poses and trying to move them around for different camera angles.”
Using these posters might have been the best decision that Fox could have made for this movie, but they obviously don’t understand their audience. It's crazy that these are the best things to come from this movie, and they weren't even utilized. Yeah, the movie still would have sucked, but launching a marketing campaign around it with a cool look and feel like this probably would have helped get more people to go see it.
