The New Fantastic Four Trailer Makes Me Even More Tired Of Pedro Pascal

How is that even possible?

A new trailer has been released for the upcoming Fantastic Four: First Steps, brought to you by the Marvel Cinematic Universe geniuses behind such box office bombs as Immortals, The Marvels, and Captain America 4: The One Without Captain America In It. As a result, hopes that someone, anyone can ever get this particular superhero team right are fading, fast. It is all happening just as I thought it would, so here is a flash discount offer on premium annual subscriptions.

Hurried reshoots just weeks ahead of release, reportedly due to poor test audience reactions, have fed critics’ speculations that the film has been too damaged by woke programming to succeed at the box office. Which is a shame, really. The tattered remnants of comic book fandom really wanted this film to be good. Unfortunately, it does not look good.

Disney executives clearly prevailed on the creators to emphasize that this is Marvel’s “first family” in the trailer. However, the basic problem with the film is Mister Fantastic/Reed Richards, a character who is synonymous with leadership in the Marvel mythopoeia. No matter where in the multiverse the story goes, Richards is able to lead a scratch team of guest star superheroes as well as his own teammates, using each of their strengths to complement the others. This is his real superpower, not his stretchy limbs, which we do not even see in the trailer.

In fact, that Reed Richards seems entirely absent from the trailer. Instead, we are treated to an extended clip of Pedro Pascal as Richards being emasculated by his younger brother-in-law, Johnny Storm/The Human Torch. This was supposed to be make me laugh. Instead, it deepens my suspicion, based on early screening reports, that Pascal has participated once again in the cinematic destruction of masculinity. This week, I unlocked my recent essay on this very topic. It remains unlocked another four days before it will be archived.

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Everyone Has Had Enough Pedro Pascal. Please, We Do Not Want Any More

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Here is the follow-up post that I wrote ten days later. It will unlock for free readers in another ten days. As I explained, Pascal’s sexuality is not problematic. Rather, his willingness to performatively emasculate beloved male characters has led to overexposure in the era of Woke Hollywood, which is now ending abruptly. The imminent box office failure of Fantastic Four: First Steps threatens to make Pascal’s image of the anti-man actor concrete with the public. He will be the wrong man for the male leads that big budgets want to back, afterwards.

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The Decline And Fall Of Pedro Pascal

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I am quite willing to set aside what I think of Pedro Pascal to judge his performance independently of his politics, even though I maintain the era of loudmouth actors sharing their opinions on everything is at an end. Likewise, I am not attacking Pascal personally, even if I include personal facts about him, because this is cultural commentary at a time of significant cultural shift.

Our primary culture-producing corporations have exhausted or mined their intellectual properties to death, with streaming playing a structural role in the decline of revenues because it kills all the other forms of revenue (DVDs, rentals, theatrical re-release, etc). The rise and fall of Pedro Pascal’s career is merely one line of data on a chart that describes this historical moment.