The Fantastic Four Teaser Teases Weird Laugh Track

ABLUpdated 3 weeks Ago2 Mins read5

Ahead of its July premiere date, Disney and Marvel released the first teaser for The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Well, actually, it’s a teaser for the first teaser. As a teaser for a teaser, there is no footage of Mr. Rocks (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the Fire Guy (Joseph Quinn), Stretchy (Pedro Pascal), or Invisilass (Vanessa Kirby) taking their titular first steps into the MCU. Instead, we see little kids doing that thing in movies where little kids run through the streets looking for a TV window display to catch a glimpse of the protagonists doing main-character stuff. The TVs are boxy as hell to tell the audience, This is the past. (But which past?!?!?! Exactly.) The four surrounding screens show some sort of space mission, and the center one warns, “Prepare 4 Launch.” This is what we see, but what do we hear? Move over, children’s choir singing a slowed-down version of a popular song — we have a new spooky sound: stock children’s laughter on loop.

There are two explanations for the usage of canned laughter. First, Marvel was in a rush to get the teaser for the teaser out and looking to save money. With Robert Downey Jr. reportedly earning upwards of $100 million to return to the MCU as Doctor Doom, at a time of the dreaded superhero fatigue, Disney needs to save money anywhere it can. And that includes paying kids to ADR their own laughter. Real laughter? In this economy? To say nothing of the cost of imported whoopee cushions, chattering teeth, and rubber chickens these days needed to make those kids laugh. No, instead you just download the file that says “children-laughing-mp3” and paste it four times into Avid.

Explanation two: It is deliberate. The use of fake laughter is meant to create an uncanny quality, subtly teasing the fact that something is off here. Matt Shakman, the film’s director, was offered The Fantastic Four after directing WandaVision, Marvel’s previously most altogether ooky project. The sound could communicate that we are, in fact, not in our world. (Rumors have pointed to TFF: FS taking place in the 1960s in a different dimension than the one MCU audiences have largely been following.)

Hopefully, this question and many more will be answered in the actual first teaser, which drops Tuesday at 7 a.m. ET. As Mr. Rocks would say, it’s clobberin’ o’clock!