The first full trailer for what studios are calling their tentpole gamble of the summer landed Tuesday morning, and within an hour it had done the thing every marketing team secretly prays for: split the internet clean in half.
By lunchtime, the clip had racked up more than 40 million views across platforms, with the comment sections reading less like movie chatter and more like a family argument at Thanksgiving.
A role that fans had spent two years fantasy-casting with a shortlist of A-listers went instead to an actor most people know from a streaming drama that got canceled after one season.
Detractors call it a dealbreaker, and they are not being quiet about it.
A brief shot of the film's central creature, glimpsed for maybe two seconds in the back half of the trailer, has become its own meme economy.
Screenshots are circulating with zoomed-in red circles, side-by-side comparisons to a 2009 video game, and captions that range from "this is a PS3 cutscene" to "give it time, it's not finished." The studio has not commented, which has only made the discourse louder.
What's genuinely interesting is how the trailer is performing.
Tracking data shared with trade outlets suggests the negativity isn't slowing it down.
Saves and shares are outpacing a comparable blockbuster from last year by a wide margin, and pre-sale chatter for opening weekend spiked within hours of the drop.
In 2025, it seems, being argued about is its own form of advertising.
Director-adjacent leaks haven't helped calm anyone.
A crew member's since-deleted post hinted that the trailer's most criticized effects shot was a placeholder, which ignited a fresh round of "see, we told you" versus "then why put it in the trailer." Welcome to modern fandom, where a two-second clip can generate a week of content.
The bigger question is whether any of this matters by July.
Films that got roasted at the trailer stage have gone on to enormous openings, and films that got universal praise have flopped.
Audiences, it turns out, are not a monolith, and the loudest voices online are rarely the ones buying four tickets for a family of four on a Saturday afternoon.
For now, the studio is sticking to its playbook: one more trailer, a Super Bowl-adjacent spot, and a press tour that will inevitably produce at least one awkward red carpet moment.
The cast has stayed mostly silent, aside from a single cryptic Instagram story from the lead that fans have already decoded six different ways. **Our take:** Trailer discourse has become a sport unto itself, and it's worth remembering that none of us have seen the actual movie yet.
Studios know outrage travels faster than praise, so some of this may be by design.
Final Thoughts
The real verdict arrives when the lights go down, not when the comments go up.