"The Fantastic Four: First Steps" is the third big budget attempt to launch a movie franchise with the Fantastic Four superhero team. These have been tough characters to crack for a number of reasons, chief among them being that the heyday of the Fantastic Four comics was back in the 1960s. Instead of trying to modernize them the way that the previous films did, "First Steps" chooses to lean into the retro vibe, taking place in an alternate universe that looks an awful lot like 1964. Our main characters also feel like superheroes of another era - larger than life celebrity do-gooders with a long list of powers and accomplishments.
Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) is a brilliant scientist whose body stretches like rubber. His wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) controls light, can make things invisible, and creates energy shields. Sue's brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) can become a flying, flaming Human Torch. Finally there's Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss Bachrach), The Thing, a strongman who appears to be literally made of stone. All four got their powers from "cosmic rays" during a space flight a few years ago, and have since then kept busy fighting villains and bringing peace to the world. However, this is all prologue. Our story starts when two things happen - Reed and Sue discover that they're expecting their first child, and a Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) comes to Earth, heralding the imminent arrival of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), an implacable cosmic being who goes around literally eating planets.
The production design is the best thing about the film. We don't just get a 1960s themed Marvel movie, but the kind of comic-book retrofuturist world where the Fantastic Four have a robot assistant named H.E.R.B.I.E. (Matthew Wood), get around in a flying "Fantasticar," and it turns out there's a hidden subterranean civilization led by a cranky Mole Man (Paul Walter Hauser), who Sue Storm brokered a peace deal with before the events of the film. I was a little taken aback at how broad and cartoonish some of these elements were at first, but I got used to it quickly. By the end, I was reminded that it's been an awfully long time since we've had a superhero film that's properly family friendly, and we could use more of them. And with the big focus on family the film keeps emphasizing, it feels appropriate that "The Fantastic Four" is very all-ages.
And ultimately, I think that's why "First Steps" works. Yes, it's goofy a lot of the time. Yes, the CGI baby isn't always convincing. Yes, they tried to stuff too much into one film, so it doesn't feel like some storylines and character arcs quite came together. Apparently John Malkovitch got left on the cutting room floor somewhere. However, it commits to telling one story from start to finish, gives us crystal clear stakes and motivations for everyone involved, and delivers plenty of excellent spectacle along the way. It's an old fashioned, earnest superhero story in the best way, with the fate of the world in the balance, and the heroes being faced with tough moral decisions - but we know that they'll choose right in the end. I'm not really a fan of Galactus, because he's a very one-note villain, but he sure does deliver on scope, and ultimately he feels like the right kind of threat for this kind of superhero story.
Compared to the previous iterations of these characters, these versions of the Fantastic Four feel more idealized, and more functional as a team and family unit. This is great for the superheroics, but also makes them less interesting to follow as characters. Ben Grimm is lonely, but doesn't deal with any self-hatred. Johnny expresses some frustrations, but is not the hothead loose cannon in any sense. We learn plenty about them through their interactions with each other and with other characters, but no one on the team gets the spotlight individually for long enough for any real character development. Reed and Sue experiencing new parent anxieties and trying to protect their kid are probably the biggest real arcs.
I don't know if a sequel is in the cards, but we'll be seeing more of these characters very soon in the upcoming "Avengers" movies. Hopefully they'll get a little more fleshed out there, even with the limited time. I'm not sure if these are the best screen versions of the Fantastic Four, but they're certainly strong enough to warrant a few more appearances in the MCU.
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