The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The title is a joke, a reference to Marvel history and also an announcement – this, fanfare please, is the opening film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s glorious Phase Six.
The joke. The Fantastic Four has taken many first steps before. It’s the failed-to-launch superhero franchise par excellence, with three damp squibs – two with Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba and one with Miles Teller and Kate Mara plus assorted unremarkable FF walk-ons in other MCU movies. “Damp” may be overdoing it, but those three movies did not sweep all before them, let’s say. And then there was Roger Corman’s run at the material, with a movie in 1994 that was made to protect the IP and never got officially released.
As for the history – Marvel Comics was a newly rebadged company in all sorts of trouble when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced the Fantastic Four in 1961. The new characters struck a chord with readers and turned around the company’s fortunes as well as setting a bickering, larky template for everything to come. Without the FF no Spider-Man, no Hulk, no Thor, no MCU.
Throat cleared, the film, a retro-futurist affair and a bit of a departure for Marvel in terms of stylistics. NOT an origin story, say Marvel, and yet they still manage to fit in the FF becoming the FF after a foursome of plucky astronauts get hit by cosmic rays and return to Earth altered forever. Reed Richards is now Mr Fantastic. Sue Storm is Invisible Woman, Ben Grimm is The Thing and Johnny Storm the Human Torch.
The plot: saving the Earth from destruction by Galactus, a malevolent superbeing who first sends his emissary, the Silver Surfer, a John the Baptist of destruction to Galactus’s Jesus, to wreak CGI havoc – a way for Marvel to deliver a buy-one-get-one-free deal on villains.
Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby play Reed and Sue, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are Johnny and Ben. An average American family in vibe. Reed and Sue the grown-ups – she’s expecting a baby, who will become part of Galactus’s evil plan, while Johnny and Ben squabble like teenagers in the now-familiar Marvel bantz way. All are fine performances, though the dread blandness of the FF affects all the actors, as it did those of Ioan and Jessica, Miles and Kate et al back in the day.
The villains have some cut-through. Ralph Ineson’s booming voice gives Galactus a bit of edge and the Silver Surfer for all her shimmering exterior is a dark character, visually and tonally, with Julia Garner probably the film’s standout.
In case we’re not entirely sure who Moss-Bachrach is – his face permanently hidden behind prosthetic lumps – The Thing/Ben likes to cook, a nod to EM-B’s character in TV-resto drama The Bear (who doesn’t cook, but hey).
The most noteworthy thing about the film is its hipster-bar retro look. This is a techy futuristic world where vinyl LPs still exist. When the “so crazy it might just work” plan to defeat Galactus is put into effect it is notably all about old-school industry. Men in hard hats constructing stuff out of girders. When the FF jump in a car – a car! – to save the world, it looks a bit like Adam West’s Batmobile. The special effects, meanwhile, have more than a hint of Ray Harryhausen about them, and when the gigantic Galactus heavy-footedly starts stomping through New York, it’s the big bronze giant from Jason and the Argonauts that springs to mind.
Has a superhero ever given birth in a Marvel movie before? Sue does in this one. For all its lack of cosmic clout, this is an interesting film full of new beginnings and tentative explorations of different directions, while still giving the fans what they want. All in all it’s a bit unfocused maybe, a touch bland, quite nice. Not the sort of adjectives that get splattered on posters, but there is still enough stuff stirring in the undergrowth to make this fascinating all the same.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2025
