Fantastic Four: First Steps review

The Fantastic Four is one of the biggest comic properties out there. Even if you don't know comics, you have at least heard of the characters. Every other such character has yielded at least one very good movie. But the FF has had trouble.

I am actually a fan of the two movies from the mid-2000s, with Chris Evans and peak Jessica Alba. They were pretty successful movies, but critics hated them, and nobody seemed too put out when the franchise ended after two movies. And the MCU started a year later, and Evans would never have been Captain America if FF had continued. 

Much worse was the attempted reboot in 2015, by which point the non-MCU Marvel films were really struggling. This one was a dark, boring version of the FF characters, and wasted an actually very good cast.

By the time that movie came out and bombed, everybody was pretty much just sitting and waiting for Marvel Studios to get control of the property back and make a really good Fantastic Four film.

Well, that time has arrived. Disney bought Fox several years ago and with it many properties, including the Fantastic Four. And so we knew we would get a proper MCU Fantastic Four movie soon.

And now it arrives as something of a savior for I suppose a struggling studio in need of a massive hit. 

And not surprisingly, Marvel Studios has made the best Fantastic Four movie of all time by a significant margin. A movie that really gets the tone and the characters in the world. And is likely to be their biggest hit in a while. 

Directed by WandaVision's Matt Shakman, the movie takes place in the 1960s on an alternative Earth from the proper MCU. LIke the new Superman movie, we pick up the story after the titular heroes already have their powers and are known by the world at large. So we don't have to do another origin story.

I always like this approach. I liked it in Spider-Man. I liked it in the new Superman. We don't need to see the same origin over and over and over in different films. Besides, there is a short little montage to catch total newbies up. 

Those characters are, of course, Mr. Fantastic aka Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), the Invisible Woman aka Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), the Human Torch aka Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and The Thing aka Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). I wasn't that interested in any of this cast on paper when it was announced. I think Pedro Pascal is a good actor, but he's definitely overexposed of late. I had never been too big on anything I'd seen of Vanessa Kirby to this point. Joseph Quinn had been in a few things but hadn't really stood out to me, and I wasn't really familiar at all with Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

But Marvel has always been great with their casting and they hit it out of the fucking park again with this one. Everybody is really, really good in this, really charming, and really nailing their characters. And I think the best of them all is Kirby who really gets a couple of the big showcase moments.

The main plot involves Galactus, the eater of planets, who we did see in the second of the Chris Evans Fantastic Four movies, accompanied by the Silver Surfer as well. In that movie it was played (well, voiced) by Laurence Fishburne. In this movie, much to the consternation of the internet, it is a female Silver Surfer played by Julia Garner. Basically it's the same character arc and it is done better here, and no, there is nothing wrong with there being a female Silver Surfer. If anything I wanted more of her. 

Galactus wants to eat Earth, the Fantastic Four try to negotiate the Earth out of this. But Galactus wants Reed and Sue's newborn child in return and they refuse. It briefly makes them pariahs on earth (fuck them kids, I guess). But eventually everyone bands together to try to stop Galactus. 

I went into this movie assuming that the Fantastic Four were going to fail in this endeavor, and that was going to be the catalyst for getting them into the proper MCU, which we saw teased at the end of Thunderbolts. That doesn't happen. We do get a Doctor Doom tease in the credits, but other than that, we don't get any connections to Avengers Doomsday or anything in the existing MCU. This is the first truly standalone Marvel studios film since Iron Man. No connections to anything else.  You can go in cold.

Visually this is one of the best MCU films maybe ever. The set design. All the retro looks are really cool. The effects are very cool as well and creative. There's one especially fantastic scene set out in outer space near a black hole. Galactus is also suitably imposing. And the Silver Surfer looks really good as well.  You probably don't get as much of the actual Fantastic Four powers as you might expect, but that stuff is rendered very well as well and for what it's worth even though I don't usually notice the scores in these movies this one had a really good one.

Never doubt Marvel.