The Fantastic Four: First Steps and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Directed by Matt Shakman
What is it about The Fantastic Four that has made it both enduring enough to now be on its second reboot, third if we count the Roger Corman film, and yet so difficult to get right, which, again, if we count the Roger Corman film, hasn’t had a good entry since 1994? I suppose the fact that they were the first superhero team from Marvel Comics gives them a certain gravitas, similar to how Superman is treated over at DC, so it’s rather fitting that both movies are coming out so close to each other with similar expectations behind them. Superman has certainly put Marvel in an interesting position with their one time collaborator James Gunn making a strong case for their side to take the Superhero movie crown, and on top of that, this is serving as the launching point for what will hopefully be a much more successful and confident phase of the two-decade old MCU. Will the fourth time be the charm for Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s signature creation, or is this movie stretched far too thin for even Mr. Fantastic to hold it together? Let’s find out!!
You know them! You love them! They make the world a better place every day! Well, at least in their world, Earth-828, but regardless, the Fantastic Four are here to defend us all! Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Ben Grimm, and Johnny Storm (Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn) have certainly made the most of their celebrity status after gaining unique powers from cosmic rays, and things are only looking brighter when Sue learns that she is pregnant with Reed’s child. It’s too bad that all this good news is swiftly followed with a herald from the furthest stars of the galaxy (Julia Garner) proclaiming the incoming demise of this planet at the hand of Galactus (Ralph Ineson); a cosmic being that will surely grind these four heroes into one pile of super-dust. Clearly this problem is going to take more than just stretchy powers, invisible powers, fire powers, and rock powers, to overcome, but even putting their massive brains together may not be enough to stop the literal end of the world. With so much at stake and a baby on the way, can our foursome of fearsome scientists live up to the pedestal that the world has put them on? Does Galactus have more than just a thirst for destruction that is driving him to target this planet specifically? Maybe if the rock guy punches him really hard, it will be enough to destroy Galactus! Either that, or find a way to make him swallow the fire guy.
A lot of people are happy that optimistic Super Hero movies are the new hotness with this and Superman lighting up the box office, and while I appreciate that celebrating both films would be much more in the spirit of things, we have a very clear winner here as this film falls short in a lot of key areas. It’s not a bad movie or even bad on the Marvel grading curve, but with such a better contemporary in the theaters, and arguably a better compatriot in this year’s Thunderbolts, its shortcomings are put that much more into sharp relief. Let’s not get too negative right off the bat, as my feelings for this are genuinely positive. It’s certainly the first Fantastic Four movie to feel like it grasps the material and has the means to achieve its loftier concepts. Ben’s not just a guy in a rubber suit this time, and he’s certainly not the rock monster that Trank conceptualized for Fant-4-Stic; he is as convincing a presence as any of the human characters in this, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach was a great pick to bring him to life. Sure, he’s a little constrained by the relative broadness of the material and the fact that he has by far the least to do of the four of them, but his sheer force of personality is a constant scene stealer and I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a lot more focus when we start doing the cross-over films again. Of course, making The Thing awesome was never going to be the biggest challenge of this movie. Reed has always been a tough nut to crack and an easy target of mockery for his old-school science aesthetics, which I’m pretty sure he’s always given a beard in the more modern incarnations of the character, but between the relationship with Sue and his son, as well as Pacsal’s strong performance, it manages to find quite a bit of humanity without sanitizing his obsessive and sometimes heartless tendencies. There’s a comfortableness between them that creates more chemistry than any other relationship in this twenty-year old franchise, and Vanessa Kirby deserves a lot of credit for pulling that out of both Pascal’s character and her own. That said, the real MVP of the movie is Joseph Quinn, who I was convinced wouldn’t work in the role, but his performance is great, and the script gives him a lot to work with. For me, it was the contacts and blonde hair which never looked convincing and frankly made him seem older than he is, but I was surprised to see that he was the genuine heart of the movie. If the movie can be said to have a significant through line outside the conflicts surrounding the baby, it’s how everyone underestimates Johnny to their own peril, and he shows himself to be perhaps the bravest of the bunch despite his caustic and lackadaisical demeanor which does a lot to make his obnoxious qualities endearing rather than grating.
If your measure of a Fantastic Four movie is that they get the characters right, then this is an unequivocal success right out of the gate, and it certainly has everything else you’d expect from a big scale Marvel production. The art design is top-notch with a kitschy retro-futurism that both create a warm homey environment and a slight undercurrent of absurdity that would sometimes feel like one of the cleverer Adult Swim shows with a significantly higher budget. Action set-pieces are well put together, with big sci-fi concepts coupled with creative uses of their powers to both overcome obstacles and reflect the finer nuances of each character’s personality. On a technical and character level, this movie meets every mark and passes every test. If you want a fantastic journey to go along with all of that, however, well I think this is where the movie starts to slide a little bit before revealing its greatest flaws. I suppose it was always going to be an uphill battle making a Fantastic Four movie without Doom and to retell the Galactus story yet again, but the movie still manages to make much of it feel underweight and overly simplistic. Stylish, to be sure, as both Silver Surfer and Galactus are wonderfully realized; especially the latter as they’ve made no concessions to bringing the absurdity of this character to life while using a phenomenal actor to say a dozen or so lines for him. Still, despite his status as an all-powerful threat and Ralph Ineson’s iconic voice, I found that the threat lacked a certain amount of gravitas, especially with Silver Surfer’s character arc being rather overtly telegraphed throughout. It ends up feeling less like the end of the world and more like solving a difficult math problem, which makes sense given the vibe of these characters, but if that was the case then the Capital-S Science of it all is perhaps a little loose. How it’s portrayed doesn’t have to be realistic or even that much different from outright magic, but there’s a way to make someone applying a complicated skill to be fascinating even if the skill comes off as mundane when compared to super-powered-punch-ups, and the movie never quite feels like we get to that level of impressive rigor. It just feels insubstantial at points, and nowhere else is this felt the strongest than in the world building.
This may have been an inevitable problem with setting this movie in an alternate universe of the MCU, and frankly we’ve already been here once before with Quantumania, as there’s just very little connection that the audience has with the people, places, and things, that exist in this world separate from the one we’ve gotten used to for twenty years. This doesn’t have to be a problem as establishing the world that a movie takes place in is a key part of making literally any movie, but it never stops feeling like an alternate place, or perhaps more like visiting a theme park version of a place we already know. This sense of unreality isn’t just the knowledge that all our super-hero buddies are all doing fine somewhere else regardless of the outcome of this particular crisis. The movie feels somewhat Randian with almost no presence or need for the general populace to exist outside how they can fawn and support their betters; in this case The Fantastic Four who, as far as this movie is concerned, have no peers or colleagues. It’s baffling how few characters there are in this movie that hold a conversation with our characters; just crowds of extras and the occasional pick-up shot of someone watching TV intercut between stock footage of science. Compare this to the Sam Raimi Spider-Man where New York City itself was a living breathing home for Peter with unique individuals peppered throughout, and while a movie doesn’t necessarily need that level of detail in its environment, this movie’s themes are explicitly about Earth and its people. It’s about the space-age optimism of society working together towards a common goal, and yet society feels rather inconsequential, which sucks a lot of the air out of whatever we’re supposed to be rooting for and whatever we’re supposed to dread.
Nothing about this movie is poorly done or wouldn’t have worked in a slightly different context, but the film’s stated goals and its execution are so vastly far apart that it becomes jarring to watch it all play out. Even so, I think the filmmakers nailed the core characters, and their chemistry was able to overcome many of the problems I had. I was certainly able to enjoy it for that reason alone, and I would definitely recommend it; especially if you find the world much more endearing than I did. I’d still take the boy in blue over the team of four, but there’s more than enough room in this world for both to inspire us to be better than we are while punching bad guys in the face.
The Reviewers Unite 