REVIEW:
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the first great Marvel movie in a long long time. Since Spider Man: No Way Home really, which was four years ago, back in 2021. In fact, there have only been four good Marvel movies in the past five years…Shang Chi, Spider Man No Way Home, Deadpool and Wolverine, and Fantastic Four First Steps. That’s it. And those four films have one single thing in common. Their embrace of nostalgia. Their willingness to give the fans exactly what they want, even if it means putting themselves out there, and embracing ideas and styles that might be considered silly.
Case in point, Fox’s X-Men movies were afraid to put Wolverine in a yellow and blue suit (the X-Men colors from the comics.) Deadpool and Wolverine did it. Shang-Chi brought back the Abomination, a character from a generally disliked Hulk movie. Spider-Man No Way Home featured a whole bunch of villains from less than favorable movies, like Sandman, The Lizard, and Electro. And Fantastic Four finally gives us Galactus, in all his larger than life campiness.
In fact, featuring Galactus is just one of the many, many ways this movie gets it right. I suppose it all starts with the setting and time they put this movie in. It’s an alternate reality version of the sixties. And they handle it like a retro-future world, kind of like the Jetsons. Everything looks dated, and yet also futuristic, as if this is what people in the sixties imagined the future might look like. So there are sunken living rooms and extreme colors, like the seventies offered, but also robots and flying cars. And it’s all fantastic. It really looks and feels great. Considering this team started off in the sixties, and Marvel likes to do that right, starting characters in the decade they began (which is why they went back to World War 2 from Captain America’s first movie,) with their retro-future alternate reality idea, they found a way to make it work.
From there, we get all kinds of fun campiness, like Herbie the cute, lovable robot, and Mole Man (Paul Walter Hauser,) who is like a throwback to older, cartoonish comic-book villains, dressed in a goofy, but accurate to the comics costume. And then there’s the Silver Surfer and Galactus. When Fox made their Fantastic Four movies, Galactus was reduced to a space cloud. This time around, he’s the menacing giant we always hoped Marvel would step up to the plate and deliver. And the Silver Surfer looks pretty good too. That’s the one that’s the most controversial, since they made her a female in this movie, (played by Ozark’s Julie Garner.) But as things would have it, this turned out to be a good decision.
The decision to make the Silver Surfer female most likely came from the studio reoognizing that it had way too many male characters already and not enough females. After all, it’s about a family where three fourths of the members are guys. Then there’s Galactus and Mole Man, also guys. And so Marvel found a way to get another woman in there. And this woman version of the Surfer does appear as female in the comics from time to time. Yes, she’s not the most well-known version of the surfer, but it’s also not out of nowhere. In this movie, the character looks absolutely wonderful. The effects are top notch. And having a female Surfer gives Johny Storm (the Human Torch,) an opportunity to demonstrate some of his womanizing persona without him blatantly flirting with every woman who comes across his path (the way the Chris Evans Human Torch did in the two Tim Story Fantastic Four movies.) It all works for the best. And so does the way Disney marketed this thing, putting her in the very first trailer so that if people did have a problem with it, then they had plenty of time to get over it, before the movie came out.
All three villainous characters are terrific here. Galactus, the Silver Surfer, and Mole Man. They aren’t all used the same way, with Mole Man only appearing in a couple of scenes, but that’s totally fine. As played by the always great Paul Walter Hauser, his character is more about comic relief, and it definitely works. Garner is terrific, and Ralph Ineson is perfect casting for Galactus. His menacing voice and look are spot on. That covers the villains. But what about our heroes? Our main characters?
I’m pleased to say that they are all handled nicely as well. Pedro Pascal, who plays Reed Richards, is clearly in too many movies these days (he was just in two others in the past two months, Materialists and Freaky Tales,) but so what? He’s good. He’s talented. And he’s likable. As long as he keeps delivering, it doesn’t really matter how much he’s in. Here, he is one of the two emotional cores of the story. The other is his wife, Sue Storm, played by Vanessa Kirby. The two of them are the power couple of the movie and get into real couple issues and arguments. The movie holds nothing back in presenting their relationship and taking chances with crossing boundaries. From opening the film with Sue Storm sitting on a toilet while talking to Richards, to a scene where she turns her womb invisible so that Richards can see the baby growing inside of her, to a scene where the Silver Surfer tries to literally take the baby out of Sue Storm, this movie definitely takes big risks. And they pay off.
Aside from that, this couple’s interactions with each other are interesting. When Galactus asks for Richards and Storm to give up their baby, and in turn he will spare earth, the couple refuses. Only Richards considers it. And Sue Storm knows he does. She even gets angry about it. This turns out to be a pretty compelling debate. It is noble or justifiable to sacrifice one human to save billions? I like that neither character wants to go along with this, but that Richards admits to having thought about it. In fact, his biggest problem is that he’s too open and honest. There’s a moment in this movie where he does a press conference with the public after returning from space, and admits that Galactus wanted their baby in order to spare earth, and they said no. I had a hard time understanding why he told the world this, as if he didn’t realize that there were tons of people who would now be furious with him. Then I realized his honesty is one of his defining characteristics. And the movie does show us the logical consequence of all this, with people calling for the team to sacrifice their baby. It would have been nice to have an argument where Sue Storm got angry at Richards for announcing this to the public, especially without discussing it with her first. She could have claimed that by announcing this, he put their family in danger. But she didn’t and that’s okay. Maybe it would have felt like too much arguing at that point.
To get back to the characters for a moment, the other two are Johny Storm (Sue brother, the Human Torch,) and Ben Grimm (The Thing.) Both are handled nicely. These two don’t get huge storylines the way they did in some of the other FF movies, but that’s okay. We’ve already seen The Thing spend multiple movies being depressed about his rock look and having a real hard time learning to accept it. We don’t need to see that again. The same goes for Johny’s womanizing. Here it is handled just right, with his infatuation with surfer. I love when he needs to know if the surfboard is part of her body or not and is relieved to find out that it’s not.
Both Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm do have some stories all to their own, which turns out to be enough. In the case of Grimm, it’s the fact that Richards led the team to space and didn’t build the spacesuits properly or calculate what could happen and now blames himself for best friend Grimm looking the way he does. And Grimm repeatedly tells Richards it’s not his fault, and he’s being too hard on himself. Meanwhile, Grimm just wants to embrace simple things like cooking, being a helpful uncle (he ready the baby books,) and giving back to the community. He does tricks for the local kids on the street and makes friends with a teacher, who we goes to visit later on in the film (played by Natasha Lyonne.)
The movie is packed with ideas about these characters and their abilities. At one point, when there is a push to stop using electricity, and The Thing stops shaving and grows a very cool looking rock beard. Jonny Storm is shown at the beginning of the movie not only having the ability to create fire, but also to absorb it or put it out. These are all new ways pr presenting the powers, which is actually what we needed from this movie. And just as important as what the movie does is what the movie doesn’t do. It doesn’t give us another origin story. Thank goodness for that.
Not giving us origin stories anymore for character where we have already seen the origin in other incarnations and versions that came before, is the new trend these days. It started with Marvel’s Spider-Man Homecoming, For the first time, with that Tom Holland film, we got a new Spider-Man without having to see how he got those powers again. Next came The Batman. And then only two weeks ago, the new James Gunn version of Superman. All origin stories that we have already seen at least twice before. So no need to show them again. And instead, this movie opens with a talk show hosts montage that chronicles the whole story of what happened to the team in just a brief number of minutes. It is a wonderful montage filled with both humor and fun as we see the team taking on some iconic villains (like the monster that pops out of the ground, right out of the first FF comic book cover.) This montage might be right at the start of the film, but it quickly announces that they are finally getting these heroes right.
From there, we get the pregnancy story, with both Richards and Storm expressing concern that their baby will be born with issues or strange abilities, just like the two of the are. But we also get the story of Johnny wanting to go back up into space and Reed resisting. He is still living with and dealing with the fact that what happened to them all last time was his fault. This is all interesting and powerful, and before you know it, the Silver Surfer appears, heralding Galactus and explaining the threat.
From there, our heroes go to space themselves, to take a meeting with Galactus. This ia a very smart use of different settings. Instead of having Galactus attack earth twice, the first time winning and then the second time losing, the way a boxing movie would do to its protagonist fighter, (everything from Rocky to Black Panther,) here it isn’t just two matches. It’s our heroes going to outer space to find the villain, get answers, and try to negotiate a deal. That scene goes horribly wrong with the Surfer chasing them down through space, including wormholes, black holes, and faster than the speed of lithe time travel.
And then it’s back to earth to devise a plan involving teleportation. While Reed is working that one out, Johnny is on his own mission to decode the Silver Surfer’s language so that he can try to break through to her. I love that this movie makes all of the characters smart and gives them all something to do. If anyone could have used a little more of a story or mission of his own, it’s Ben Grimm, but what we get here is okay, and certainly doesn’t repeat the same beats from other films, which is nice.
Speaking of figuring out what to cut, and how to keep this movie to a shorter running time, the movie makes a point to come in at under two hours, and it is greatly appreciated. You see, they basically chose to keep the feel of the film fast paced and exciting, instead of just giving us more and more and going on and on, to the point where we would start to get a little bored. Yes, they had a lot more that they filmed and could have included, such as a tour of the Baxter building to see which floor each of the characters lives on, but is all that really necessary? This movie went to great pains to keep its plot line tight, (including the cutting of John Malkovivh out all together.) As a result, what we get is a movie that never feels over stuffed, (as opposed to Superman, which came out two weeks earlier,) and leaves us wanting more.
And yet it does find the time to mix in some red herrings, into its storyline. Not many movies are smart enough to do that. A red herring is a false start. A story or idea that doesn’t really go anywhere. So why is it so smart to include them? Because it basically means that a plan the characters had didn’t work out. In a murder mystery, a red herring is a false lead. Thinking the wrong person did it. Being led down the wrong path. In an action movie like this one, it’s a plan that doesn’t pan out as expected. And the reason why it’s smart to include them is because it’s realistic. Crazy heroic plans don’t always work out perfectly. And this movie knows that.
In this movie, a major red herring comes when Reed Richards devises a plan to have every major country around the world pitch in and join in the fight to save earth by building one of his teleporting devices. The plan is to move earth to a different location where Galactus can’t find it. And the countries agree and do it. But just as they are finished being built, the Silver Surfer shows up and destroys them all. Another red herring comes at the end of the movie when our heroes come up with a great plan to temporarily blind Galactus and then trick him with the location of the baby. Only Galactus doesn’t fall for it. And these false starts are all pretty great.
Fantastic Four First Steps is hardly perfect. It somehow misses a perfectly teed up opportunity to have any conversations between Reed and Sue about Reed Richards telling the world that Galactus wanted their baby and that they refused. Even if she agreed that it was right for him to tell the public, I would still think she would be upset that he didn’t discuss that with her first. And instead of having that argument, the movie puts the couple through a different one where Reed gets in trouble with Sue for “thinking about,” the possibility of sacrificing their baby. So basically the movie chose the wrong argument to have. But that’s small potatoes compared to everything this movie gets right. From the amazing look and atmosphere of the setting to the fun characters to the fantastic action and effects, this one is a very good movie.