The Foxy Mr. Fantastic
The Fantastic Four -
First Steps
Directed by Matt Shakman
UK/USA/Canada/New Zealand 2025
Marvel/Disney
UK cinema release print.
Foreshadowing: The only spoilers in this are hints of what doesn’t happen. I think you can read in safety... or, you know, Reed in safety.
What is it with the July Blockbuster trailers this year?
I mean, the marketing has been terrible.
The Jurassic World Rebirth trailer looked as awful as I assumed it would be, the Superman trailer, Krypto aside, looked pretty appalling and the trailer for The Fantastic Four - First Steps, was surprisingly bad. I’d been looking forward to that last one because I knew it was going to be set in the 1960s and, admittedly this meant the film had to have been set in a multiversal alternative version of Earth (since they are not past characters in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe aka MCU, other than in alternate cameos)... but they are right up front about that in this movie, with the characters living in a version of Earth named after original co-creator Jack Kirby’s birthday.
And in each of the cases of the promotional campaigns mentioned above... the films they represented were some of the best blockbuster movies we’ve had in a while. Jurassic Park Rebirth (reviewed here), while totally not needed, was one of the better franchise entries. Superman was pretty solid (it probably helped that Krypto gets a lot of screen time... reviewed here) and, yeah, despite being totally miscast in terms of the way the characters look in the comics... with Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Susan Richards (The Invisible Girl), Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Benjamin Grimm (The Thing*) and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm (The Human Torch)... this film is actually one of the better MCU entries to date.
The main leads all work well together in terms of their on-screen chemistry and the whole movie looks spectacular in its creation of a kind of retro-fitted, futuristic vision of the 1960s. An aesthetic which I thought would work (until I saw the trailer) but, yeah, in spite of that, it still looks pretty amazing. One might even say... fantastic.
The film kinda had me from very early on when, after skimping on a proper origin story... much like superhero movies are finally learning to do again, from their 1940s and 1950s on screen counterparts, just cut to the chase... it does a brief potted history of the origins of the team on an Ed Sullivan parody TV show and one of, I’m sure, many comic book homages throughout, it recreates, in live action format, something approximating the cover of the very first issue of the comic, dated November 1961. You know... the titular characters’ famous battle with the Mole Man. Actually, the Mole Man takes on a much more significant role as the film moves forward, rather than just being used as a throwaway for this sequence, it turns out.
There’s even an homage to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, if my brief glimpse of them working in the offices of Timely Comics (Marvel’s original name in the 1930s) was correctly decoded by my brain. So, yeah, there are lots of homages to the original comics, even if the film strays far from the fine details.
For instance, I meant to watch the WandaVision follow up TV show Agatha All Along before seeing this (I forgot) because I’d heard Sue Storm is pregnant in this one. So, obviously, Franklin Richards would need a babysitter and, in the comics, that was the witch Agatha Harkness. But, nope, she doesn’t make an appearance here.
And similarly, you’ll know from the trailers (which include material which didn’t make final cut, by the looks of it) that the big bad of the movie is the mighty Galactus (and he actually looks just like him this time around). So, of course, that means his herald, the Silver Surfer will be making an appearance and... make an appearance he does. Um... no... actually that’s, make an appearance she does. Instead of Norin Rad being this movies Silver Surfer, we have his lover Shalla-Bal, played by Julia Garner, filling that spot. So, yeah, wrong again but, also again, it kinda works here.
What doesn’t work is that damned robot Herbie, who finally makes it to the screen. And why it doesn’t work too well is because, though it speaks English, you can’t really make out what it’s saying. At least, I couldn’t. Could maybe have used some subtitles here guys.
But it is fast paced, simpler than the usual overcrowded superhero fest (in exactly the way Superman wasn’t... but still managed to make it work) with a lot of oomph and, actually, quite a lot of emotional heart. All set to a Michael Giacchino score which, again, despite being terrible in the trailers, really works for the movie... bet there’s no CD release though, because Marvel seem to have given up on giving their more music literate fans a score on the one useful format they could have put it on. Yeah, not getting into this again right now... their music policy sucks.
But yeah, other than not being able to enjoy the music for the film away from the movie because it’s not released in an acceptable format at time of writing, The Fantastic Four - First Steps was a surprisingly charming movie and a good time at the cinema, for sure. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this links in to Avengers Doomsday next year (or even, since it’s not picked up here, how it related to the post credits scenes of Thunderbolts, reviewed here). A small hint might be found in the first of the two post credit sequences of this film, methinks.
*Actually, The Thing is based more on his original, early 1960s look here, instead of the more defined, better known version of the character from the 1970s.