It’s been ages since a Marvel movie has succeeded like The Fantastic Four: First Steps, a delightful throwback adventure nestling a family soap opera. In many ways, no entry in the MCU has felt as detailed or inspired, let alone shown as much adoration for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s comic book source material. You know what they say: the thirty-seventh time’s the charm.
Set in a separate universe from its more grounded peers — the original Iron Man all the way through the recent Thunderbolts* — First Steps drops us smack-dab in the middle of ongoing adventures starring Marvel’s “First Family.” The film swiftly establishes their personal dynamics and keeps these relationships central throughout hurried moments and sudden tonal shifts, ensuring that Marvel Studios’ now-signature slapdash CGI is no match for a heart of gold.
First Steps functions both as an adaptation of a thus-far hard to translate roster (it’s the fourth go-around for these characters since 1994), while also working on its own terms. While the plot is straightforward and unfolds with sincerity, the film has no dearth of raucous humor or whizbang action moments reminiscent of classic sci-fi serials. Its sense of scale is born not only out of danger and destruction, but palpable emotional stakes, yielding one of the most inspired four-quadrant Hollywood blockbusters since — quite fittingly for a Disney-owned film — Pixar’s own take on the concept, The Incredibles.
What is The Fantastic Four: First Steps about?
Novelty title cards plucked from the 1960s welcome us into the home of married couple Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) and Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), in a surprising opening scene that replaces the genre’s usual first act fireworks with quaint domesticity. Sue has just taken a pregnancy test and waits to share the good news. In the meantime, Reed obsessively fixates on a task, as he often does in the comics. But this is no spaceship we find our protagonists in, as expected. Within this regular Earthly house, Reed is working on something much more mundane: rustling through every drawer for an everyday item.
On paper, this all seems unremarkable. But in performance and character blocking, it’s the perfect distillation of Reed and Sue, aka Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman, and it informs the heightened drama between them throughout First Steps. The prospect of having a baby both scares and excites the celebrity couple, with Sue elated and Reed prepared to infant-proof the world if he has to. As they share the news with Sue’s immature brother, Johnny (Joseph Quinn), and the couple’s best and oldest friend, gentle rock-giant Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), a passionate family portrait emerges, of trepidatious parents and bickering surrogate siblings, each preparing to add one more to the pack.
Apart from Ben’s appearance, an unfamiliar viewer might not realize there’s anything out of the ordinary about the family at first (eventually, Sue wields invisibility and force fields, Johnny spontaneously combusts, and Reed stretches like taffy). The film is intent on this character-first approach, so it reduces the family’s well-worn origin story — being hit by cosmic rays during a space mission — to an energetic montage, alongside ripped-from-the-comics highlights from their first few years as crimefighters. The retro-futuristic designs and the family’s diligent robot helper H.E.R.B.I.E. make the movie feel like an update to The Jetsons, emphasized all the more by flying cars in the distance and sleek, curved public screens on which a TV host (Mark Gatiss) gets viewers up to speed.
Amidst the congenial hubbub and brotherly banter, danger arises. Mysterious space transmissions intercepted on Earth by the family mean the unforeseen arrival of an otherworldly envoy. The melancholy, metallic Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) lights up the New York sky in flames, announcing the impending apocalypse courtesy of her master, known as Galactus (Ralph Ineson). Faced with this intergalactic threat, the team returns to outer space for the first time in years in order to track down the ancient villain — a skyscraper-sized, biomechanical demigod driven only by hunger — in the far corners of the cosmos. However, their plan to negotiate goes south when Galactus senses something special about Sue’s unborn son and will only spare Earth in exchange for the boy.
Thus begins the central philosophical dilemma of First Steps, one that forces the family to confront their roles as humanity’s saviors — and the people of Earth don’t take kindly to having their lives put at stake. As is the nature of classic superheroes, the Fantastic Four become tasked with solving an impossible conundrum.
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps is pure comic book adventure
The MCU has long featured the famous ethical dilemma known as the trolley problem, but here, Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben are hell-bent on finding a solution. This imbues them with the same good-natured soul as this summer’s Superman — another summer blockbuster that takes after comics’ 1960s “Silver Age,” when many of the medium’s kookiest concepts were born. It was also when Lee and Kirby first published The Fantastic Four, but First Steps‘ adherence to the decade is more than just about paying tribute.
The film’s era-appropriate designs are eye-popping — there are times you’ll wish director Matt Shakman lingered on each splendid detail for twice as long — but where the movie especially succeeds is in its echoes of the era’s Space Race optimism. The United States was, of course, engulfed in the Cold War (and in real wars), and the Civil Rights movement was hitting its peak. But the more utopian, integrated ’60s of First Steps has its eyes affixed to the stars, as people treat its space-faring scientists (and educators) as Earth’s ultimate heroes. Hints of grainy, archival film footage flash back to the team’s fateful venture past the stratosphere — they are this world’s first astronauts, hence the title — brief scenes in which the characters’ fear and excitement (and that of the world at large) radiate off the screen.
First Steps is a throwback not only to Marvel’s newly beloved mid-century décor and retro superheroes, but to an old-fashioned sense of adventure, told through broad emotional strokes and accompanied by composer Michael Giacchino’s bubbly, operatic score. And yet, First Steps is also distinctly futuristic and scientific, using more widely understood corners of the cosmos to create dazzling action moments. The gravity of a wormhole bends space lasers helter-skelter. The time dilation of a neutron star becomes a key part of an escape plan. And among all this cosmic chaos, Shakman centers trust and intimacy, as characters floating in zero gravity share vital moments of transformation.
In a cinematic universe of grounded villains with politically muddled motives, Ineson’s horned Galactus stands out as a truly Kirby-esque horror (by way of children’s building blocks). A being whose objective is to consume in order to survive, he’s elemental; a force of nature with no conscience. On the flip side of this equation is the morally earnest Fantastic Four, characters who strive to foster global cooperation in the vein of Ridley Scott’s feel-good space saga The Martian. Like in the aforementioned Superman reboot, the cast and characters of First Steps are an utter delight.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps cast is exceptional
You could pick any interaction between Fantastic Four members and it would tell you all you need to know about their history. And yet, First Steps doesn’t simply coast on these comic-inspired details. Rather, it builds plot through each character’s response to danger, between Johnny’s hotshot eagerness, Ben’s steadfast balance of kindness and no-nonsense enthusiasm, Reed’s pedantic consideration of every possible solution, and, perhaps most vitally, Sue’s fierce love, externalized as protective energy shields.
It’s been unfortunately characteristic for Sue, known as the Invisible Woman, to fade into the background of Fantastic Four stories or play second fiddle to her ambitious husband. However, Kirby — despite her ostentatious pantomime when using Sue’s powers — exudes vigilance and radiance, which becomes a major part of the story. Lofty speeches in superhero films are a dime a dozen, but it’s rare to see one that not only comes from a place of understanding but of uncertainty — during a vulnerable moment, Sue appeals to people’s better angels, as the public tears down her family.
Equally understanding, but in a much quieter way, is Moss-Bachrach’s Ben, the glue holding the family together in tough moments. Rather than cartoonish affectations, The Bear star opts to find the measured humanity within Ben through his voice performance. However, he also reserves an inner childishness for the character, revealing this in the moments Ben roughhouses with his more chaotic foil. Out to prove himself as more than just a dopey playboy, Quinn’s Johnny is mostly seen trying to live up to the examples set by his three elders, whether in his Ben-like assumption of responsibility, his Sue-like protectiveness, or his Reed-like problem solving, when deciphering messages from outer space — captured on golden records no less, à la the optimism of Voyager 1.
But the movie’s biggest strength — and arguably the defining ingredient of any great Fantastic Four story — is Reed. Pascal shapes Mr. Fantastic with obsessive cautiousness and a drive for logical altruism. The latter can verge on self-defeating, given how much of his probabilistic logic involves considering the most inhumane options (if only to later counter them). He’s a walking paradox, driven by his need to protect his loved ones but in a way that leaves his soul vulnerable — especially as the world debates sacrificing his own son. Reed is cursed with having to consider all aspects of this terrible philosophical dilemma, nuances projected not just through dialogue, but by letting capable actors (and real, old-fashioned movie stars) have fun with dramatic material.
The Reed-Sue dynamic sings as well, counter-balancing the film’s sense of worldwide camaraderie with interpersonal domestic drama that gets to the heart of both characters, and their respective drives of logic and love. As a couple, they are each other’s North Stars, so they’re never unattuned to each other’s perspectives, but the rising tensions during the plot are rooted in how they might meet in the middle. The film finds a magnificently moving answer by way of the quirks of language. Reed repeatedly uses a famous quote by Archimedes that denotes his scientific drive: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Meanwhile, Sue speaks similarly of “moving heaven and Earth” to protect those she loves. Where these two ideas collide — in their plot function, in the ferocity with which each character believes them, and in the actors’ conviction — is the kind of smart and incandescent crossroads of character, story, and theme that so few Hollywood studio products have strived for of late.
When First Steps inevitably reaches its noisy climax, occasionally losing its geographical compass while less-than-stellar effects take hold, what remains firmly affixed is its character-centric core and sense of wide-eyed adventure. The Fantastic Four will inevitably end up in a more drab version of their reality, when they’re forced to cross paths with the larger MCU, but for the moment, their self-contained relaunch is one of those rare miracles of superhero cinema that ensures both fidelity to enduring characters and the demands of big-screen spectacle for new audiences. The film strikes this balance without ever sacrificing the flawed humanity and the uncompromising heart that have long made Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben some of the most lovable fixtures in all-ages American fiction. First Steps is, in a word, fantastic.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens in theaters July 24.
