Everything that’s wrong with The Fantastic Four: First Steps — and the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) project — is present in the title.
My friend with whom I saw the film said that the MCU is one of the great artistic achievements of Western civilization. Honestly, he has a point. As popular entertainment, it is an unprecedented juggernaut. Eleven out of the top 50 highest-grossing films of all time are MCU products. Avengers: Endgame is responsible for the single biggest day at the box office of all time, and the reason why 2019 was the biggest box office year in the history of the medium. But money isn’t everything. Out of the 37(!) films produced by Kevin Feige’s unit, many of them have been well-made and entertaining: the original Iron Man, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and of course Black Panther. One in five is not a hit ratio to be sneezed at.
But the biggest problem with the MCU is that it has become a conveyor belt of mediocrity. How many times have I written the same review, with different names? “It’s not terrible, just uninspiring and unnecessary.” Furthermore, the sheer volume of underwhelming product has become overwhelming. Notice I didn’t mention the TV series made to bolster Disney+. Way too often, you have to belly up to the streaming slop trough to even make sense of a new Marvel theatrical release. This entertainment is starting to feel like work.
The Fantastic Four were the result of the first collaboration of Marvel honcho Stan Lee and comic art legend Jack Kirby. In 1961, they were instructed to make a super-team after the Justice League became a hit for DC comics. In the midst of the first Space Race, they decided on a group of astronauts who developed superpowers after being exposed to cosmic rays while on a mission. They also decided that their team would be a literal family. Science genius Reed Richards became Mister Fantastic, who had Plastic Man’s power of extreme stretchiness, which gave Kirby a chance to show off his flowing line work. Richards’ girlfriend and eventual wife Sue Storm became the Invisible Woman. Her brother Johnny became the Human Torch. Richards’ college roommate Ben Grimm grew a rocklike skin as The Thing. The Fantastic Four were an instant hit on the comic rack and inspired one of the first Marvel-related screen adaptations when Hanna-Barbera made an animated show for ABC in 1968. When Marvel fell on hard times, the Four’s film rights were sold along with X-Men and Spider-Man, eventually landing with 20th Century Fox, who tried three times to make a decent film and failed each time.
Now, with the Marvel first family back in the fold, the MCU gets a crack at it. Casting has always been the MCU’s biggest strength, and this is no exception. America’s hot uncle Pedro Pascal stars as Mister Fantastic, and from the get-go, he embodies Richards’ Big Dad Energy. Vanessa Kirby plays Sue Storm, who discovers early on that she is pregnant. The Human Torch is Joseph Quinn, who is adequate but never rises to the level of Chris Evans’ cocky portrayal in the Sony FF movies. Ebon Moss-Bachrach of The Bear fame portrays Ben Grimm as a pile of granite with a taste for cozy sweaters.
The move that makes this Fantastic Four flick better than its predecessors is the decision to make it a 1960s period piece — or rather, setting it in the alternate dimension of Earth 828, which remains stuck in the Atom-punk retro-futuristic world of the Kennedy administration. The production design is the best part of this Fantastic Four because it hews close to Kirby’s original vision. (One of the most baffling choices in the MCU was taking the Eternals, which was Kirby’s most psychedelic creation, and handing it to neorealist director Chloé Zhao, who sucked all the life out of it by trying to give space gods humanistic motivations.)
The origin story is left to a series of flashbacks that hint at the family’s wilder adventures, including defeating and making peace with the Mole Man (Paul Walter Hauser). The Four go about their daily lives as celebrity heroes. Richards has a TV show where he teaches kids about science. Storm is a diplomat who’s almost implemented world peace. Grimm’s got a crush on a Jewish schoolteacher named Rachel (Natasha Lyonne, getting paid). Johnny Storm is trying to get Richards to return to astronauting by tracking a series of mysterious signals from deep space. Things are going pretty swimmingly until a mysterious alien shows up on what appears to be a surf board. The Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) lands in Times Square and announces to planet Earth that their master Galactus (Ralph Ineson) is on the way to eat it.
Since Earth 828 has faster-than-light spaceships but no 4K video, Richards and the crew suit up to go negotiate with Galactus, hoping to save the planet. Perhaps he could snack on Uranus instead? Needless to say, the negotiation goes nowhere. More accurately, it goes to a collapsing neutron star’s accretion disk, where Richards must calculate an escape trajectory that will shake the Surfer while also helping Sue Storm give birth to their child, Franklin. Galactus offers to spare Earth in exchange for Franklin, who he claims has cosmic powers, but Richards says no dice. This causes some awkward moments when the rest of Earth’s population find out.
Director Matt Shakman does a lot right, but his film feels like less than the sum of its parts. The adventures of these beloved characters trying to save the planet feel weightless and flat. It’s all right there in the title, First Steps. You know this is an incomplete story, and that there will be no consequences. While not as weighed-down by lore as many of the Marvel movies, it still can’t escape the gravitational pull of cross-promotion. The point is not excitement or catharsis; it’s addiction. It only exists to oblige you to seek out more of the same. This is not art; it’s just skillful brand management. You, the audience, deserve better.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
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