The Fantastic Four: First Steps review – From Silver Age to Silver Screen

The key words in the title The Fantastic Four: First Steps are those last two. First Steps. Because it needs to be noted upfront that despite all the marketing that has been trumpeting how this new superhero ensemble finally brings the Fantastic Four into the established Marvel Cinematic Universe(MCU), The Fantastic Four: First Steps doesn’t actually do that. Well, at least in the most obvious sense.

If you were expecting to see element-inspired heroes Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) rub shoulders with Avengers like Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and Anthony Mackie’s new Captain America, rein in those expectations now. In First Steps, the Fantastics aren’t even overtly manoeuvred into place by the end of the film to meet those champions in the next MCU entry. A door is opened to that eventuality, but it’s hardly a dramatic cliffhanger. No, First Steps is the very start of the process that is marrying Marvel’s First Family and the Avengers across the tangled Multiverse.

However, The Fantastic Four: First Steps has another important function to complete before all that: after three Fox Studios-made movies of varying quality, First Steps needs to reclaim and elevate its costumed quartet. They’re not just proto X-Men after all, living together, bickering and dealing with their insecurities in between saving the world. Why do the Fantastic Four matter? What do they stand for? How are they different from every other superhero squad?

First Steps sets out to answer all those questions, unlike the first two Fox movies, which adopted a more joking tone and distilled its characters down to hot headed, hottie and absent minded professor archetypes. As for the 2015 “gritty” reboot that reimagined the Four as tormented teenagers, the less said about that the better. First Steps, by contrast, goes out of its way to show that Mister Fantastic’s brain is his greatest power, not his elasticity; while Sue is a multi-skilled MVP far from fragile; and both Johnny and Grimm are competent, well-rounded figures instead of bratty man children captive to kneejerk emotional reactions.

It’s a strange coincidence that The Fantastic Four: First Steps releases two weeks apart from Superman, because both blockbusters adopt a similar approach to establishing the relevance and importance of their characters. In both cases, the films bypass an origin story to instead show heroes already a handful of years into their costumed, world-saving careers. Also, in both cases, the movies aren’t reluctant to draw on their comic book roots. Without embarrassment or wink-wink cynicism, they embrace the far-fetched, frequently cheesy antics seen on the page.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps goes even further in this regard than Superman, in the sense that it plops its characters down in a Silver Age setting instead of merely drawing inspiration from it. First Steps stands out from its MCU peers thanks to its retro-futuristic 1960s world, which mixes science fiction with recognisable real-world history. Forgetting for a second how this timeline choice naturally layers on nostalgic (and progressive) values of yesteryear – public trust in science, hopefulness, openness to collaboration, and selfless sacrifice for the greater good – First Steps is by far the most aesthetically distinct of the MCU movies. Filmmaker Matt Shakman, who directed every episode of WandaVision, maintains the same tight grip on both throwback stylings and timeless emotion as he did with the first live-action Marvel series.

It’s the emotion part that is really important to First Steps, granting the audience access to the characters’ inner workings that they’ve never had before. Pascal and Kirby have the most to do, and the most screen time, as Reed and Sue grapple with the relatable anxieties of parenthood; things they can’t control despite their immense power.

Complicating matters, and serving as the main narrative driver of the film, billions-year-old alien entity Galactus (Ralph Ineson) has announced his intention to devour Earth. This message is delivered by his herald, the enigmatic Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), who offers a solution: if Sue and Reed give Galactus their baby, the planet will be spared.

There’s a danger of overselling The Fantastic Four: First Steps. A waft of MCU “safeness” lingers in the air – despite the surprisingly raw and forceful work of Kirby especially – and chances are that a few days after viewing you won’t remember many of the plot details. The Silver Surfer’s motion-capture CGI also is oddly underwhelming. That said, sincerity goes a long way, and despite leaning into the cosmic science side of the Fantastic Four comics, the film never feels goofy in an eye-rolling sense. Galactus, a world-eating space god, is honestly a ridiculous concept on paper, but Shakman, Ineson and the rest of the team have translated the character perfectly for the screen, making Galactus an unstoppable, matter-of-fact force with undercurrents of tragedy.

There’s a scene in The Fantastic Four: First Steps where our heroes try to decipher the intentions of another character. Repeatedly, the word “warm” is used, and that’s the powerful feeling at the heart of First Steps. Even Natasha Lyonne, who has a small role in the film as Grimm’s love interest, casts aside her smart-mouth screen image, to instead appear convincingly kind-hearted and welcoming. And that’s the impression given off by First Steps overall, with its self-contained universe that calls to mind The Incredibles in multiple ways.

Of course, soon enough, the Fantastic Four will need to enter fish-out-of-water mode and appear in the meaner, snarkier world that houses the Avengers, and closely parallels our reality. Until then, though, you can enjoy a reprieve with a piece of colourful escapism that refreshingly doesn’t require an encyclopaediac knowledge of the MCU, and hearkens back to a yesteryear rich in potential for human advancement, paired with a commitment to achieving that vision. Plus, it looks fantastic!

The Fantastic Four: First Steps in screening exclusively in cinemas, including IMAX, from 25 July.