The Fantastic Four: First Steps

In “Fantastic Four: First Steps,” set against a vibrant 1960s-inspired retro-futuristic world, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm—known as Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and The Thing—face their greatest challenge yet. As a tight-knit family with extraordinary powers, they must defend Earth from the planet-devouring Galactus and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer. The stakes become deeply personal when Galactus threatens their newborn child, forcing the team to balance their heroic duties with their familial bonds to save both their family and the world.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps Review:

Marvel’s first family has had a rocky cinematic journey, to say the least. 2005’s attempt was met with mixed reviews and, quite frankly, succeeded almost entirely thanks to Chris Evans’ fun portrayal of Johnny Storm and Jessica Alba’s Jessica Alba-ness. Objectively, it was a mediocre film, and its sequel was inarguably a mess. A decade later, the dark and brooding patchworked narrative nightmare that was then up-and-coming director Josh Trank’s undoing would shelve the quartet for another ten years.

                   

In a score spanning cinematic landscape that consists almost entirely of overmined legacy IPs that once brought joy but now evoke groans of disappointment to the masses, one could be excused for assuming that The Fantastic Four: First Steps would be another muddled misfire. I know that I did. But, surprise of surprises, we were both wrong. Oh, the movie is most definitely muddled, but it manages to mostly hold things together through its vibrant and hopeful tone, as well as one of, if not the best, and most unified and likable MCU ensembles.

Like Jules Winnfield once said, “personality goes a long way.” The Fantastic Four: First Steps might not be the proverbial pig of which that particular Samuel L. Jackson character was speaking, but it is far from perfect, and its ensemble is what holds it together despite its warts. Unlike a lot of recent MCU projects, this film’s core cast is a vastly more cohesive team `than we’ve ever seen in the MCU, one that deeply loves one another. That three-fourths of the team is an actual family rather than one of modern Hollywood’s Frankenstein-like, self-built monstrosities that they keep trying to push as the moral equivalent of a genuine family is no small factor in the film’s success. It “feels” right, because it is right, and what is a movie if not a vehicle for manufacturing feelings?

Likewise, unlike any other film in the MCU, this core cast respects one another. When Johnny ribs Ben or Reed, it’s not to denigrate and lacks the Whedon-esque sarcasm that has marked every Marvel film since the first Avengers. In fact, this film is a near-complete departure from the Whedonisms that began as charming but have become grating over the years. Emotional throughlines aren’t interrupted every few minutes with tone-deaf tension-deflating quips, and characters don’t spend 90% of the runtime sniping at one another like middle school children. For a fairly comic bookie film that isn’t trying to be Nolan’s Batman, it’s relatively tonally mature, and the team’s dynamic is the lynchpin that holds together its rather messy and rushed plot.

Undeniably, The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ first act is strong, if you can forgive its overreliance on expositional tropes like news programs that deliver years’ worth of backstory in minutes. But what it does right is to firmly establish, not only the team dynamic, but just as importantly, this film’s reality as being apart from the rest of the MCU. It’s a terrific decision that eases the tension of not having seen every second of the hundreds of hours of theatrical and streaming content that now burdens every other piece of Marvel cinematic product. It’s a fresh start that even novice audiences can enjoy.

The strength of its first act is vitally important because by the time The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ second act rolls around, the evidence of rumored extensive last-minute reshoots (as recent as May of this year) pretty quickly rears its head. Notably, there is a scene in which Johnny and Reed are talking with one another, and when Johnny’s back is to the camera, it’s clear that Joseph Quinn, who plays The Human Torch, was saying something much different than the ADR that we hear. Like old and poorly dubbed Godzilla movies, his jaw movements are entirely out of whack with the lines heard. From there, everything begins to feel rushed and uncomfortably stitched together.

The much-talked-about chick Silver Surfer is nothing more than a plot device that any number of cinematic tricks could have replaced, and Galactus, while blessedly no longer a space fart, is reduced solely to justifying the plot’s ticking clock. Nearly every conflict is almost comically solved with ease via Reed’s character becoming a contrivance fabrication machine (think Tony solving time travel in minutes in Endgame,  meets Tony Stark’s magic fabrication device in No Way Home).

The various dropped arcs and patched-together story almost entirely neuter First Steps’ pacing, giving the audience only a vague sense of how long the super team has or needs to prepare for Galactus. We know that he’s coming and that there’s not a lot of time, but little more. For example, it takes the giant planet-eating entity a mere month (it might have been up to four) to travel thousands of light years from whence he is introduced to our solar system. Yet, it takes him hours, days, or weeks (it’s impossible to tell) to travel the distance from the moon to Earth (it took the Apollo 11 team three days). This disjointed timeline, along with Reed’s ease at problem-solving, undermines the sense of anticipation and impending doom that the film was aiming for.

It is worth mentioning that the film’s digital effects are somewhat inconsistent. While it does a pretty good job of displaying the team’s powers, Johnny, when fully engulfed, rarely feels real. However, although there was much online hullabaloo over the Silver Surfer’s appearance when she was first shown in the trailers, it either translates better on the big screen or the FXs team touched her up, because she looks fine. That said, Galactus’s comic-accurate design notwithstanding, he looks like utter trash in every scene. There’s not one moment in which he doesn’t appear to be a digital cartoon. Likewise, Reed and Sue’s baby was barfed up by the Uncanny Valley. Even the American Sniper baby raised its anamatronic eyebrows at Franklin Richards.

Were it not for the primal feelings of ownership that they established early on and a load of goodwill earned from its first act, there’d be little reason for the audience to be invested in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and it’d be just another forgettable Marvel mistep. Happily, the filmmakers get enough right that this doesn’t happen. Its sleek and fun aesthetic, lovable characters, and generally positive vibe hold it together. It’s not quite good enough for us to formally endorse it as Worth it, but I liked it and think that most of you will as well.

Role Models:

Flame On?

• It’s been a while since we’ve added this section to a review, and I certainly didn’t think that Fantastic Four: First Steps was going to change that, but here we are.
  • Johnny is a smart and hardworking man who knows when it’s time to play and when it’s time to get down to business. He’s a good friend and a loving brother, and he never once hesitates to do the right thing, even when that right thing might mean his death. This Johnny might not be as much fun as Chris Evans’ take on the character twenty years ago, but he’s a much better man than that one.

Suzy Homemaker

• Sue is a loving and supportive wife who doesn’t belittle her husband and has his back (with the exception of one brief and clunky scene that more or less fizzles out).
  • She’s also a devoted mother who sees her child as her child from the moment that she learns about his conception, and she cannot be dissuaded from choosing life even if it means her death.

WOKE REPORT

Silver Elephant In The Room

• Let’s get this out of the way. Every iteration of the Silver Surfer has been male, except for one instance on a few pages in an obscure comic issue depicting an alternate reality only ever seen on these particular pages. Knowing this, it’s difficult to argue that the otherwise male-heavy First Steps cast wasn’t artificially “evened out” based on the filmmakers’ misguided sense of social justice. However, despite the wokeism that went into the casting decision, we didn’t mark down the Woke-O-Meter for Shalla Bal (aka Silver Surfer) as much as some might have expected for a number of reasons.
  • First: While the behind-the-scenes decision to make Silver Surfer a woman in this movie was undoubtedly woke, there’s nothing inherently woke about it in the film itself. Shalla Bal isn’t a cosmic Rosie the Riveter sent to teach Earth’s men that women can be powerful too, or an unstoppable girl boss who degrades her male co-stars at every turn.
  • Second: The filmmakers go far and above to establish that this is an alternate reality from the prime MCU that we’ve been watching for almost 20 years. In fact, this film’s reality is unique to this film and appears in no other medium or iteration. This means that this Shalla Bal is technically not a gender-swapped character, but rather a quasi-original version created solely for this film.
  • Third: She’s barely in the movie. Even if we were to score our Woke-O-Meter according to the percentage of screentime that she has, it wouldn’t be more than 12%, and probably less. I would estimate her total screentime to be ten minutes or less, which accounts for 8.7% of the film.
  • Fourth: She has hardly any impact on the film. She’s a plot device and a MacGuffin, nothing more. Her entire character could have been replaced with a trip line and a line or two of dialogue delivered by nearly anyone else.
  • Finally: Her being female actually marginally enhances the film by providing Johnny and her with a bit of interplay. It wasn’t developed enough to have added much dimension, but it was fractionally interesting.

They Lied to Her. She’s the Support Staff

• If you’ve listened to Vanessa Kirby at all leading up to the film’s release, it’d be more than understandable if you assumed she was the team’s leader. She’s not at all. Reed is in the driver’s seat for the entire film. She gets a couple of bones tossed to her in the form of a short sequence or two when it seems contextually unnatural for her to take the lead in an interview and answer a question better addressed by Reed. While she certainly isn’t a wallflower, she’s clearly the second in command.
  • The chatter about her role in the group seems to have originated from ego-soothing conversations between the director, writers, and Kirby while on set. “No, really, you’re the group’s leader. Where would Reed be without you?” That kind of stuff. Because it is not in the film.
    • Admittedly, Reed is marginally on his heels emotionally in this film because he’s going to be a father for the first time. He has a father’s everyday concerns as well as some pretty significant ones about the health status of his son. So we don’t get the uber-confident Reed shown in some of the backstory exposition. Still, rather than take over for him, Sue supports him and bolsters his confidence (except for one short and poorly written scene meant to raise the tension but goes nowhere).
    • I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that they do attempt to portray Sue as a little more emotionally stable than Reed, as she regularly tries to allay his fears about the baby and… you know… saving the world, but I believe it’s a failed attempt. To me, as someone who’s been a first-time, second-time, third-time, and more father, it seemed as though she was optimistic through willful ignorance rather than through any special knowledge, and, while good feelings are pleasant to have, Reed’s concerns were logical, reasonable, and more than justified. She only had to be concerned with protecting her baby, while he was responsible for the fate of the entire planet, as well as her and the baby.

A Reed that Bends

• Those who have been rightly turned off by Pedro Pascal’s recent slew of beta male characters, especially his sad and broken Joel, may understandably be turned off by this emotionally subdued Reed. However, unlike Joel, who is useless and brutally disposed of, Reed may be riddled with concerns throughout the film, but he never lets them stop him. It actually gives his character some dimension and an identifiable story arc, whereas the rest of the team are pleasant but essentially two-dimensional.

Pro-Life Imagery

• So far, this WOKE REPORT list has been mostly about what’s surprisingly not woke about Fantastic Four: First Steps, and I’m going to continue with that trend. Here’s one that moved the Woke-O-Meter’s needle toward ‘BASED.’
  • There’s some really poignant pro-life imagery in the film as
    Spoiler

    Sue turns her stomach invisible to show her husband the baby growing inside, and we see a significantly developed fetus who they repeatedly refer to as their “baby” and their “son.”
    • A large portion of the film centers on the inherent value of Reed and Sue’s unborn child.
    • In one scene, Johnny tacitly makes the point that Sue had complete agency when making the choices that led to her pregnancy, instead of treating it as something that happened to her.
    • Everyone, and I mean everyone, is thrilled about the pregnancy.
    • They not only choose life in the film, they fight for the life of their unborn child.