MOVIE REVIEW: The Fantastic Four: First Steps – a Fantastic adaptation of a classic superhero story

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SDCC COVERAGE SPONSORED BY MAD CAVE

While Superman had the weight of what seemed to be the whole movie world on its shoulders, The Fantastic Four: First Steps has smaller but equally heavy burdens, with Marvel in what could be considered a down period despite films grossing hundreds of millions of dollars.

When the standard is a billion dollars, global grossing final tallies making under half a billion just can’t do it, it seems. Not only that, the long-awaited Fantastic Four film has had fans chomping at the bit ever since Disney acquired 20^th Century Fox six years ago.

Marvel’s first family has struggled on the big screen for decades, even after two decent family-focused films from the mid-2000s starring a pre-Captain America Chris Evans as the Human Torch. Those two never scratched the right itch at a time when Spider-Man from Sony Pictures and X-Men, also from Fox, were lighting up the box office records. They tried again with 2015’s Fantastic Four (also known as Fant-four-stic due to its unusual title treatment). Still, terrible production drama and excessive studio involvement ultimately led to the franchise being essentially killed until now.

Now, after many starts, Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios can finally debut the team that launched the Marvel Age sixty years ago, featuring a retro-futuristic period look and a star-studded main cast. Let’s see what they got. Can Marvel’s First Family usher in a new Marvel Age for the cinema?

Julia Garner as Shalla-Bal/Silver Surfer

Our movie opens on Earth-828, where The Fantastic Four have been the world’s greatest and only superheroes for four years after their fateful rocket trip into space and being bombarded by cosmic rays. They are fully ingratiated into the culture, with their home base in the center of Manhattan—a massive tower featuring a giant four at the top, straight out of the comics. As seen in the previews, Reed and Sue are now expecting their first child. During her pregnancy, the Earth is visited by a silver alien being who tells them that their world is doomed to be devoured by Galactus. The Fantastic Four must then figure out just what Galactus is and how to save the world, as everyone has their hopes pinned on the team to save them from this massive alien threat.

This film, unlike many other MCU films, is adapting Fantastic Four #48 through #50 from the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby run on the title. The Coming of Galactus is one of the most important stories in the superhero drama. What director Matt Shakman and writers Josh Friedman and Eric Pearson do here with adapting it is focus on the family relationship of our four heroes: seeing these characters deal with such a joyous time as welcoming a new member into their family while also trying to prevent the end of the world at the same time.

Pedro Pascal plays Reed Richards as a man with the entire weight of the world on his shoulders. Reed is always thinking and dealing with what possibilities he sees, but this is one problem he’s having trouble figuring out. Pascal easily brings the right tone and emotion as Reed. He’s an affable husband and a comforting leader. Yet he’s not an arrogant genius; he still feels guilty about the space flight, and that weighs on him, as evident in Pascal’s very emotive face, which we’ve seen in so many other films and television shows. His chemistry with Vanessa Kirby works as she plays Susan Storm – the Invisible Woman. In some scenes, she’s as much the leader as Reed is. Kirby’s Susan is a very confident woman and is portrayed as the most powerful member of the group, as well as its best public representative. She’s not marginalized, unlike in previous films, and there are no random nosebleeds. The film also excels at displaying her powers and how she utilizes them, beyond just creating bubbles and disappearing.

Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic and Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios' THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS

Joseph Quinn‘s Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, is light and gives just the right amount of comedy. It never takes away from the stakes of what they are all facing. The film does well to give him a strong arc here and something to do that is not just being a hotshot. They all bring something to the table, and Johnny is smart here, too, as he gets the real interaction with the Silver Surfer played by Julia Garner. For me, there were moments when it felt like they took the Alicia Masters/Surfer interaction and combined it with the comic relationship between Frankie Raye, another herald of Galactus, in how this relationship works out in this story.

Garner is good as Surfer, here taking the Shalla-Bal character and giving her the burden of finding planets for her master to consume. Then there is Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm – The Thing. This might be one of the most perfect realizations of a Marvel character I’ve seen in one of these movies–lovable, sad eyes and man of the people. They take the character and draw connections to the fact that this character is most closely tied to Jack Kirby himself, with his time in the neighborhood and elements that relate to his backstory portrayed in the film. While the whole film is more of a love letter to Kirby than Stan Lee, it’s most apparent in The Thing, especially with the character played by Natasha Lyonne.

I have to say that, for me, the most impressive thing about watching this film is Galactus himself. This is what many fans have wanted to see: seeing him in his ship and watching him walk through Manhattan with all his comic-accurate outfit on. It was beautiful to see, and Ralph Ineson does very well to bring about the gravitas of the role – the hunger and never-ending pain of his existence. The use of practical effects here also helps show the scale of the threat. Having a guy in a suit walk through a little model city is still the most effective. The VFX team deserves a lot of kudos as the film’s effects look great, from the technology of Manhattan through space travel and the big set pieces. Each thing looks great and real. Having the film look like a period piece also adds to the believability and authenticity of the movie. This is the “FF in the ’60s” movie fans have been throwing around for years. It even uses the old ABC network logos in the film.

Galactus looking at the Statue of Liberty

The Fantastic Four: First Steps will be talked about like it’s a return to form and blah blah blah, which many critics, even I, have used before. What really works with this film, just like with Superman a few weeks ago, is a sense of hopefulness, a belief in heroism, and actually feeling like it’s adapting the source material. It’s something that the MCU has struggled with lately, as they may have taken the wrong lessons from Guardians of the Galaxy, which is about taking the characters away from the source material too much. Here we have The Fantastic Four film, which many people have dreamed of seeing for decades, and I’m happy that I was able to experience it.