The Fantastic Four: First Steps
The fifth time's the charm? With the exception of The Incredibles, Hollywood has had a pretty bad record adapting a good Fantastic Four to film. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is easily the best attempt (even if the bar is ridiculously low). The first thing director Matt Shakman, writers Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, and Jeff Kaplan, and producer Kevin Feige get right is capturing the proper setting for a film as we open a world set in the kind of 60s futurism that spawned the original comic book. From its opening moments to its closing credits we believe this is a world where the Fantastic Four could thrive, where a robot like H.E.R.B.I.E. would help babyproof the Baxter Building, where you could see the Fantasticar pass by, and where the fate of the world would rely on a family coming together to save the day. A strong argument could be made that the look of the film is its unsung hero.
Forgoing the origin story (which gets mentioned here and there in clips and narration from everyone's favorite late-night program) we jump in with the Fantastic Four already firmly established as the world's greatest heroes about to embark on two epic adventures. One involves the pregnancy of Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) and the other involves the arrival of the notably never named Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) teasing the arrival of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), the devourer of worlds. The two plots tie together as the group works frantically to save the planet.
I have a couple of complaints with the film including the lack of effort to tie it into the larger MCU (which is notable seeing as currently Marvel has no films scheduled prior to the release of Avengers: Doomsday which is still 17 months away likely forcing that film to do quite a bit of narrative lifting) and the other is the notable choice to make all four members of the team scientists. That make sense for Reed (Pedro Pascal), and I'm will to stretch credibility for Sue. Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is the pilot of the group so I'll let that pass, but it's incredibly hard for me to accept the idea of Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) as a scientist (especially as a big plot point relies on that choice).
If Johnny is the weak link for me, in attempting to merge the classic Johnny Storm character with a more grounded scientist, the rest of the core cast all fare better. All versions of the group have done a fair job in their creation of the Thing, but this is the first one that really plays on the idea of having Ben constantly dressed in clothes over bulk and taking notable steps to remain as human as possible (such as being the group's chef). And Pascal and Kirby work well together even if the script, at times, seems to struggle with deciding how smart Reed should be from scene to scene (although small distractions like fatherhood and the end of days could be weighing on his mind). While they don't have lightning chemistry, there's enough on-screen to believe these two would build a life together.
As for our villains, who are looming threats but spend marginal time on-screen, Julia Garner works fine as the cosmically-imbued Shalla-Bal who is forced to consider where her actions to save her own planet have led her. My only real complaint on the gender-swap that cuts Norrin Radd out of the film is the design keeping her hair which never looks right no matter how cool she looks surfing through plasma or fire. As for Galactus, the CGI space monster looks terrific and gets the chance to play a little kaiju in his eventual arrival to New York. And, like Godzilla, he's presented more as a force of nature as the film chooses not to bog itself down in explaining his backstory.
In terms of ranking the film, it's not peak Marvel but it's really good. I'm not sure if my nagging issues with Johnny would bother me more or less on a second viewing, but it's not enough to get in the way of my overall enjoyment of the film. I still have a number of questions about how exactly this film ties in with the end of Thunderbolts (or the rest of the MCU), and could have done without the mid-credit tease given the film's outright refusal to build to it, but all that said it's a close to fantastic as this group has gotten to be on the big screen.
Watch the trailer- Title: The Fantastic Four: First Steps
- IMDb: link
