The Fantastic Four: A Vintage Vision of Tomorrow

Marvel’s latest comic book adaptation is a visual delight, a glossy, big-screen throwback to the superhero team’s earlier days. The Fantastic Four: First Steps has top-notch performances across the board (particularly from Pedro Pascal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and it lives very much in the spirit of the go-big-or-go-home aesthetic of the 1960s-era adventures that inspired it. It also fails to wring the tension out of its story in a way that might make it stick with you. For all its charm, there’s never quite enough at stake to make this a truly thrilling, exciting ride.

Producer Kevin Feige said of the film, “This is Marvel’s first ‘no-homework-required’ movie in a while,” and it is. In the days when you need a decade of Marvel movies to fully understand what a crossover plot entails, it’s fun to see a Marvel flick that won’t punish you for not knowing who Galactus is or whether he appeared in any previous movies or spin-offs, or cameos, or what’s going on with the multiverse. For this entry, Marvel director Glenn Close has written a story that reintroduces Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm with none of the tricky continuity that bedeviled past attempts at putting them on screen. First Steps is simple, and it’s okay to be simple, but sometimes it’s too simple.

We get some exposition through a talk show with Mark Gatiss, who can more or less read us all the way up to the heroes’ present condition, which has already been covered in trailers. Four years ago, a space mission to the edge of the galaxy left these four exposed to radiation that mutated their DNA. Reed (a wise and often wry Pedro Pascal) can stretch his body as if it were made of taffy. Vanessa Kirby’s Sue can phase through solid objects and blast repulsor shields from her hands. Joseph Quinn’s Johnny becomes the Human Torch, with the ability to set himself ablaze and fly. And Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm has been transformed into The Thing—an eight-foot-tall rock golem with super-strength.

The four live together in what looks like a compound lifted straight from mid-century modern kitsch—equipped with a flying car and chalkboard full of equations, decorated with retro rocket ships, and serviced by a toddler-sized robot butler named H.E.R.B.I.E. The world of First Steps is a pure vintage vision of the future, populated with square television screens and no cell phones, and an optimistic but borderline cartoony design sensibility. It’s The Jetsons crossed with Lost in Space with a dash of Marvel comics.

The visual style is a delight, but the movie doesn’t have much urgency to it. Family is the movie’s main theme, and not just because Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben all spend the majority of the film together. Sue is pregnant, which we learn early in the movie, and Reed’s initial response is both cute and relatable. At one point, he has H.E.R.B.I.E. detail both their house and lab with an entire checklist of babyproofing upgrades. Johnny and Ben don’t have Reed’s cerebral approach to problems, but their fraternal banter is good-natured and fits well with the family vibe. Plus, both of them are psyched for the possibility of being uncles.

Of course, they can’t just have this family moment before another giant purple/gold cosmic leviathan heads for Earth and threatens to eat it. Galactus, a towering figure in green armor and glowing eyes, has decided the planet is up next for its food supply, but first, it sends a herald out to make the announcement: a silver-skinned figure played by Julia Garner in motion-capture mode. The Silver Surfer arrives in a gleaming surfboard of doom, but she’s also a source of wonder (and distraction, and eventually, lust) for Johnny.

The visual action is on the tame side, considering all the space flying we do and the energy bolts zinging around in the battle scenes. Galactus and the Surfer both feel stitched out of the same retro comic book aesthetic. Galactus is a fist-pumping alien demigod, but his motivations and dialogue also seem cribbed from the sort of hammer-wielding mutant who used to stride through Marvel’s pages bellowing. The Silver Surfer moves with a smug cool, but the biggest difference between her and Galactus is that she’s hot. The action climax, in which the heroes follow Galactus into space while also being pelted by the Silver Surfer’s attacks, comes complete with stop-motion-looking bolts of light, tracer fire, floating fireballs, and cartoonish mushroom clouds.

The biggest set piece of the film comes when Sue goes into labor mid-mission. It’s a head-scratcher to imagine anyone working under that level of distress and exertion, but also just about the coolest thing ever when you see it play out on screen. It’s a combo we don’t often get to see in action flicks: the imminent death of the planet coupled with the imminent birth of a new human life.

The combo is also emblematic of the sincerity-and-silliness of the film’s overall tone. Some moments genuinely land, but they also don’t land hard enough. The stakes are never really high, even when Earth itself is on the line. It all has the feel of a children’s adventure story, not a superhero blockbuster.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is charming, polished, and well-acted—but it lacks the kind of dramatic and emotional heft that has elevated the Marvel movie brand over the last decade and a half. It is accessible, nostalgic, and heartfelt—but also surprisingly light on thrill. First Steps will be just right for the Marvel fan who is looking for something wistful and whimsical instead of world-ending. But for someone looking for more action/adventure punch, First Steps will feel like an empty box wrapped up in festive colors.