Josh Reviews The Fantastic Four: First Steps

I could hardly dare to dream that this summer we might get a great Superman movie AND a great Fantastic Four movie, and yet… here we are!

After the never-formally-released Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie from 1994 (click here for my review of the fun documentary Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four), Tim Story’s two disappointing FF movies for Fox from 2005 & 2007 (which do have some good moments, but overall I thought they were both pretty bad), and the disastrous 2015 reboot directed by Josh Trank, it seemed for a long while that a great version of the Fantastic Four on screen was never going to happen.  This made me sad, because I love the Fantastic Four!  The FF was the very first superhero comic that I followed monthly.  (I started reading around the time of Steve Engelhart’s run on the title and the “new” FF after Reed and Sue retired to raise young Franklin.  I still consider this a kick-ass era of FF comics, and I wrote about it at length here.)  I haven’t read every FF comic from the past four decades, but I have read a heck of a lot of them, and they remain one of my all-time favorite super-heroes.  I have longed for a great FF movie.  When Marvel bought back the rights to the characters that had been previously controlled by Fox, I started to dream that maybe there was hope.

And huzzah!  Fantastic Four: First Steps is not only easily the best Fantastic Four movie (that’s a low bar), it’s a great movie!  It’s incredible that Superman and Fantastic Four were released within a few weeks of one another, and both found a way to do what so many previous versions of these characters had bungled: getting back to a pure, good, wholesome version of these characters in a movie that also felt fun and modern.  (I’m going to try to keep this review focused on The Fantastic Four and not keep talking about Superman, but it really is wild that these two movies, that have such striking similarities in terms of approach, were released so close to one another.)

I love that this Fantastic Four movie is completely stand-alone.  There’s not a whit of homework required; you don’t have to have seen or remembered any other Marvel movies, because they’ve made the very smart choice to set this film in an entirely different universe.

I adore the retro-futuristic world in which this story is set!  It’s a world with one foot still in the sixties, while also having been made into a futuristic world of tomorrow by the impact of Reed Richard’s retro-futuristic technology.  It’s amazing.  I absolutely adore the design of this world, brought to gorgeous life by the film’s incredible production team and visual effects.  The sets, the props, the costumes are all amazing, and these people should win lots of Oscars.  I love the look of this world’s Times Square, with huge TV screens that loot like sixties-style televisions.  I love the look of the Baxter Building.  I love seeing the Fantasti-Car, which looks absolutely perfect.  I can’t believe how great H.E.R.B.I.E. is, as a retro-futuristic robot.  (More on H.E.R.B.I.E. later!)

I love the humanistic, hopeful tone of the film.  I love that these are characters who are GOOD, who believe in doing the right thing and who stick to that belief even when things get tough.

I wasn’t sure about the casting when the main ensemble was first announced, but in the film all four of the main foursome are spot-on.  Let’s start with Pedro Pascal, who is the most divergent from the look and feel of Reed Richards from the comic books.  Could sexy Pedro Pascal really play the absent-minded professor that is Reed?  The answer is yes!  I really love Mr. Pascal’s version of Reed.  I believe in this Reed’s intelligence and also his aloofness and occasional coldness; while at the same time, Mr. Pascal makes him fun even in his nerdiness, and he keeps the character grounded as a real human being who desperately loves his family.  The scene in which Reed looks at his son and admits that he’s always felt something was wrong with himself is a killer scene, beautifully written, and perfectly played by Mr. Pascal.  That scene totally cemented this Reed Richards for me.

I also wasn’t quite sure about Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm.  I’ve loved Ms. Kirby’s work on screen, but could she play the sweet, kind-hearted Sue?  Turns out the answer is absolutely yes.  I love that Sue feels like the main character in this story, and I love that, in the end, it’s clear she’s the most powerful member of the team.  (Growing up reading John Byrne’s run on the FF from the eighties, that was always Mr. Byrne’s approach, and so this has always felt to me like the most correct depiction of Sue.)  I love how, right from the beginning, they depict Sue as the real leader of the team — she’s the one forging alliances between nations.  It’s a cool choice to start the film with Sue’s learning she’s pregnant, and taking us through the birth of Franklin.  (I love that, as was the case in Superman, this film doesn’t waste time retelling the familiar origin of these characters but instead drops us in media res, several years after these characters have been on the scene!)  Ms. Kirby anchors some of the most memorable moments in the film.  (Wowsers that zero-g birth scene is bonkers!)

I had high hopes for Ebon Moss-Bachrach (who quickly became my favorite performer on The Bear) as Ben Grimm, and my high hopes were exceeded.  Mr. Moss-Bachrach is absolutely perfect as Ben!!  I love how gentle his Ben is; how kind and sensitive.  I love that it’s Ben who first realizes that Sue is pregnant.  I love that we get to see Ben hanging out on Yancy Street (his home as a kid; modeled after the Jewish neighborhood around Delancey Street in New York City).  I love that this film acknowledges Ben Grimm’s Judaism (and it’s exciting to have a Jewish actor finally playing the character).  I love the perfect design of Ben’s rocky form.  Finally we have a movie version of The Thing that actually looks like The Thing is supposed to look!  The shape of his head, and his brow… perfect!!  Amazing!!  That made me so happy.  I also loved that this Ben is usually wearing clothes, even in his rocky form.  That looks great.  (And I was particularly happy we got The Thing’s classic hart & trench-coat look in one scene.)  I’m glad that they did pause to show us a few moments of Ben’s mourning his lost humanity, but also that this Ben seems at peace and isn’t sulking the whole movie.  I thought the look of Ben with a beard was cool (though I wish they hadn’t stuck with that for the whole end of the movie.  It doesn’t frankly make any sense to me that The Thing can grow a beard.  He has no hair!!  He’s not shaving his head every morning!!)

Joseph Quinn (who made such an impact as Eddie Munson on Stranger Things season four) is terrific as Johnny Storm.  We get a sense of Johnny’s impetuousness, but the movie doesn’t make Johnny too much of a kid or an idiot.  I loved the way the movie captured Johnny & Ben’s sibling rivalry and banter, and I loved the way Johnny’s relationship with the Silver Surfer played out.  (Seeing this storyline made me understand the decision to gender-swap the Surfer.)  I like that Johnny got to be the one to make the pivotal discovery of understanding the Surfer’s alien language.  (It’s nice how the movie gives all four characters moments to shine and to be important to their ultimately saving the day.)

Doug Jones & Laurence Fishburne’s work as the Silver Surfer in 2005’s Rise of the Silver Surfer was the best aspect of that film, so going into this new movie I thought that’d be tough to top.  And I was disappointed at first that the Surfer in the MCU wouldn’t be the “real” Norrin Radd Silver Surfer but rather this Shalla-Bal version.  But this movie won me over to this version of the character.  I liked her look, and I thought Julia Garner did a great job bringing her to life.  She was satisfyingly otherworldly.

The worst part of 2005’s Rise of the Silver Surfer was their approach to Galactus as Sir Not Appearing in this Film.  It still boggles my mind that they chose to depict Galactus as a purple cloud.  Why make a Galactus movie if you don’t want to (or just can’t) find a way to actually include him in the story??  And so it was exciting to me that this new FF movie promised to give us a far more classic depiction of Galactus.  It was joyful to see this Galactus on-screen, big purple helmet and all.  This is such an iconic character and such an iconic look.  I’m thrilled it finally exists on screen.  At the same time, Galactus might be the weak link in the film.  While there are some shots that looked really cool to me (I love when we first see him, as a huge shape in the clouds on his spaceship, with his glowing eyes piercing the gloom), there were also too many shots where I felt he looked a little too CGI-fake.  More problematically, I didn’t feel the movie took the time to center him as a character, and to present him as a tragic character doomed to eternal hunger and to be the destroyer of worlds and murderer of uncounted bazillions.  I wanted to feel more empathy for his desperate desire to somehow rid himself of his hunger.  But the character felt superficial to me; mostly just a big evil monster out to take Reed & Sue’s baby.  Oh well.  Ralph Ineson does a nice job as Galactus’ face & voice.

I loved seeing Natasha Lyonne pop up in the film — and as a cool Jewish lady who catches Ben Grimm’s eye, no less!!  That was awesome, though I was surprised how little she had to do in the film.  I wonder if there were originally more scenes with her that got cut?  (I’m also not clear what character she was playing.  I think her name was Rachel; I don’t think this is someone from the comics.  It’s a curious choice not to include Ben’s most famous love-interest, Alicia Masters.  They do mention Alicia’s dad, the Puppet Master, in the film, though!)

Paul Walter Hauser (Orion and the Dark, Inside Out 2, The Afterparty season 2) was terrific and hilarious as the Mole Man.  I want to see lots more Mole Man in future MCU films!!  Mark Gatiss (Mycroft Holmes on Sherlock) was fun as TV host Ted Gilbert, and I was delighted to see Ted Lasso‘s Sarah Niles (who had a role in another big tentpole movie this summer, F1 with Brad Pitt!!) pop up as well.  (Though watching the movie I was totally confused as to who her character was.  At first I thought she was the mayor of New York!  Turns out she’s the head of the Future Foundation, which is basically the corporation that the FF oversees.)

Superman had Krypto, and the FF has H.E.R.B.I.E. — I loved this cure little robot!  I loved his sixties look.  (I loved that he has a different cassette deck that gets put into his head for “space”.)  They used H.E.R.B.I.E. just the right amount, in my opinion, so that he was cute and not grating.

The score by Michael Giacchino is fantastic!  Say halleluyah, finally we get a great, memorable, hummable super-hero theme!!  I have been saying for years that it’s crazy that these big superhero movies have basically abandoned the idea of distinct character themes.  Mr. Giacchino’s FF theme is fantastic, and I thought the whole score was top-notch.

This movie really zips along!!  I love that it comes in under two hours.  While I’d have loved a few more scenes to be able to spend more time with these characters, I can’t argue with the movie’s propulsive pace.  There’s really not a dull moment in the entire movie.

I still don’t love the film’s title.  First Steps is (like Jurassic World: Rebirth) a message to the audience, as opposed to having anything to do with the actual story.  (Couldn’t they have at least given us a mid-credits scene of Franklin’s taking his first steps, as a way of justifying that title??)

Here are a few more comments — beware SPOILERS ahead:

• I really enjoyed the film’s opening montage, showing us the history of this alternate universe and these characters.
• I loved seeing the FF fight super apes!!  Though I’m bummed John Malkovich as the Red Ghost was cut out of the film!!
• I loved seeing the cover image from Fantastic Four #1 brought to life on-screen.
• I didn’t realize until after walking out of the theater that we didn’t get the MCU logo and fanfare anywhere at the start of this movie.  That’s a cool touch, because this film isn’t set in the MCU!
• I wish the sequence in which the FF travel into space and arrive at a planet just as Galactus is destroying it had landed with a bit more impact.  That should have been a moment of true shock and horror.  But I don’t think they successfully sold the scale of an entire planet’s being destroyed.  Also, because Reed had already told us in an earlier scene that he knew Galactus had destroyed five planets that they could detect, this scene wasn’t surprising.  The characters knew already this is what Galactus did!  I think that was a mistake, and this scene should have been where they discovered that Galactus was a destroyer of worlds.
• I thought it was wild that, even in this very family friendly movie, they showed Sue’s pants coming off before she gave birth!  (It was a very clean birth; there was no gore floating around the spaceship in zero-g, and thank heavens for that.  But that shot of Sue’s pants coming off still felt surprisingly adult to me.  I liked that.)
• I understand why Galactus’ classic world ship (which is the size of a solar system) wouldn’t work here, though I wish they’d come up with a better, more Jack Kirby-esque design for Galactus’s ship.  The simple drill shape felt too pedestrian to me; not awe-inspiring enough.
• I loved the revelation at the end about why this alternate universe had the number that it did.  That was lovely.
• I was surprised that this movie didn’t catch us up to the end-credits of Thunderbolts*, but I love that choice.  I’m glad this movie left us with the happy ending (as opposed to the FF’s having to flee their universe at the end).  It makes the wait for Avengers: Doomsday more intriguing, as we now have a year and a half to guess when/why the FF have to leave their universe.  (I’d thought their alternate universe would be destroyed in an Incursion, which might yet be what happens, but based on the film’s mid-credits scene I now think they’re chasing after Doom and trying to rescue Franklin.)
• That mid-credits scene with Doom was… fine.  I wish we’d actually gotten to see and hear Doom.  The staging felt a little awkward — why has Doom taken off his mask?  Is it just so we the audience could see it?  (I hope there’s an actual plot reason — is Franklin using his powers to heal Doom’s face?)  Is Doom about to take Franklin to help him create Battleworld?  (That’d be reminiscent of the plot of Jonathan Hickman’s 2015 Secret Wars mini-series.)
• I liked the cartoon at the end credits, though I think Marvel should start putting the silly sequence at mid-credits and allow the post-credits scene (that audiences wait through many minutes of credits for) to be the more substantial one.  Just my two cents!

I loved Fantastic Four: First Steps!  It’s a throughly enjoyable movie.  If they’d done a slightly better job with Galactus, this would be a home run.  As it is, it’s a terrific triple.  We should not understate Marvel’s achievement in finally getting the Fantastic Four right.  The decision to set this in a retro-futuristic alternate world, as opposed to the main MCU, was a brave one, and it paid off well.  Bravo to director Matt Shakman (who oversaw WandaVision), and writers Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, & Ian Springer for successfully cracking this nut!  I can’t wait to see this movie again!