Counting this one, there have been five Fantastic Four films over the years. First, there was the unreleased 1994 film which was made solely to allow for rights retention. Then came the two Tim Story-directed films in 2005 and 2007, both somewhat financially successful, but shredded to bits by critics and fans alike. The less said about the dreadful 2015 version, the better. Now we have a brand new team, a brand new purpose, and an exciting future that we already know will bring Avengers, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four together in some way. So: a lot is riding on The Fantastic Four: First Steps. After a string of disappointing returns, Marvel has to be looking to this picture as a pseudo ‘relaunch’ of the MCU. If The Fantastic Four, the original Marvel team, can’t save the studio from itself, I don’t know that anything can. In fact, for all of the cool visuals and interesting character beats, The First Steps wreaks of desperation.
Set on Earth-828, four astronauts – Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) – encounter a cosmic storm which changes their DNA and turns them into superheroes. Richards can stretch like Armstrong; Sue can make herself invisible and create forcefields; Johnny can absorb energy and use it as fuel to become a ‘human torch’; and Ben is turned into a hulking rock monster with enhanced strength. They immediately become Earth’s protectors. When Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and his herald, The Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), mark Earth for destruction, the Four must jump into action to save the planet, while also balancing the safety of the latest addition to the team – Reed and Sue’s son, Franklin, whom Galactus wants, knowing he possesses infinite power and could take his place in the cosmos.
Everything tangible about this film, in terms of design, is outstanding. Earth-828 is seemingly stuck in the 1960s, but the 1960s the way The Jetsons envisioned them. It’s all very retro and futuristic at the same time, things we’ve seen before, just not in a Marvel film. Times Square, for example, features no large electronic billboards, but rather enormous analog TV sets. It’s the visual effects that present the most issues here. It’s been six-years since Avengers: Endgame hit theatres. How in the world do the visuals from that film eclipse those in a film six-years later? The effects feel rushed, and poorly thought out. Franklin rarely looks like a real baby, except in close-ups. Even Thing reads more video-game than a movie character. I wish they had given themselves more time to flesh the visuals out and detail them in a way that wasn’t constantly taking me out of what I found to be a very interesting story.
I loved the idea of The Fantastic Four having to entertain sacrificing their own child in order to save humanity. Thanks to a tremendous performance from Vanessa Kirby, we feel every bit of her fear, uncertainty, and confusion. Kirby classes this joint up in a way we haven’t seen in a Marvel film in a long time. I also appreciated the attempted ‘shades’ to Galactus. Yes, he’s a planet-eating monster who has existed since before time, but he really just wants to stop being so damned hungry. The Fantastic Four was always a family in the comics, and so much of the emotional power of their storylines was derived from our fear that something could happen to them. We never really feel that immediate threat here. We know they’re going to win, and we know Galactus is going to be defeated, because we know they are leading Avengers: Doomsday. That’s the worst byproduct of all this Marvel forecasting – it takes away the tension. Avengers: Infinity War managed to pull a real shocker. Nothing since.
This is, without a doubt, the best of The Fantastic Four films. Admittedly, that’s a low bar. It’s a film that works best when it allows the team to be a team – the banter, the jokes, the family flavor. There’s just not nearly enough of that, nor do most of the team seem to be rising to the level of the material, or Kirby’s performance. Pascal is entirely flat as Richards, and comes across as fairly ineffectual. Quinn needed to be bigger. He’s got the look and the attitude, but he’s missing the snark and the wit. Moss-Bachrach is the dullest Ben Grimm we’ve seen yet. Both Michael Chiklis and Jamie Bell brought more to the role. You can’t have such a comic book feeling comic book movie with performances that feel bored, at times. The film never crackles unless Kirby is on-screen, save for a memorable but brief turn from Paul Walter-Hauser as “Mole Man”, and an underdeveloped relationship between Thing and a school teacher played by Natasha Lyonne. That could have really gone somewhere. It did not.
On the whole, I enjoyed more of The Fantastic Four: First Steps than not, thanks to Kirby, some interesting visuals, and the understanding that this was setting us up for the shit to hit the fan in Avengers: Doomsday. And, it’s one of the better Marvel releases in recent memory. Michael Giacchino deserves a large amount of credit for the film’s success, delivering us easily the most memorable Marvel score to date. Director Adam Shakman had the right pieces, and the right game board, and managed to make it out of the first round relatively unscathed. This franchise damaged Tim Story before he regained his footing, and all but ended Josh Trank’s career. It could have gone much worse. I don’t know if The Fantastic Four is going to ‘save’ the MCU, but it should certainly satisfy fans of the comic who have been waiting diligently for decades to see their favorite super-family accurately represented in film. It’s not perfect, but everyone clearly did the best they could.
RATING: ***1/2/**** (now playing in theatres everywhere via Marvel Studios)
