The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Writers: Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer (screenplay, story); Josh Friedman (screenplay); Kat Wood (story)
Director: Matt Shakman
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn, Julia Garner, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser, Ralph Ineson
It can be easily argued that the marvel comics superhero team Fantastic Four have not had the most successful run on the silver screen. From The Fantastic Four, a 1994 ashcan copy that was never released but heavily memed in the digital age; to a duo of sexist and critically-marred iterations courtesy of 21st Century Fox in 2005 with Fantastic Four, and 2007 with Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer; to Josh Trank’s infamously dreadful Fantastic Four (stylised as Fant4stic) what some regard as the worst comic book movie of the modern superhero era thanks to directorial disputes, reshoots and a twitter meltdown by Trank himself who disavowed the film on its opening weekend. To say that a good version of Marvel’s ‘first family’ has been long demanded by fans would be an understatement.
So while anticipation is naturally quite high for Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the first feature about the superhero team to emerge from Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox in 2019 and the first film to be released under the umbrella of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is a very low bar for the film to reach in order to be the best iteration of the group to date. It is no surprise for one to say that Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps is indeed the best version of the Fantastic Four to have graced the big screen to date. Which is exactly what the Marvel Cinematic Universe needed: a breezy, entertaining and perfectly safe, self-contained tale of a superhero family saving the world from a big bad guy who wants to destroy the world.
After a baby blue Marvel opening logo, we are introduced to the superpowered characters of Susan Storm (Vanessa Kirby) and Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) in a bathroom, the pair a softly bickering married couple whose argument screeches to a halt when Susan reveals a futuristic looking positive pregnancy test. A quick back-and-forth between the two describe the historical trouble of conceiving, and worries around if the child will be healthy given their exposure to Gamma poisoning. Cut to the ever reliable Mark Gatiss as a chat show host, who introduce the Fantastic Four on stage by saying "we all know the story", before directing our attention to a 60s era TV, where a funky 4:3 montage describes the team’s origin story: Susan as The Invisible Woman; her husband Reed as Mister Fantastic; her brother Jonny Storm (Joseph Quinn) as the Human Torch; and Reed’s Best Friend Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). It should be noted that in the comics and prior adaptations, the character of Ben Grimm is called ‘The Thing’ due to being mutated into rock. However, he is referred to as Ben by members of the public in First Steps as what feels like an attempt to shrug away what is a relatively unflattering misnomer.
Through this flashback we see that the quartet were astronauts sent to space who were accidentally exposed to Gamma ray poisoning, which altered their DNA and gave them super powers. Simultaneously, the sequences works at letting the audience become attuned to the idea that, as much as First Steps is a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, it is not taking place in the same universe (yet, as per Disney’s cast announcements for Avengers: Doomsday foretelling a future connectivity). No, this is taking place within a parallel universe of vintage futurism aesthetic, where there are flying cars but television sets that still have aerials on top of them, where reporters are still using single-use flashbulb photography and sport trilbee’s on their head while a vinyl record is pressed using lasers. Production designer Kasra Farahani and their team appear to be having a lot of fun hybridising the stylistic choices of 60s retro with the futuristic apparatus.
This expository montage, which is an almost over-stuffed source of lore (Shakman was correct to cut John Malkovich as supervillain Red Ghost) that includes a brief look at supervillain Moleman (Paul Walter-Hauser), shows that three years have passed since the accident and the team are lauded as heroes. After James Gunn’s Superman skipped the origin story, as did both Matt Reeve’s The Batman and Spider-Man: Homecoming, the superhero movie saturation that has occurred means that most audience members are familiar with how these iconic figures came to be, so directors can let their films be less constrained by this.
It works very well in First Steps, which drops us into a world already kept safe by the family, allowing Shakman the opportunity to explore the humanity of the characters rather than limiting their personality to solely being superpowered beings. A highlight of which is letting Ben Grimm explore a crush he has on a teacher named Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) and his passion for cooking – an amusing choice to cast Moss-Bachrach here, whose big break came from cooking drama The Bear – while Jonny gets the chance to showcase intelligence, a trait of his that is often overlooked in favour of his lewd, overly sexualised actions. Quinn gets the chance to really let his youthful, boyish charm sparkle here.
We also get to explore the family as a unit, sitting down together and eating Ben’s food made with the help of Herbie (Matthew Wood), a cute robot assistant that hovers around their home. The team has really great chemistry together so when a silver character named Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner) rocks up on a surfboard and heralds the consumption of Earth at the hands of titanic-sized creature Galactus (Ralph Ineson) unless the family surrender to him their newborn child, Franklin, there is a natural protective instinct one feels to these characters since Shakman has allowed us to view the family bond together and over the baby.
The warm, charming characters are the main attraction within First Steps – Pascal and Kirby are dynamite on screen together – because after the Silver Surfer character departs and Galactus appears to take Franklin or destroy Earth, the film degenerates into a relatively generic and grey climactic battle. It’s a relatively frustrating turn as, up to this point, director of photography Jess Hall had captured some quite stellar visuals of the team in space, and a single silhouetted shot of a desert that made one recollect Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is the position of Franklin in the final battle which is a major hindrance within the picture, quite awkwardly so, as the baby is recreated using CGI while in the hands of Galactus, or occasionally members of the team themselves. It’s not quite as jarring as the CGI Renesmee in Breaking Dawn: Part One but if one is to be absorbed in an effects-heavy story like this, you can’t have something as egregious as this without becoming an extreme distraction.
Aside from Franklin, the effects in First Steps are more often than not stellar. It is perhaps a preference to have Ben in more practical costuming, as a fully CG ‘Thing’ didn’t let Moss-Bachrach’s charming face evoke the emotion his delivery suggests – there is always something quite off about a mouth not moving quite in line with words, which is why dubbed versions always pale in comparison to subbed versions. But what is a delight to the ears is Michael Giacchino’s groove score for the picture, which bubbles up just about often enough to leave a lasting impression.
A strong emotional familial theme runs through the film, which should come to no surprise as Shakman’s previous works include WandaVision – a TV show which led with emotion first. After a rocky few years of critical disdain and a level of audience satisfaction that wouldn’t have pleased, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is exactly what the MCU required: a Phase One-esque, back-to-basics, incredibly charming, while occasionally pedestrian, film that requires no extra-curricular work to enjoy, no TV series to have watched, no comics to have been read. This is the first MCU film in the last six years to feel like its own thing, uninterested in satisfying universe completionists or having unnecessary cameos whose purpose is to sell the next film to audiences. It is a complete breath of fresh air when encountered in conjunction with the stuffiness of the current superhero zeitgeist.
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