Main cast: (Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm/Invisible Woman), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm/The Thing), Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm/Human Torch), Julia Garner (Shalla-Bal/Silver Surfer), Sarah Niles (Lynne Nichols), Mark Gatiss (Ted Gilbert), Natasha Lyonne (Rachel Rozman), Paul Walter Hauser (Harvey Elder/Mole Man), and Ralph Ineson (Galactus)
Director: Matt Shakman
Disney really needs The Fantastic Four: First Steps to be a big hit and to get people all excited about Avengers: Doomsday, a bizarre marketing strategy as to date I have no idea who are even in the new version of the Avengers.
Naturally, it just broke even or made a small profit in the box office, assuming that we don’t count the cut taken by movie theaters and there are no hidden costs such as endless major reshoots, which is practically a ritual in present day MCU. Mind you, considering the leaked script, which is full of girlboss galore with the male characters sidelined, and the end result, I wonder if there had been some major tinkering in post-production.
Not that I’m complaining, as had there been any reshoot costs involved, Disney did it to make the movie far more palatable than the leaks suggested!
In fact, I’d even go as far as to say that this movie would have fit in nicely in the first two phases of the MCU, as its quality is much better than some of the really embarrassing dreck that the MCU has put out these few years.
Set in what seems like a different Earth, the Fantastic Four are four people that gained powers after exposure to cosmic rays — the usual, go look up their history on some wiki if you wish to know more — and now they are treated like gods by the folks of Earth.
It’s all fun and games until a new challenger steps into the ring: Galactus. He has a “hunger” to destroy planets, and he has Earth set on his sights. However, he will spare Earth if the Fantastic Four would give up the child Sue is carrying to him, as that child is super special and Galactus can transfer his hunger to the child, thus freeing himself from this planet-destroying compulsion of his.
I’m not sure why Galactus isn’t the colossal cosmic Elder God-like thing if he is some planet-eating creature, as he instead needs to travel by spaceship and even needs a herald, the Silver Surfer, to do his grunt work for him. Then again, I suppose it would cost more to commission the special effects people to turn Galactus’s ugly mug into some Azathoth-wannabe.
Back to the custody battle, Reed and Sure immediately say no to Galactus’s kind offer, and the people of Earth are naturally furious when they realize that they are all going to die because the Fantastic Four won’t give up their brat to save them.
Ah, but have no fear, they all have a plan to save everyone and the baby… or do they?
Despite getting a bit tired of seeing Pedro Pascal everywhere, he is pretty solid as Reed Richards, actually. Same with Vanessa Kirby, it’s easy to warm up to her portrayal as Sue Storm. The other two characters are just hangers-on, but they are alright too. Just note that the old Human Torch being a playboy is too much of a “toxic masculinity” thing for Kevin Feige, as he boasted about toning him down into just another quippy white boy, the only kind allowed in his playground these days. In that context, having that milquetoast actor playing him, whose name I have already forgotten, makes a lot of sense.
Also, for once, the movie is coherent, and the story isn’t too dumb for words. Sure, this seems to be some low yardstick, but come on, we have all seen how terrible the other MCU movies and shows have been. An otherwise decent movie is a cause for celebration as a result.
Unlike the bewilderingly bad marketing which basically promoted the film as “Sue Storm, Girlboss”, the foursome actually works together as a cohesive team here. No male characters get sidelined or made to look like an incompetent fool, for example, and there are no eye-rolling superficial performative nonsense about racism or whatever. The movie is… just a movie, in other words, that sets out to entertain and does it well, instead of lecturing or nagging at the audience like it’s the collective hivemind of brain-damaged Bluesky dwellers.
What does set this movie back a bit is the lack of gravitas. I never once feel that things are really bad for the folks in this movie.
The set pieces are one reason for this: the whole retro The Jetsons-like vibe can be a nice gimmick, but the movie never capitalizes on the potentially terrifying contrast of the whole sunny side up aesthetics with the planet-ending dilemma faced by the people of Earth.
However, the script is a bigger and more problematic reason: it doesn’t want the viewers to feel any really bad emotion, so there is never any impending sense of doom or potential failure hounding the fabulous foursome. Even their “setback just before a triumph” moment feels more like an obligatory trope than a hard-hitting poignant moment. The script is too careful and too obvious in wanting to make the audience feel any authentic “bad” feels.
Hence, Silver Surfer gets a turnaround motivated by what is basically a dramatic prep talk. She is not given any proper opportunity to show me that she is experiencing genuine emotional and moral conflict. She just gets a “I know you are a good person, in there, somewhere!” talk and she’s like, “Oh, you are right, oooh!” It feels so contrived and fake.
Therefore, while this movie does take a few steps forward in being an improvement over the other crap in the present-day MCU, it also suggests that the Disney writing crew is still suffering from the same affliction of not wanting the movies or shows to show genuine emotion that can get in the way of their imaginary target audience of snowflakes allergic to experiencing emotions.
Still, maybe this movie is just baby steps to the MCU’s rehabilitation? Who knows, but I suspect it won’t be the herald to Avengers: Doomsday like it was hoped to be. I mean, we have a doomsday scenario already in this movie, and it’s treated like any other quippy cute superhero movie — admittedly one of the better ones of late but still — so how good can one with an actual doomsday in the title be?
