“Fantastic Four: First Steps” Review: Marvel’s First Family Finally Done Right

Ken Jones, OnScreenBlog Chief Film Critic

To say that Marvel has had difficulty adapting its Fantastic Four property from the comics to the big screen is an understatement. Three previous movies were critically drubbed. To date, the best Fantastic Four movie has been Deadpool & Wolverine because Chris Evans reprised his role as Johnny Storm. So while Fantastic Four: First Steps may be the fourth shot at making a worthwhile Fantastic Four movie, it’s the first foray into the MCU for Marvel’s oldest superhero team.

Right out of the gate, Fantastic Four: First Steps announces itself as unique from nearly every movie in the MCU that has preceded it. With the events taking place on Earth-828, every other MCU title outside of Deadpool and Wolverine has taken place predominantly on Earth-616. Earth-828 is a 60s-tinged retro futuristic world where the Fantastic Four are four years into having their superpowers after having their DNA changed during an encounter with cosmic energy in space. They’re the only known heroes of Earth in their universe. 

Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), and The Thing/Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) have won over the hearts of the world with their thwarting of crime and evil. They have a fifth team member on the way when Sue and Reed discover they’re pregnant. But the world they have worked so hard to protect faces its most formidable foe when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) heralds the arrival of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), a planet-devouring being with Earth in his sights.

As a team, all of the Fantastic Four bring different powers and qualities to the table, but all of them are intelligent, scientific, and work well as a team because of it. Reed is the smartest, with an intellect that is probably supposed to rival or surpass Tony Stark’s in the MCU. The character relies as much on his brain as on his superpowers as an elastic man, if not more so. Pascal plays him with a quiet confidence in his scientific prowess, but is also humble. When kids yawn at him explaining science in a TV science show, he reads the room and asks if they want to see something explode.

Sue brings an emotional intellect to the group; not only is she smart, but she is also able to communicate effectively. Early on, we learn how she has spearheaded the Future Foundation, an MCU equivalent of the United Nations on Earth-828, and has brokered a lot of peace in the world, though there is a notably absent seat at the Council of Nations. Kirby also gets to make the rallying speech to the world in a dark moment to inspire hope when public faith in the team is hanging by a thread. 

Her brother, Johnny Storm, is not the womanizer that the Chris Evans incarnation of the character was, but he’s also not a reserved guy. We see video footage of their fateful mission to space, and Sue proclaims he is single to the camera, and the look on Joseph Quinn’s face is one of pure panic; four years later, he’s flying past a billboard that flames up of him having his bathing suit pulled on by a dog with women gawking in the background. He is also less of a hotshot and has scientific interests that are essential to the team’s task.

Seeing this depiction of The Thing was refreshing. I have never wanted to revisit the 2000s Fantastic Four movies, but much of the storyline involving Ben Grimm was him struggling with his identity as someone whose exterior is now made of granite. In one scene, he is walking past a TV display in a store and sees his old self and then sees his reflection, but that is it. Ben Grimm has embraced what he has become, like everyone else on the team. He doesn’t let Reed beat himself up over what happened or allow him to feel responsible. 

Taking on Galactus is the biggest task the Fantastic Four have faced to date, literally and figuratively. There have been a lot of dumb choices made in comic book movies over the years, and making Galactus a cosmic cloud instead of his traditional form is among the dumbest. Thankfully, they’ve done Galactus right here, and his introduction does an incredible job of emphasizing his scale, as the Fantastic Four all seem to take a step back in fear and awe when they first encounter him. 

The 60s-tinged world aesthetic is executed well. It helps make this world distinct from the Earth, where The Avengers have existed for 30-plus movies. Everyone dresses like the time period, and the cars are similar to the time period, but technology has continued apace, if not exceeding it in some areas. There are flying cars, Reed has figured out how to travel in space at the speed of light, and is working on a teleportation experiment. The '60s theme is not just a gimmick; it feels like a fully realized world that just developed in a different direction from ours. 

The “First Steps” of the title tie into the baby that Sue is carrying, and his importance to the story develops throughout the film. The baby becomes an essential point in the plot, and his fate is argued in the group, but it never completely divides them. 

The title also likely has other meanings and implications, as it launches the next phase of the MCU, our first proper foray into a new universe in the multiverse. Also, being set on another Earth in the multiverse means that the movie does not carry the baggage of the previous MCU movies and the homework that is needed to follow all the intricacies of how the movies tie together. 

That there has never been a well-executed Fantastic Four movie to date had to have added a little extra bit of pressure to the making of Fantastic Four: First Steps, on top of the pressure felt by the spinning of MCU tires that have gone on post-Endgame. Coming on the heels of Thunderbolts*, this is another solid step in the right direction for the MCU.  It’s not the best the MCU has to offer, but it is solidly in the middle of the MCU rankings for me, and a film I think people would have to find hard to dislike or hate. They finally seem to have gotten the first family of Marvel right on the big screen, which is an unqualified win in and of itself after the past 20 years.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5