Film Review: The Fantastic Four: The First Steps
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Let me start this review off by saying I liked The Fantastic Four: The First Steps. I think. Yeah. Well, maybe? It’s all rather hard to figure out when a movie manages to be made as inoffensively as possible as this one was. Generally pleasing to look at, competently acted, and with a rollicking score (Giacchino is the MVP of the movie), this film presents a tale well told but one that rarely offers genuine thrills.
This is the third time Fantastic Four has been rebooted in my lifetime, a staggering sum on par with Superman and Batman, despite those being much more popular heroes. Knowing this Marvels smartly eschewed the general origin story of them receiving their powers, and instead kicking off the journey when the foursome of Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm aka The Thing are already into their heroic lives. Major celebrities already, their lives get an even more drastic change when Sue Storm finds out that she’s pregnant. What seems to be a nice and easy life for this quaint family unit hits a snag when a Silver Surfer arrives and tells everyone that their planet has been marked for death by Galactus. Determined to protect their planet, the Fantastic Four treat with Galactus before he makes them an offer they soundly refuse, that of Sue and Reed’s unborn child. With that stated the heroes rush back to earth and work to try and figure out how to save the Earth and their family.
We are in the era of the disco uptempo superhero movie it seems, with both this film and Superman dropping us into the world of an established hero, or four. It was welcome in that film and it’s certainly welcome here. Getting to just move about the retro futuristic 1960s New York with the heroes already established already made for a much more interesting experience. We see them as part of the fabric of the city, and get to really live in the fabric of the outstanding production design. Director Matt Shakman does an excellent job of making this feel like a lived in world and sells the dynamics of the family.
Speaking of family, for all the gruff Marvel gets about trying to make its movies family friendly, this is might be the first to really achieve whatever that goal is. Gone is Johnny’s womanizing made so camp and fun by Chris Evans, and in has come a more himbo-esque personality. For his big moment saying that he loves women, we don’t see him talk to or interact with many. This is but one example of how in the aim to make things family friendly it feels as though everything has been buffed and sanded down to be as shiny as the skin of our new Silver Surfer.
Despite the cosmic threat Galactus presents (and he’s rendered here MUCH better than his previous iteration), this movie feels rather slight. Not an altogether bad thing, but it doesn’t feel like there’s much to do or places to go. As it was going on I kind of longed for some kind of messiness or vitality to really enter the fray, and the movie just continues to maintain a steady pace. In the hands of a director like Matt and actors as capable as Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, the movie never dips into boring territory. But outside of the production design and Michael Giacchino score, there isn’t much to overtly rave about. However, I can’t say that I didn’t derive some joy in watching this movie or that I regret going. But perhaps adding just a bit of a sharper edge would have done The Fantastic Four: The First Steps a bit of good.
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