The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Today, my brother and I went and saw “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which came out a few weeks ago. This is apparently one of the Marvel movies that everyone is loving. Are they speaking the truth or not? Will this be the “Fantastic Four” movie that “finally” everyone will love?

There are two movies fighting for our attention during the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film – and one works so well it makes up for the mistakes in the other.

This film, which is the start of Phase Six, introduces a group of characters new to the MCU: The Fantastic Four, a group of astronauts and scientists sometimes called “Marvel’s First Family.” As the quick retro-TV documentary at the movie’s start explains, the intelligent Dr. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) led a space mission with his best friend, Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), his wife, Susan Storm Richards (Vanessa Kirby), and Sue’s brother, Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn).

That mission hit a cosmic storm, and the radiation gave every one of them incredible powers. Sean Means stated in his review, “Reed can stretch and contort his body like rubber.” Ben has turned into a super-strong rock creature. Sue can turn invisible when she wants and manipulate powerful force fields. Finally, Johnny lights up into a fire being who can fly.

On this parallel universe of Earth, called Earth-828 (the MCU mostly has taken place in Earth-616), the four aren’t just superheroes but really famous. Means mentions, “One of the best throwaway gags comes when Johnny opens a box of Lucky Charms and finds his own miniature action figure inside. It’s a retro-future kind of world, where women dress like Jackie Kennedy in the ‘60s, Johnny records space transmissions on gold-colored vinyl LPs, and the “Fantastic Car” looks like a Hot Wheels car from the days of tail fins.”

Director Matt Shakman clearly knows what he’s doing here on Earth-828, which isn’t surprising for the man who was in charge of “WandaVision.” Means said, “Production designer Kasra Farahani and crew create a “Jetsons”-style futuristic style that permeates everything from the New York skyline to the Fantastic 4’s living room. The look is reminiscent of Pixar’s “The Incredibles,” and a group of movie geeks could stay up all night debating who influenced who.” (One supervillain, an underground ace called Mole Man and played by Paul Walter Hauser (Stingray from “Cobra Kai”), resembles The Underminer from “The Incredibles.”)

Shakman noted, “Shakman makes us and his cast so at home in this world that we don’t mind so much that the story is a patchwork affair.” The script is written by four people – Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, and the less-famous team of Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer, with Pearson, Kaplan, and Springer sharing story credit with Kat Wood – and the layers sometimes show.

At the start of the film, Sue tells Reed that she’s pregnant, after two years of trying. Any family celebration of this blessing is cut short when an alien arrives, a silver figure on a spiritual surfboard. The Silver Surfer, played in motion capture by Julia Garner, tells the people that Earth has been chosen to be destroyed by a planet-murdering being known as Galactus (Ralph Ineson). The Fantastic Four promise that they will do something, though the exceptionally bright Reed isn’t sure what, to stop Galactus.

Means said, “Shakman stages some action scenes of varying quality — a mid-movie outer-space chase as Sue goes into zero-gravity labor is the most frenetic — and more use of the word “family” than any script this side of a “Fast and the Furious” movie.” In the end, Shakman clearly is having more fun building this environment than capturing the emotional lives of the superpowered humans who are trying to keep it from being destroyed.

Even though this is the first time the Fantastic Four has been in the MCU, it’s not the first time they’ve been in the movies. There was the low-budget Roger Corman adaptation in the 90s which I have not seen because, I believe, it was unreleased. There were two not bad movies, in 2005 and 2007, with Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis as the protagonists. (That one was referenced in “Deadpool and Wolverine.”) Finally, there was the disaster 2015 version, with Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell. Means said, “This one, unlike those others, manages to gauge accurately how seriously we’re supposed to take all this, which is maybe 40 percent.”

Means continued, “The results are a lot more entertaining and eye-catching than some recent Marvel movies. Maybe because Marvel is starting fresh with these superheroes, and giving them a self-contained story that doesn’t rely on knowledge of 14 other characters presented in nine previous movies and TV shows.” (Spoilers: there’s a mid-credits scene that teases an upcoming supervillain, but that’s almost required in Marvel movies currently.) “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is likable on its own, and a sign that Marvel is coming back after the films that people have not been enjoying after “Avengers: Endgame.”

There was a minor issue at the theater where the film didn’t start showing previews once the showtime started. I don’t know why that was, but I went out to the concession stand to let someone know before they started it. I don’t know why I was feeling tired at one point, but I feel like I zoned out during the first fight scene with Galactus. Still, this was a great movie, the best “Fantastic Four” movie ever made. Everyone should go to the theater to see this because this will make you start liking the MCU again. The slow moments felt really nice for character building, we get to know the characters, the actors played their parts well, there were some nice humanizing and emotional moments, the writing was good, and the action scenes were engaging.

Thank you for joining in on this review tonight. Stay tuned this Friday for the continuation of “Michael Douglas Month.”