Watched: 07/27/2025
Format: Drafthouse
Viewing: First
Director: Matt Shakman
Well, nothing says "I am a cool dude" like showing up for a 9:00 AM screening for Fantastic Four by yourself. I don't know if 12-year-old me is dying inside or deeply impressed I'm still committed to the cause.
Fantastic Four is not a comic I read a lot. I very much enjoy the first issues by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, but kind of lose interest after that - though Mark Waid's run is mind-boggling. I do love the idea of the team as a bunch of science-adventurers more than just caped vigilantes,* and their individual personalities and the family dynamic. Also, my earliest memories include watching that jenky Fantastic Four cartoon of the 1960's the movie references.
I've never seen the Corman movie, but have seen the two 00's-era movies, and the 10's body-horror movie that was Fox's "edgy" take on the FF. The movies were uniformly not-good, no matter what your Millennial nostalgia brain is trying to Space Jam Fallacy you into believing.
It is an interesting few weeks with Superman and Fantastic Four both coming out and maybe showing superhero movies know they have to evolve or die. Both are movies I'd take a kid to see, both are generally movies about trying to *help* - which is the part of superherodom that has really gotten forgotten the last few years. And both feel like preludes of things to come.
And that may be an actual narrative problem for me with Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025).
Set on Earth-828**, the opening of the movie sums up the origin of FF in a slick ABC-special format, name-drops classic FF villains, references classic moments from the comics and includes Mole Man as a supporting character. I was grinning like a maniac.
The story does not have the sprawling feel Marvel films have taken on over the years, but feels boiled down to its bare bones as both Marvel and DC also seem to have gotten the message that ain't nobody got time for a 3 hour movie anymore. When a movie is 2:45 and you have 30 minutes of trailers and then have to sit through the credits to see a 5 second joke, it's a lot.
The story is a loose adaptation of the original Silver Surfer and Galactus tale from around issue #48 of the original Kirby/ Lee run. It's a brief thing in the comics, and does cause a challenge in adapting to a 2 hour films as Galactus is not Lex Luthor - he's terrifying, but in the way your sun going supernova is terrifying, but not in the way of a malevolent person trying to end you, personally, gives you character beats.
Earth 828 is a world that looks like the fantasy world of the Busiek-penned/ Alex Ross-painted series Marvels (read it if you haven't), occurring right around when Kirby/Ditko/Lee et al launched the Marvel Universe of the 1960's. The movie has a Space-Age glow to it, and presupposes a world in which the existence of the Fantastic Four has led to disarmament of nations - ie: the Cold War is not happening - and the prosperity of the 1960's is reaching everyone.
The FF are the world's biggest celebrities, but Ben Grimm can still head down to Yancey Street for his black & white cookies, Sue is a major international political figure, Reed is making life better for everyone, and Johnny and ben are ready to go into space again (their rocket is parked on the Hudson River).
Then shiny Julia Garner The Silver Surfer appears in Manhattan and informs everyone that the world is about to end. Galactus is coming, and he's gonna eat Earth.
Like many Marvel films before this one, the portrayal of the characters is informed not just by those first stories - which may be deeply dated (and, lord, is Sue Storm the most dated character in comics when you read those early FF issues) - the movie gives us a chance to maybe tone some things down. I confess, I did not miss Johnny pranking Ben like a shitty sixteen year old with a TikTok channel.
Pascal's Richards is clearly thoughtful and brilliant but flawed - but no longer has the lantern-jawed professor of 1950's sci-fi movies in mind as the archetype. Quinn's Johnny Storm is not a skirt-chaser, but a romantic. Vanessa Kirby's Sue is the force of nature she's been written as for a while now, and you can see how the Reed/Sue dynamic would work as two power players with or without powers. And... god bless him, Ebon Moss-Bacharach finally gave me the Ben Grimm I've wanted to see in a movie, not just aesthetically, but as a character.
The movie doesn't have time for Ben to feel bad for himself - we're maybe past that now. Nor does it have time for Sue to be mad Reed is too focused on his work - she has her own work. Johnny isn't running off to mess with cars, and Reed isn't accidentally poking holes in the time/space continuum. Yet.
The real conflict rises from the FF learning that their child could contain cosmic powers (in the comics, Franklin Richards is a wildly powerful character), and Galactus wants him - offering to spare Earth if they give up the kid. Which, of course, they can't do, but the other few billion people on Earth would like to keep the place where they keep their stuff.
I've read some social media posts of folks stating they found the movie "boring" which is certainly a take for a movie that moves, narratively, at a rocket's pace and could have used more time to breathe and let us sit with various moments and ideas a bit longer. Rather than Sue being mad at Reed for focusing on his work, here her irritation with him grows from his ability to live constantly in a world of worst case scenarios, which he must do in order to stop them from happening. They bring it up, but... it felt like it needed to get lived in a lot more. The amount of action was more than adequate, in my book. The FF are not characters who should ever spend their time just punching things.
Also, bonus points for having a quirky robot in a movie and not making it horrible, Space Camp.
I think my biggest beef with the film was probably that it all felt like set-up to whatever comes next. The movie is largely table-setting in its way. Like... maybe this should have/ could have been where Marvel actually did make a TV series instead of a movie, because the world we get is so rich, I genuinely want to spend more time with these characters - and you know we'll get maybe 3 movies plus some cross-overs, and maybe we'd like more? The next time we see them won't be coming up against Annihilus, it's going to be stealing brief moments in the cross-over event. Dammit, give me more Ben/ Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) time.
Anyhow, it's the most complete feeling Marvel thing since WandaVision, and first movie that's felt like stuff I want to follow quite a bit since Captain Marvel.
I think I did a remarkable job of not talking about Vanessa Kirby being Vanessa Kirby. Please clap.
*I get that everyone says Incredibles is the best Fantastic Four movie, and I love it, too. But I think of them as being very different entities in part because of the masked vigilante angle of the Incredibles versus FF as publicly known figures trying to find microverses for the good of all mankind
**once again, it's so weird to me that Marvel now owns the idea of numbered earths in the popular consciousness after doing nothing of the sort for decades while DC expanded, contracted, expanded and contracted how many worlds existed over and over since the 1950's
Vanessa Kirby is alarmingly attractive and was deeply distracting through the whole movie
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