Friday Watch: Fantastic Four - First Steps (2025)

Watched:  08/21/2026

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  Fourth?

Director:  Matt Shakman

First - I am no longer discussing Marvel movies as *movies*.  It's ludicrous to do so.  No one has tried and achieved everything Marvel Studios has done, and to pretend any of what is happening in any single movie is not part of a greater whole is untruthful.  If your problem is that a Marvel movie is tied to other Marvel movies and TV shows, the door is that way. 

We already talked about this movie twice before when I saw it in the theater (twice) and then when my dad came over to keep an eye on me after I had a big screw put in my foot (on purpose) and was recuperating/ hopped-up on goofballs.

But with Doomsday coming, I'd been thinking about the movie a great deal.  After all, Victor was conspicuously absent in this Fantastic Four movie, but it sure seemed to point to where things are going as the FF are all over one of the trailers.

HEAVY SPOILERS AND POINTLESS SPECULATION BELOW

People didn't seem to like this movie very much, and I can kind of see why.  It has to do so much, it's largely movie by bullet point.  I'll always stand on the idea that this *should* have been an eight episode TV show instead of a movie - there was just so much ground to cover.  Actually showing the FF take on the Mole Man would have been nice as an intro.  Getting to see more of Franklin's arrival and hinting for a while that Galactus was coming...  more about Shalla Bol.  And absolutely more of Rachel Rozman as playd by Natasha Lyonne.  

It moves at a clip that can be too much and not enough.  We're not getting time to sit with any one idea, make the connections.  It just kind of keeps happening.  And so we're not given enough time to disassemble all of the ideas and character stuff, and make it meaningful.

What surprises me a bit is that people weren't along for the ride based solely on the charm of the characters, the visual story-telling, and the score.  

Say whatever else you want, but the FF have a unique chemistry established immediately by Stan and Jack (and improved once Ben stopped feeling sorry for himself non-stop and the eventually Sue being written as caring about something more than whether she has Reed's attention or not).  The family dynamic rather than a rag-tag bunch of misfits can be a breath of fresh air in a crowded field of anti-heroes forced to work together by circumstance.  

Visually - this movie is @#$%ing amazing.  The Retro-Future early 60's vibe, brightly lit instead of hiding what they can't do in shadow, is a huge part of the story.  It suggests "what if our superheroes really did focus on solving *everything* instead of just punching stuff?" - the police have Fantasticars in this movie, there's evolved technology, things tucked onto the city streets I assume are communication towers...  Everything in the film is *designed*.  Familiar enough, but also made to look part of this world in particular.  Even HERBIE has a hatch in the back of his head familiar to anyone who ever took electronics apart in a pre-solid state age.   

Everyone is in period-appropriate wardrobe, and there's a suggestion that Earth-828's segregation is non-existent or well in the past.  The streets of Times Square are lined with giant tube TV's alongside movie theaters and stores that have been there for decades.  

I am going to be so sad to see the FF have to ditch this styling for outfits that fit better into the aesthetic of an Avengers movie.

So, what is the doing?  Why was it built how it is?

Well, it's setting up the entire origin and status quo of the Fantastic Four, establishing their character traits and how they relate to each other in, like, the first ten minutes.  Plus, introducing the thing that will change everything.  No, not Galactus.  It heralds the arrival of the baby that will be Franklin Richards.

By showing Galactus this early on, we're not dealing with a street-level threat like the Red Ghost and his apes, something that would be cool to see, but we believe the FF can handle with a few hours of work.  Instead, we're dealing with an extinction level event.   So what it's really doing is setting up who these characters are and what they'll be like when they show up for Avengers: Doomsday.  

What are those odd scenes in the middle where Sue (Vanessa Kirby) accuses Reed of considering what she considers unthinkable - handing Franklin over to Galactus.  Is Reed seriously considering it?

He states there's always been something wrong with him - and I think we're to understand that he considers the solutions to problems before he weighs the human element.

So, yeah, Reed (probably paired with some other heavy hitters from across Marvel's multiverse) is going to pull some crazy stuff out with a high human cost for Avengers: Doomsday.  This entire movie may be the groundwork for that.  

We also see him trying to go down the path of explaining the multiverse on his kid's show in the first few minutes.  And if Victor Von Doom is involved, and he sure is, this movie sure went to great lengths to *not* bring the guy up til the last second - showing the empty Latverian chairs at the Future Foundation.  

If Reed and Victor have the same relationship here in Earth 828 that they do from the mainline comics, I suppose Reed would see Victor's actions as partially his to resolve.

I could be wrong, but I've read enough Marvel to guess that I am not.

But because people slept on this movie or wrote it off as not what they wanted (I think the under 120 minutes of real story time didn't help like people assumed it would) the goals of the movie likely got pushed under the rug a little.

It's still by far the best movie interpretation (sorry people who were eight when they saw the first one and imprinted on it like a baby bird), and Eben Moss-Bacharach is going to be impossible to beat as Ben Grimm in my book.

But I enjoyed the plot.

the plot