The Fantastic Four: First Steps

There’s no way it should have been this hard or taken this long to do Marvel’s First Family justice, and in some ways, that justice still hasn’t been served.

Set in the MCU but taking place on a totally different Earth in the multiverse, specifically Earth-828, The Fantastic Four: First Steps reintroduces the titular superhero team in a retro-futuristic ’50s setting, complete with a familiar team dynamic pulled directly from the comics. Bringing Mr. Fantastic aka Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Invisible Woman aka Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), The Thing aka Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and Human Torch aka Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) into a world unlike anything fans have seen before, it isn’t long before Reed and Sue’s first child, Franklin, is introduced, kick-starting the latest chapter in the saga of the Fantastic Four. Soon confronted by a space-traveling herald named Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), who claims that an ancient cosmic entity known as Galactus (Ralph Ineson) is on his way to annihilate the planet, the FF are forced to take matters into their own hands. And as the creeping death that is Galactus grows ever closer, the team must figure a way to not only stop this omnipotent being before he destroys everything they hold dear but also make sense of a concerning fact about their son that may not bode well for his future.

Though I didn’t outright hate the last few Fantastic Four films, they didn’t do nearly enough to make me like the FF any more than the passing interest I already had in their comic adventures. And while this one does do some things right when it comes to rectifying past movie issues as well as giving fans a more comic-accurate take on this superhero family, First Steps isn’t as engaging, well-written, or exciting as it should have been, giving me pause about the direction of these characters moving forward, on top of their overall importance in the grand scheme of the MCU.

First steps first: for as much as I’m about to complain about this film, I still have to admit that I enjoyed at least some of it. From the inspired retro-futuristic setting to some cool cosmic action involving a black hole to a couple of scenes that played well with the FF’s family dynamic, I still only liked First Steps on a surface level, with most of the rest of the movie falling well below average in terms of quality — a problem if only because of the sheer amount of lackluster MCU films releasing lately.

On paper, the casting for this one should have been perfect. But just because Pedro Pascal was the hot actor at the time doesn’t mean he needed to be put into everything all at once. Giving an overall bland performance and doing little to give Mr. Fantastic any personality outside of spouting scientific exposition every couple of seconds — the character’s self-destructive tendencies really aren’t on display here as much as they should have been — Pascal doesn’t exactly phone his performance in here, but he’s also not doing anything of substance either. Besides that, Reed’s stretching powers are relegated to a couple of short scenes where he’s mostly using them to traverse the environment, giving fans the bare minimum when it comes to showcasing his elasticity.

Then there’s Joseph Quinn’s Human Torch and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s The Thing, two characters whose tough-love relationship is barely realized in the script, to say nothing about the lack of sarcastic chemistry they’re known for being almost nonexistent. Yet, for as uninspired as the casting is, I do have to at least give Vanessa Kirby’s Invisible Woman some credit, as the movie at least attempts to delve into what makes her tick while putting her more or less at the center of this film’s conflict. Not a good showing for a film that was supposed to reboot these characters in ways that would sustain them moving forward.

And not to get too far into spoiler territory, but to put a cherry on top of why this movie frustrated me more than anything else comes in the form of Reed’s third-act plan to stop Galactus. Once Galactus arrives planet-side, Mr. Fantastic, supposedly the smartest man on Earth, comes up with one of the most flimsy, underdeveloped, and dumb ideas to pull a fast one on Galactus, a being, mind you, with intimate knowledge of the cosmos and of life itself. Not only is this a terrible way to showcase Mr. Fantastic’s intellect and the unfathomable danger that Galactus poses, but from a scripting level, it’s just plain lazy.

Throw in the fact that the film felt like a reworked version of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer half the time, and along with some uninspired casting and mostly disappointing computer effects, the script quickly became my biggest gripe. This isn’t the reintroduction of wonder or even the deepening of familial themes in the MCU. This isn’t the triumphant return of Marvel’s First Family, nor the MCU refresh that had made so many of the inaugural heroes of this franchise work so well in live-action. It’s a just okay, somewhat uninspired film that clearly needed to be shoved into theaters to make the FF relevant before Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars arrive. And depending on how those movies go, the FF could bounce back better than ever and become a team worth rooting for, but I’m honestly not holding my breath.

Better than the last few attempts at bringing Reed, Sue, and the rest of the gang to the big screen, yet not exactly knocking it out of the park itself, First Steps doesn’t do what it needed to do to turn this team into the best live-action incarnation of the Fantastic Four yet. That said, there are some things to like, from the few decent action scenes to the general setting of this unique world to the promise of something better spinning from the groundwork laid down here. But as it stands now, I don’t really care for The Fantastic Four: First Steps as much as I probably should, something that doesn’t bode well for their next appearance in Avengers: Doomsday and whatever else the future of the MCU holds.