The Fantastic Four: First Steps Review

Alright, a brand new Fantastic Four movie. Let's see if this one will be any good despite the MCU being decent at best these days.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a comic book movie based on the Marvel Comics' team the Fantastic Four. This is the fifth movie based on the team, the second reboot, and serves as the 37th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As per usual with these movies Marvel Studios did production with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures handling distribution. The story is written by Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer with Matt Shakman directing.

The story is, on Earth-828 is been four years since Reed Richards, his wife Susan Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm got their powers and became a superhero team. While they've faced challenges before, a bigger and much more dangerous known as Galactus is coming to their world to devour it. The Four must pull themselves together and put a stop to this seemingly unstoppable monster.

Initial Reaction

Despite this movie not being on my Most Anticipated list and not being the biggest Fantastic Four fan or not even a fan in general, I was curious how Marvel Studios would handle these characters. Cause let's be honest they haven't been doing a good job post-Avengers: Endgame. But I figured they couldn't do any worse than the studio butchered 2015 flick (I refuse to call it Josh Trank's film). So I rewatched the old movies for a Road to and even reviewed some comics along the way, and hoped for the best.

Cons

Nothing here folks.

Middle Ground

Let's start off with characters. Firstly there's both Reed and Susan. Since becoming parents they both feel the weight of parenthood, only for this story is a lot more intense because Galactus wants their newly born son Franklin. But with that out of the way they do have more human problems. With Reed he's struggling with balancing his duties as a father and being a brilliant scientist, and for Sue while she's far more emotionally intelligent she does have her own struggles. She still wants to be caring mother and keep Franklin safe, but with Galactus coming closer and closer to devour Earth she knows she'll have to make some tough decisions. Then there's Johnny. Now the marketing didn't do his character any favors. It gave you the impression he was gonna be more annoying than funny. Thankfully that wasn't the case. Sure he still has his comedic scenes, but in the movie his story is trying to get to the Silver Surfer's aka Shalla-Bal's humanity. Now for the weakest story arcs. First up is The Thing/Ben Grimm. Now he does have somewhat of a romantic subplot with a school teacher named Rachel Rozman, but because of limited screentime we don't see much of them together. Oftentimes The Thing is just being a loyal friend. Then we have Shalla-Bal/Silver Surfer. The writers do try to flesh her out with her backstory, but she's still a very surface level character. Lastly there's Galactus. They really didn't give him much. At one point he tells the Fantastic Four he wants Franklin to replace him and in doing so it'll end his hunger because it just causes him suffering. But the movie never dives deeper into that agony other than that line. So for most of the film Galactus is just a reality really big giant and nothing more. So yeah, some writing for the characters were better than the others.

Pros

I'll start with what worried me the most and that was the humor. Well good news everyone, the humor is toned down. Sure we get some moments with the "MCU humor", but that was I think like two or three moments. Most of the time the movie's played straight. Then there's the world. While we have traveled to different places in the MCU, 99.99% of the time were taken to places that look like stuff you'd see in the real world. With Fantastic Four: First Steps we're taken to a world that looks like a futuristic 1960's, and I loved every bit of it. The setting looked great and has mentioned before it's very different compared to previous cities in the MCU. The last thing I'll praise is the cast and their chemistry. These four surprised me. They play off each other perfectly and they come off as a dysfunctional yet loving family. But even when separated they're great. Vanessa Kirby brings quite a lot of heart as Sue Storm, both as the emotional anchor for the team and as a new mother. And well I do agree that over the years Pedro Pascal has become a very overexposed actor, I can't deny he did a good job as Reed Richards. He was a pretty good balance of genius and a man struggling to be a good father. These two were the biggest standouts and they delivered.

Now this movie isn't a masterpiece and I highly doubt it'll bring the MCU back to its former glory, but hopefully this'll be a good sign that the quality from here forward will be more consistent than the good to mix to utter garbage stuff we have now.

My final rating is, Good.

Okay that'll wrap things up. Come back on Monday, Jul 28th, for my review of Happy Gilmore 2. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.