'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' Review: A Frothy Adventure Light on Story But Full of Family
Vanessa Kirby dominates this return of the comic world's first family
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The First Family of the comic book world has tried to get off the ground several times by this point, from the hokey (and technologically limited) release in 2005 and its sequel in 2007, to the 2015 reboot whose troubled production history is far more entertaining than the finished product. (Did anyone else just notice we’ve gotten a Fantastic Four reboot over 10 years for the last 20?) Some would argue, myself included, that The Incredibles remains the best Fantastic Four movie we’ve ever gotten and that doesn’t change with the release of Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Director Matt Shakman certainly crafts a grounded, well put together story, with some fantastic lead performances but the narrative is frustratingly slight. This is a world you want to live in and explore, but spend too much time wondering about why things are the way they are.
The Fantastic Four are the protectors of Earth 828, celebrated and beloved after being exposed to cosmic rays during a space expedition and returning home with superpowers. In this 1960s-esque, technologically timeless landscape the Fantastic Four are global leaders, celebrities, and international icons. When Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), aka Invisible Woman, and Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), also known as Mr. Fantastic, are set to have a baby, the entire world is excited. But when the intergalactic herald Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner) arrives to announce that the villain Galactus will arrive to destroy their planet, unless Reed and Sue give him their son, the Four must figure out how to save Earth and keep the child safe.
First Steps smartly eschews the Four’s origin story in favor of a quick flashback—like a retro TV program—laying out how the four got their name and the background of their lives. We meet Reed and Sue as they’re discovering they’re going to have a child, after two years of failing to conceive. The familial dynamics of the quartet celebrating the new arrival, and the awareness that Sue’s proclamation that “Nothing is going to change” is a lie, sets up a great conceit. For fans who loved Shakman’s work on WandaVision, it feels like something similar is at play.
And much of the feature’s first half settles nicely into a fun look at being a superhero family. How do you still have Sunday dinner when Moleman (a hilarious Paul Walter Hauser) is trying to take the PanAm building? There’s a very Incredibles vibe to everything, from the Kasra Farahani’s gorgeous production design to Incredibles composer Michael Giacchino’s equally earworm-y score. Even when Reed confesses Galactus wants their son, Franklin, and sees how quickly humanity turns on them, the narrative focused primarily on the Four is interesting as it connects so nicely to the parasocial relationships we have today. Our heroes must live and die for us, and possess no identity of their own. How dare you not give up your baby for humanity!
But with Shalla-Bal’s arrival comes stakes, not necessarily anything tying into the four’s emotional connection (like Hela in Thor: Ragnarok), but an intergalactic “Thing” meant to kickstart the plot. Wherein the first half was settling into finding the story as the group moves along—the arrival of a baby, in itself, brings stakes and momentum—this abruptly kicks everything into gear and becomes 100% focused on nothing more than “Save Earth.” This means the characters become one note, boiling down to a single scene of personality. Pedro Pascal chokes out “It’s my job to think of terrible things so that terrible things don’t happen,” and while it’s a beautiful scene for Pascal the movie doesn’t give him anything else. He spends the screen time being a worrywart and look frazzled. Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm is….lonely? tired? It’s really unclear. But he does have a cute potential girlfriend (Natasha Lyonne). The need to set up the humanity saving completely vaporizes any interest or depth for the characters.
That being said, the core Fantastic Four are amazing and deserve multiple movies together. But it’s Vanessa Kirby who elevates everyone. Kirby brings a similar vibe as Elizabeth Olson’s Wanda Maximoff in that she’s extremely intelligent, empathetic, and extremely powerful. But Sue’s power isn’t completely derived from her superpowers. It’s because she’s intelligent and empathetic. Her and Pascal’s scenes together are so tender and warm it’s a shame there aren’t more of them. Sue’s birth scene in space is an extremely tense and beautifully rendered moment. As the Giacchino score rises and lives are in danger, Sue tries hard not to admit everything is going to change as Reed provides comfort. It’s gorgeous. And once Franklin arrives, it is Sue who is left to justify her desire to keep her child (you almost just wish this was a Sue Storm movie, not an ensemble).
Quinn, Moss-Bachrach and Pascal are good, but they lack any big moments to make you want to follow them compared to Sue. Quinn’s Johnny Storm is left in the bonding position with Shalla-Bal, the joke being he’s drawn to the “sexy space alien.” And Julia Garner is relegated to the “hurt people hurt people” narrative we’ve seen Marvel churn out countless times. She’s very reminiscent of Zawe Ashton’s bland villain The Marvels or Emma Corrin’s character in Deadpool & Wolverine. Covered in CGI, Garner isn’t left to give much of a performance.
The third involves a hodgepodge of stray plot points culled from earlier that seem placed to fill specific gaps in the third act. Paul Walter Hauser makes a meal out of his few scenes but it’s hard not to start giggling at how quickly and simply other countries are to give up their plutonium or move in with underground city dwellers. It’s not a “we all come together for the greater good” narrative as there’s no real foundation for it. It plays abruptly like “we need to wrap this up and this is what we conjured up.” (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes screenwriter Josh Friedman and regular Marvel screenwriter Eric Pearson are credited alongside Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer’s script.) It leaves a very grounded story for the first half with a “don’t think too hard, if at all” mentality by the end.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is just that. It’s a first step for a new generation of Fantastic Four movies and, the hope, is that the stride becomes more confident from hereon out. All the materials are there. As for this film, on its own it has some serious issues to overcome, predominately in pacing and a narrative that goes for big as opposed to personal. Either way, it’s still a worthy watch, but the whole affair is the equivalent to getting a coffee that’s 90% foam.
Grade: C
The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters Friday.
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