It took long enough, but after years of teasing, the Fantastic Four have finally joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While the cinematic history of Marvel’s First Family doesn’t exactly make for essential viewing, the MCU's recent fumbles mean there's more pressure than ever for Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps to perform. Thankfully, the superpowered quartet soars to new heights for both the Fantastic Four and the world’s highest-grossing franchise.
Kicking off Phase 6 in style, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a breath of fresh air at a time when Disney needs it. While many are gearing up for the return of Robert Downey Jr. to play Doctor Doom in the Avengers: Doomsday, First Steps doesn’t get too bogged down in queuing what comes next, and instead, rightly focuses on building the retrofuturistic world of Earth-828.
With the previous movies leaning hard on Doctor Doom as the team’s most iconic foe, I’m glad to see Shakman didn’t take the easy route here. Instead, he takes on the monumental task of trying to bring Galactus to the silver screen as more than just the gaseous cloud that appeared in Fantastic Four. Rise of the Silver Surfer.
Four heads are better than one
At the core of First Steps are Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Reed Richards, Sue and Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm. Each slips easily into their role like a customized astronaut suit, but special praise has to go to Kirby and Moss-Bacharach for giving the ensemble its real heart.
Whereas Pascal’s sometimes cold Mister Fantastic is the brains of the outfit, Kirby’s stellar performance pitches her as a female powerhouse up there with Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch and Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova. While I’d have liked more of the emotional struggles Ben Grimm faces as the team’s rocky muscle, he brilliantly balances comedy and heartache, even getting a love interest in the form of Natasha Lyonne’s Rachel Rozman.
Rounding off the cast, Paul Walter Hauser steals the show in a relatively minor role as Mole Man, giving the team’s first comic book for his time shine. Julia Garner also plays a hard-shelled Shalla-Bal as a middle finger to those who’ve clearly never picked up a comic book and took umbrage with a female Silver Surfer, as all of these characters settle into the blue hues of this truly unique world.
Not since Black Panther has the MCU delivered such an interesting backdrop that’s so refreshing. Even though the post-credit tease of The New Avengers suggests the FF will soon be hopping over to Earth-616, at least Earth-828 escapes Galactus’ hunger with the potential to return in the inevitable sequel to First Steps.
There are some impressive action sequences, especially as First Steps reaches for the stars in a movie that goes in a very different direction from the typical spacefaring stories like Guardians of the Galaxy. Set to Michael Giacchino’s stirring score, he continues his impressive legacy after providing the music to the likes of Doctor Strange and directing Werewolf by Night.
It would also be amiss not to mention the costumes, as we can only imagine the money that went into bringing this '60s aesthetic to life in terms of wardrobe and set design. Couple this with stunning VFX, and you really start to see how far we’ve come from the early days of Iron Man. Marking the MCU’s 37th movie, First Steps’ visuals are as good as you’re going to see in an IMAX movie. In particular, the work on the Thing is top-notch as you see every crevice.
Devouring the competition
Still, First Steps isn’t a perfect outing, as that age-old MCU villain problem rears its head one again. Even though we (thankfully) skipped over the tired trope of an origin story with a few flashbacks and newsreels, it was still hard to shoehorn someone as colossal as Galactus into First Steps’ relatively lean 114-minute runtime. We’re not surprised Shakman had to cut John Malkovich’s character, who we can only assume was Red Ghost.
Apart from a throwaway mention from Galactus that he used to be a mere man many eons ago, there’s no real backstory. Nor do we get to see his planet-consuming power aside from a brief scene where an unimportant planet is devoured when the Fantastic Four first meet him. Why not up the stakes by having him gobble Earth-828’s version of Xandar or Titan?
With so much to cover in terms of setting up the team and their world, it might’ve been better for First Steps to go the Spider-Man: Homecoming route and focus on one of the many name-dropped lesser villains like the Mad Thinker or the Wizard. Even though we’re glad Galactus hasn’t been killed off in one movie, his inevitable return is an annoying post-Secret Wars tease that's in danger of ending up like the MCU’s many other cliffhangers we might never get resolutions to. Elsewhere, eagle-eyed viewers have noticed a slew of big scenes that featured in the trailers but are missing from the final cut. Shakman could’ve surely added a couple more minutes to the runtime.
Ultimately, The Fantastic Four starts off strong but falls into an inevitable MCU lull as it tries to downplay a threat as gargantuan as Galactus in the third act. There’s also the Doom-shaped elephant in the room as First Steps can’t help but cue the Russo Brothers’ upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. Instead of giving us a payoff from The New Avengers, there’s an ominous post-credit stinger of some nondescript Victor Von Doom without so much as an RDJ cameo.
It’s hard to see how we get from this to Doomsday, especially with Avengers 5 next on the MCU docket. Ultimately, it feels like the future of the Fantastic Four is in safe hands with the Russo Brothers and Shakman. Having given us WandaVision and one of the MCU’s best movies in recent years, here’s hoping Shakman will get to return to the fold for The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ fated sequel.
More sci-fi movies and TV:
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter, and check out our YouTube channel.