First Steps Review – ‘The best Marvel movie in years’

Despite the insistence of this latest Fantastic Four film’s subtitle, it arrives carrying a distinct hint of déjà vu. Not least because 2007’s so-so sequel Rise Of The Silver Surfer covered the very same Earth-threatening ground, with the same (very very) big bad. But, just as you might worry how yet another Fantastic Four could serve up anything close to fresh, you might also take heart in the relieving fact that fourth time (okay, fifth if you count the never-released Roger Corman-produced movie) is a charm.

This is down to two factors: the casting and the world-building. One of Marvel Studios’ strengths is finding the best people for the roles. After all, they know all these long-storied comic-book characters better than anyone else, and can sniff out their essence in actors that might at first not seem obvious to everyone else. So, please welcome to the MCU: Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, a socially awkward, softly spoken brainiac who’s most comfortable using his bendy-stretchy powers to reach the furthest corners of his giant chalkboard while sciencing shit out. Former Princess Margaret Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, aka Mrs Richards, whose mother-bear energy finally confirms the Invisible Woman as the quartet’s most powerful member. Joseph ‘Eddie Munson’ Quinn as Johnny Storm, thankfully freed from the cocksure hot-head stereotype (though he does now have a thing for “naked space women”, specifically Julia Garner’s frosty Silver Surfer); and The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the orange-rocky Ben Grimm, unburdened of the self-loathing that’s shaded previous Things, allowing his orange-rocky heart to shine.

They are, it must be said, a chemistry-test-acing quartet. And it is a smart move to join them four years into their superheroic career. The “cosmic turbulence” origin story is skipped over via TV newsreels, so we join them as a tight, settled, fame-comfortable family unit which has more or less solved all the local crime problems… just before mega-foe Galactus (Ralph Ineson) moves into orbit. Rather like a certain other blue-suited superhero who returned to our screens this summer, they are presented as “the very best of us”, and it is a welcome joy to bathe in a little of their bright-hued optimism. Yet, unlike that certain other cape-fluttering-fellah, the Four inhabit a world with no other known superpeople — something that hasn’t happened in the MCU since it launched with Iron Man. For the first time in what for many viewers will feel like a lifetime, there is no movie/TV show cross-referencing required to fully appreciate this Marvel joint. As rewarding as that could be for those that can keep up, the decision to locate this story in an Avengers-free alternative universe makes it feel blessedly lighter and crisper than anything we’ve seen from Marvel Studios in quite a while.

Which brings us to the world-building. Similar to Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, director Matt Shakman and his team have constructed an entire environment, with a striking aesthetic, to echo and complement the main characters. Except where Keaton-Bats had a towering neo-Gothic Gotham, the F4 have a vivid, zippy ’60s-retrofuturistic sci-fi Manhattan. It’s a city with flying cars and its own rocket launch pad, but where the fashion is pure Mad Men, the tech is mostly analogue, and the TV cartoons are still jerkily hand-drawn. It’s such a fun and well-crafted world that it almost feels a shame to anticipate Reed, Sue and co leaving it for next year’s Doomsday shenanigans.

Speaking of supervillains, it is good to finally see Galactus done properly on the big screen — or rather, IMAX screen, as that’s evidently the only format large enough to handle the lofty space-git. Rise Of The Silver Surfer fudged the Eater of Worlds as a vast cosmic fart, but here he’s presented in all his Godzilla-sized-humanoid glory, courtesy of none other than Finchy from The Office himself, Ralph Ineson. Finchy could throw a kettle over a pub, but this guy could simply tread on the pub.

As you’d expect from its villain, there is an outsize, other-worldly flavour to the action, some of which takes place off-Earth — in a visual style that owes quite a bit to Interstellar, it must be said. At times the CGI creaks, especially when locating baby Franklin Richards amid the action, but there is less VFX slop than has recently come to define this kind of adventure.

Besides, the focus is squarely on the family at the story’s nucleus. If the script doesn’t hit quite so many comedic high notes as some other Marvels, it at least brims with sincerity, presenting a heroic squad committed to protecting the Earth, while encouraging the whole world to link arms and do its bit, too. Those are the kind of heroes, it feels, that we need right now.