Fantastic Four: A Breezy Sci-Fi Adventure with a Retro Twist

Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a fun, handsome throwback to one of the comic book publisher’s earliest superhero teams. It has a handsome, 1960s-influenced visual palette and several sturdy performances (particularly from Pedro Pascal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach). And yet, for all its retro-cool and fan-service flourishes, it never finds the pulse-quickening drama or heart-tugging narrative propulsion to stick with you long after the lights come up.

Marvel producer Kevin Feige was right to call the film “a no-homework-required” movie experience. After 10 years of supersized spectacles with subplots that reach across the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s a relief to have a Marvel movie that doesn’t expect you to know anything about other movies, multiverses, Easter eggs, cameos, spin-offs, or anything else. For better or worse, First Steps reboots its four lead characters and reintroduces the audience to Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm without any connection to the continuity of past comics, cartoons, or live-action adaptations. This is as standalone as standalone gets, and First Steps is pretty content to keep it that way, sometimes to a fault.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps begins with a TV talk show that we soon learn is being hosted by Mark Gatiss in character as a middle-aged William Howlett. It’s a convenient but useful device: a 45-minute recap of how these four characters became who we know them to be. Four years ago, the Fantastic Four were ordinary (yet brilliant, or beautiful, or daring) humans with regular jobs. But they all went on a cosmic space mission in which they were exposed to a mysterious radiation that changed their DNA.

Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards is both thoughtful and funny, and he’s the one with the power of elasticity: a body so stretchy he can twist and contort it like a human accordion. Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm can turn herself invisible (her body light bends around her like a funhouse mirror) and push out streams of force fields. Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm is the Human Torch: pyrokinetic skin that can be set aflame at will and allowing him to fly. Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm was the only one who didn’t enjoy this DNA mutation: The rest of the team got superpowers, but his genes mutated in such a way that he became a permanently huge, rock-covered, comic-book-looking giant with super-strength.

It’s been four years, and the four live together in what looks to be a mid-century modernist space compound. Think flying cars, chalkboard equations as kitchen wallpaper, and a toddler-sized robot named H.E.R.B.I.E. making breakfast and cleaning up. The set and costume design feel like a perfectly realized slice of retro-futurism, complete with big square TV screens (including on their wrist-watches) and not a single smartphone. It looks like the Marvel Universe did some fan-fiction rewriting of the Jetsons’ family fantasy with Lost in Space’s version of the future.

The look of the film is endearing, but the actual narrative moves at a rather leisurely pace. Its core thematic through-line is the family bond between the four main characters. Sue is pregnant, and we learn this in the opening scene. Reed’s reaction is equal parts fraught and adorable, and in one of the film’s funniest sequences, he has H.E.R.B.I.E. baby-proof their home and science lab. Johnny and Ben operate as brotherly playmates and comedic foils. And while both of them are slightly sheepish about this impending parentage, they enjoy the idea of being uncles.

But no sooner do we see the four enjoying this family moment than a familiar, menacing-looking monster arrives. Galactus, an armored behemoth with glowing red eyes, is on a collision course with Earth. Before he arrives to make good on his appetite for planets, Galactus sends a herald to announce the bad news. She’s a silver-skinned blonde who arrives on a levitating surfboard and wears a pointy helmet. (She’s played in motion capture by Julia Garner.) The Silver Surfer, as the character is known in the comics, is sleek and badass. But she’s also another object of erotic curiosity (and even infatuation) for Johnny.

The action isn’t that extreme, though. In the middle of space travel and running from Galactus and the Silver Surfer, a lot of the set pieces play like video game trials. We get all sorts of blasts of light, flame trails, and computer-generated visual fireworks. But everything has a retro look to it that matches the stylized set and costume design. Bright colors pop like psychedelic lava lamps. And Sue is going into labor mid-mission during the climax of the film? Surreal as all get-out. In a way, birth and the potential end of the Earth have never been so beautiful, or so bizarre, or quite so bedazzling.

It’s that sense of sincerity wrapped in whimsy that most defines the film’s tone. For all the effort put into choreographing a handful of these visual stunts, the emotional center of the film often feels buried under all that pastel color. It’s hard to feel like anything is at stake, even when we’re told the fate of Earth is on the line. This is a children’s adventure story, and it’s closer in spirit to E.T. than Guardians of the Galaxy.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is fine and well-acted, but the life-and-death stakes just aren’t there. It’s a more friendly family than a cosmic crisis. For those in the mood for something lighter than Marvel’s next apocalyptic showstopper, it may be just the ticket. But for those who need a little more thrill with their reboot, it’s a beautifully wrapped package that isn’t quite as special as its contents.