If Disneyland were to open a Fantastic Four ride, there would be a jokey, excessively art-directed ten-minute video telling park visitors everything they need to know about the super-team and their world. And if that ten-minute video somehow became a two-hour feature, it would look a lot like The Fantastic Four: First Steps, a movie so in love with its own retro-futurist sheen that it never bothers to build characters or a real world beneath the period gloss.
Of all the Marvel Comics ever created, this jewel in their crown — the superhero book that launched the original Marvel Universe — continues to resist a big-screen adaptation. Director Matt Shakman (a TV vet) and a hard-working production design crew create an alternate world (Earth 828, to be precise) that’s a gleaming version of the 1960s, one where there are both flying cars and grounded autos with fins. But what they’ve created is a toybox, a diorama that marries design styles and technology but that never feels like a place where actual people live. (The fact that shows like Severance and Marvel’s own Loki have already reveled in the office machinery and architecture of the 1960s and 1970s takes away the zing of a world that seems to exist with almost no right angles.)
We open with an episode of a TV show celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Fantastic Four, a super-group formed when scientist Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), ace pilot Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Reed’s wife Susan (Vanessa Kirby), and Susan’s brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) rocketed into space and were subjected to a DNA scramble thanks to a bombardment of cosmic rays. Now Reed can stretch his arms across a room, Ben’s skin is articulated stone, Susan emits force fields and can turn invisible, while Johnny is a human torch (one of several comic-book nomenclatures never mentioned here) who emits flames and flies.
They’ve become heroes in this world, fending off various globe-threatening villains and even spearheading a UN-like organization called the Future Foundation, working toward a worldwide program of disarmament. But then an interstellar herald (Julia Garner, playing a character in the comics known as the Silver Surfer) arrives to tell everyone that Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson) is coming soon to devour the Earth so, you know, kiss each other and your planet goodbye. Our heroes travel to deep space to confront Galactus face to face, and the mammoth being says he’ll spare Earth if he can have Reed and Susan’s unborn child, which possesses a cosmic power they can’t begin to understand.
So yes, this is another franchise kicking off with the fate of the planet at stake, so you can guess how that goes. And while it’s the journey and not the destination that matters, the journey itself is a generic checklist, its quartet of heroes sanded down to blandness. We’re told that Johnny is a lothario but only get to see that in action when he momentarily flirts with Galactus’ herald, and while the Ben Grimm of the comics is both tormented by his physical change and a funny, loyal bruiser you want in your corner, the quartet of screenwriters haven’t given him much of a personality at all, a problem exacerbated by Moss-Bachrach’s naturalistic acting style. His low-key energy has served him well in other projects — he scored some of the most moving moments in the current season of The Bear — but his performance here is entombed inside this CG creation.
Apart from a few scene-stealing moments involving Paul Walter Hauser as the subterranean Mole Man, the only cast member who stands out is Kirby; if, as the anecdotal assumption goes, an everyday mother can summon sudden, car-lifting strength to rescue her endangered infant, just imagine what a super-powered mom can and will do to save her baby from a world-devouring behemoth.
There’s a lot to like about the world of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, from the mid-century kitsch to the progressive social ethos to its generally upbeat demeanor, but the movie itself lacks the nerve to carve out a memorable personality. Bespoke costumes and vintage Lucky Charms boxes are the empty props of a timid movie.
Director: Matt Shakman
Screenwriters: Josh Friedman and Eric Pearson and Jeff Kaplan & Ian Springer, based on characters created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn, Ralph Ineson, Julia Garner, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser, Sarah Niles, Mark Gatiss
Producer: Kevin Feige
Executive producers: Louis D’Esposito, Grant Curtis, Tim Lewis, Robert Kulzer
Cinematographer: Jess Hall
Production design: Kasra Farahani
Editing: Nona Khodai, Tim Roche
Music: Michael Giacchino
Sound design: Josh Gold, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: Marvel Studios
In English
115 minutes
