The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Created simultaneously in 1961 and a space accident, The Fantastic Four have a storied and complex history. They have been filmed before, at least three times. Four if you count the legendary Roger Corman version from the 1990s that's more famous for the financial fracas around it than anything on screen. Not least because complicated questions about rights were less about the moral questions of X-Men than the messy business of show.

They've also had four animated versions, a habit that's continued in the details of this version. Within the universe depicted (Earth-828 true believers!) that's also true. One of the many pieces of pop-cultural sensibility, from Warhol to Frank Lloyd Wright style podium buildings, drawn from The Jetsons and the jet-age both. Breakfast cereals with talking toys, rocket towers on the Hudson, all part of an immaculate conception of a force that has been as much about family as it has fighting mole-men and shape-shifters and a litany of alliterative antagonists.

This is not just the best of the filmed Fantastic Fours but top drawer MCU, a film that entertained me as a thing itself, as a comics connoisseur, as someone who's done their Marvel miles. Its details are everywhere a delight, nods to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and deeper cuts across the (drawing) board. That includes a willingness to jump straight in, removing the tedious business of origin stories to a diegetic discussion in a television tribute to the fulsome foursome. There doesn't need to be much exposition to explain that they were exposed to extraterrestrial energies. There's more important things to cover, starting with the four becoming a five.

Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) and Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) are expecting. Her brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn), their best friend Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are going to be uncles. As one myself their nervous enthusiasm was one of of several places where nods to realism, including car seats and contributions to cookery, helped ground a story that was by definition fantastic. Reed can extend his limbs, hence Ben's nickname for him, "stretch". It's been hard to depict in anything other than drawings but this comes closest to suspending disbelief as readily as any Spider-Man swings.

Sue has control over huge swathes of energy, forming force-fields, making things selectively see-through. Projections and perspective are what she brings to the team, mentally, materially, imminently maternally. Johnny radiates differently, The Human Torch has a weirder energy than elsewhere, but how much of that as actor and how much intent is a question that doesn't really matter. It works in context, brilliantly, soaringly. More grounded still is Ben, transformed by those cosmic rays into The Thing. Still a big kid from the old neighbourhood, rocky in his countenance, no more certain in his place than any other adult and all the more adorable for it.

There are others around them, Sarah Niles and Matthew Wood contribute as confident consigliere Lynne Nichols and adorable android analogue HERBIE. There's also New York, the city that Lee and Kirby wanted to be right outside the window, a city that's home to webslingers and worse and the more wonderful. Its people, hatted and happy in the heading to Hallowe'en. We are of the sixties, the transformation from the Jet- to the Space- age, to the age of Heroes. The logos are there, from abc (a Disney company) to those of Pepsico. That product placement is partnered by riffs and references. A different Marvel opening, shades of Saul Bass. A soaring score by Michael Giacchino that has nods to greater goings before, from Jupiter Ascending to Godzilla. There's already extensive online discussion about The Emperor's Twin and Subzero Intel and I've got theories of my own. Not enough to cover arms' length of a chalkboard, but enough.

That matters less, much less, than a moral arc that relies on a rejection of the cold equations. When things go off the rails the trolley can be stopped. The four haven't been to space in some time, but space reaches back. Led by the Herald of Galactus herself, the Silver Surfer. Julia Garner's one of several characters whose appearance is altered digitally. Like her boss (Ralph Ineson) a certain degree of unreality in the metallic or the mildly mauve does double duty. It distances the alien from the mundane, but also keeps Ben Grimm's bouldery body in background.

I'd go into more detail but there isn't the need. In part to keep you from spoilers, but also because however finely grained my fondness is the sense of the subtle shouldn't stop you from seeing a superb superhero showing. That this is one of the few films you'll see that credits advisors for both midwifery and surfing is a thing that makes it special but it does enough by itself to more than recommend it. At times keeping contemporary with the Marvel Cinematic Universe can feel like a chore, but this isn't a hero's journey that requires homework or a routemap. You could, indeed possibly should, start here - and I'd hope, indeed predict, that you'd enjoy it.

Its few stumbles come from genre, if one chooses to look down it is entertainment but not art but one cannot spell the former without the latter. Even the smallest parts contribute to the whole, enough that four doesn't feel fantastic enough. The comic sensibilities in here include humour that had a sold-out showing in stitches, but also a fondness for source that's grounded in respect. Too often there's a wink and a nod and a knowing that is seeking to distance these childish things from childishness. Sometimes being an adult involves being silly without sarcasm, in revelling in the ridiculous without being snidely self-conscious. Fantastic Four avoids the irony that can be Kryptonite that affects even the most recent Superman.

When we opened our third eye for film and gazed into the Multiplex of Madness we saw Wes Anderson's version and a montage of the baby-proofing of the Baxter Building scratched that itch in parallel. Director Matt Shakman's career is fascinating, this is only his second feature but he's got a confidence and deftness that comes from working on dozens of high-profile (and high quality) television shows, works on stage, and his even earlier appearances as a child actor. Reading through the list of shows he's helmed episodes for is like a pocket-guide to prestige television, and his heavy involvement in Wandavision connects him to one of the best bits of the extended Marvel universe.

I've a rough rule of thumb that the quality of a script is inversely proportionate to the number of contributors, but Fantastic Four is a challenge to that calculation. With sixty years of stories to draw from there's innumerable inspirations at source, and synthesising that surfeit into something satisfying has clearly been a team effort. Josh Friedman's no stranger to big franchises and adaptations, but I've been a fan since 1996's Chain Reaction. Eric Pearson's done plenty in the MCU before, most recently the thrilling Thunderbolts* but also processed words for Transformers One.

My expectations as a viewer of a certain age for Transformers One were complicated but I'm delighted that Pearson seems to have my number where there's digits in the title. Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer are a writing duo with whose work I am far less familiar, but I enjoyed this enough to try to seek them out. Kat Wood's helped pen a version of the Arthur and Merlin story. Several of these are names that were last in film credits more than a decade ago, and just as I'm looking forward to The Fantastic Four returning in Avengers: Doomsday I'm counting the days to seeing their names in credits next.

For those looking to be ready there's an important mid-credits scene and the one at the very end isn't as essential for planning but is still a pleaser. That matters less than going to see this. I was delighted, enough that I'll probably be going back while it's on big screens. It's easy to get disenchanted with Disney, the mechanisms of Marvel merchandising, of Star Wars spin-offs and endless photorealistic plunderings described as live-action are as wearying as their lack of imagination is worrying. Every once in a while though there's something that reminds audiences why they keep trying to go back to the same well for water, why these work. These first steps are worth following. They're a starting gun for a new phase of Marvel movies, a way in for audiences who may have lapsed in their looking to the point of feeling lapped. One of the delights of comic books is the drawing, to see in art intent. Modern digital effects come closer than ever before to giving creatives the same freedom that lines on the page have done for millennia. Word on the street is older still, and with big boots to fill these Fantastic Four's first steps are worth tapping along to.

Reviewed on: 27 Jul 2025