Rating: ★★★★ (4.0/5)
This review may contain spoilers.
A lot of folks think that Marvel has been on the struggle bus since Endgame came out and they’ve had a hard time finding their voice again without Iron Man and Captain America holding it down. I don’t completely disagree but I’ve been a little more gentle on them and honestly have thoroughly enjoyed most of the movies that other people have taken a crap on. Looking at you, Marvels.
Today, I saw The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and I want to believe they got their groove back. They didn’t hold back leaning into the comic book fun that we all love when we pick up a book. They nailed the casting on this movie, and the 1960’s retro-future aesthetic was absolutely perfect. I love this world where the only real defenders of the people are this one loved and celebrated family. It’s such a cool place to spend some time. I also want my own Herbie the robot because that little dude worked hard to keep this ship afloat.
The story was a lot of fun. The impending doom of a giant planet eater is something I wasn’t sure could be handled in a single movie, but they did a really great job starting and ending the fight. There was a lot of story going on at once though and that hurt it to me a little bit. We picked up with the story of Sue having a kid, then worked our way through that and picked up again with trying to resolve the Galactus situation.
On the one hand, it’s fun to see all the comic book nonsense on screen, but on the other hand it’s also difficult to reconcile certain things that just wouldn’t work. For instance, I can’t park my brain long enough to not imagine how terrible having a baby in zero gravity would be. I also can’t imagine how teleporting a single egg could be scaled up to the entire earth without proper testing. I know that’s something I wouldn’t really think twice about in the comics but I had a hard time not seeing the holes in when I was watching it on screen.
That being said, I’m not going to end this review in a downer. The casting was absolutely top notch, dare I say, “fantastic.” I loved Pedro Pascal’s Mr. Fantastic. His stoicism and cool delivery are everything I would expect from a guy who has an incredible logical problem-solving brain but almost no emotional function. Sue holds this family together like an anchor and shows herself to be one of the most powerful heroes in her own right. Ben and Johnny are wonderful together in this movie. Ben, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, is probably the best version of The Thing we’ve ever seen on screen. And I loved Michael Chiklas. I can’t say enough about how well they did picking Marvel’s first family.
The final thought I have is really the Jack Kirby love shown in this movie. Marvel didn’t try to do anything fancy and new. They went straight to the source and kept the movie true to it. It was really like watching the comic book characters come to life as we know them. Marvel having their own properties back in their hands, at least the Fox ones, is excellent. If they can take a franchise that has struggled time after time to find its footing in movies, then I’m so excited to see what they do with some of the others that were already wildly successful.
We also get a killer Dr. Doom mid credits scene. It’s not huge, but it’s powerful enough to get me really excited for Avengers: Doomsday. I think we’re going to be in for a treat.