The Fantastic Four First Steps is Truly Fantastic

Marvel's The Fantastic Four: First Steps has not done particularly well at the box office, and I think it's a shame that the studio's past imaginative tedium has gatekept this movie from financial success because, for the first time in a long time, I feel excited about the future of superhero filmmaking. I didn't just like First Steps. I loved it. This movie is sleek. This movie is heartfelt. This movie contains a surprisingly believable family element. Most importantly, this movie is bold, as bold as superhero movies can be and even beyond that measure in many ways. Granted, its story isn't exactly the most daring high diver out there. Galactus is back to try and eat Earth for the seventeenth first time, with the Silver Surfer once again heralding his arrival. It's a story that's been told before, but this movie's surprising 1950s aesthetic gives it the quality of an old comic book, a far cry from the visual clickbait Marvel has accustomed us to. If you grew up on classic Fantastic Four, you will feel right at home watching First Steps. This is the first Marvel movie I've seen in a while with a tone it can truly call its own. Narratively, this movie is also excellent, and its ethical weight is equal parts surprising and satisfying. It can be a powerful movie, too. Even if it flies among the stars, it never misplaces our characters' fears, hopes, and loves, and so it stays surprisingly grounded. This movie is just as much about The Fantastic Four as it is about their exceptional feats.

The pseudo-50s setting of First Steps is outstandingly charming, a surprising flash of creativity for a movie inhabiting a genre almost devoid of it. The production design of this movie is thorough, the type to choose practical effects over computer graphics when it can, and I'd go so far as to say that this is the first Marvel movie since Deadpool and Wolverine that feels creative, as if imagination was a prime consideration of the filmmakers. Nonetheless, its vision extends even further than its potty-mouthed cinematic partner. This is The Jetsons in Marvel. Its street-level scenes are particularly well-designed, and as far as superhero movies go, the surprisingly detailed worldbuilding is second only to James Chinlund and Greig Fraser's startling vision of Gotham City in The Batman. Granted, First Steps is a far cheerier film than the latest outing of the Caped Crusader, but I probably didn't need to tell you that.

As I'm sure you've noticed, Marvel has had a joke problem for some time now. I'm relieved and thankful to say that the humor in First Steps subtly plays off the neighborly tone of the movie, rarely seeming to cut against the grain of its more serious moments. Having myself grown weary of MCU-itis, this was a welcome shift. First Steps doesn't try too hard to be funny, so it sometimes is. Yet it manages to be something else entirely at its best; weighty. You read that right. Galactus asks for too high a personal price for the Fantastic 4 to pay for Earth's sake, and this movie's impossible intergalactic dilemmas remain shockingly grounded in real, relatable stakes. Still, even if I am relatively unfamiliar with the lore of the Fantastic 4 universe, I wish Marvel would stop trying to destroy the world. A car that Ben picks up early in the movie looks weightier than Galactus's computer-generated spaceship, and the bigger this movie goes, the less consequential it has the potential to seem. First Steps is at its best when it isn't trying to create room for comparisons to the Infinity Saga.

Massive threats require massive responses, and I was drawn to the practicality and intelligence of our heroes' solutions to their Galactus-sized crisis. I'm unsure if this movie draws source material from some comic book I'm unaware of, but the plan that The Fantastic Four cook up to save Earth from Galactus is equally surprising and intelligent. It makes sense. Their preparations to carry this plan out are clever and well-conceived. The ways in which our heroes include the general populace in their plan make it feel like something is actually at stake. Much of America's reaction to the heralding of the Silver Surfer seems more in line with a Cold War thriller than anything else, and the Fantastic Four themselves are just as much cultural icons to their world as they are superheroes to ours. When they have a plan, the public practically worships them. And when they don't, the public attacks their image out of a misplaced sense of fear and frustration. It's easier to imagine the people inside the buildings being demolished by a supervillain when their perception of our heroes is a big part of this story. The general populace in this movie matters. The threat of Galacticus matters. The unmistakable political underpinnings of how the heroes conduct themselves matter, if only so that they can give those they protect a largely misguided, if inoffensive, sense of security.

First Steps contains an element no superhero movie since The Batman has - a personality to call its own. Its retro-1950s aesthetic is a breath of fresh air, and its family dynamic is a refreshingly personable and lovable thing to experience. It might lose some steam when forced to pay homage to the fact that it's a superhero movie, but the intergalactic crisis of First Steps is firmly grounded within the comprehensible confines of universal human reality and an impossible decision none of us could make in their shoes. First Steps isn't just a great superhero movie - it's a great movie by any measure. Its cast, led by the ever-capable Pedro Pascal, is incredible, or should I say fantastic? This movie is just as much about one super family's love for and commitment to each other as it is about a world-eating tin man. It never loses its emotional core amidst this spectacle, because for once, a superhero movie seems to like who its characters are more than it does what they do. For the first time in a long time, I'm looking forward to seeing a sequel to a Marvel movie, and if these are but the first steps, I'm excited to see where this franchise goes on the long walk.

Fantastic 4: First Steps - 9/10

Proverbs 22:6