Those familiar with Fantastic lore will already know that the first thing the Fantastic Four managed to save was Marvel itself. With the comic company experiencing financial difficulties, co-creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby delivered a hail Mary play that started a Marvel renaissance that changed the face of comics forever. It’s pretty simple, without the team of Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch and The Thing, we would have no Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men or Hulk so it’s no real surprise that they were rightfully dubbed the “First Family” of comics.
However, if we cast our eyes across the Fantastic Four’s cinematic endeavours, you’d be hard pressed to believe that the cosmic quartet were the start of anything with a range of attempts that rank from goofy comedies to being flat out unreleasable thanks to some dodgy legal manoeuvring.
However, now that Marvel has finally gotten back the rights to their history making characters, it’s maybe time for them to once again swoop in and save Marvel in its time of need.
Four years ago, in a universe far removed from Earth – 616 where the majority of the MCU resides, a quartet of astronauts went into space and got promptly altered at a genetic level thanks to a dose of funky, cosmic rays. Upon crash landing, the group found that they had superhuman powers, with the world’s smartest brainbox, Reed Richards, gifted with stretching abilities, his wife, Sue Storm becoming able to turn invisible and generate force fields, her bother, Johnny could set himself ablaze and family friend, Ben Grimm became a big, durable, rock golem with super strength; but instead of freaking out, they eventually became world famous as Earth’s greatest protectors.
However, with Sue pregnant, this sets of a chain of potentially world ending events that sees a silver figure riding a cosmic surfboard entering the atmosphere and heralding the coming of a god-like being known as Galactus. The being’s message is simple: Galactus is coming to consume our world to temporarily sate his own, terrible hunger, so the four tool up their rocket and attempts to locate him in order to convince him to go on an earth-free diet.
However, while standing in the presence of the awe inspiring planet binger, the immense cosmic being agrees to leave Earth off the menu on one, terrible condition – Reed and Sue’s baby. It seems that the conception of a child from two people who have been cosmically altered has managed to create a child with almost limitless power, power enough to take Galactus’ insatiable hunger from him and bear the curse itself while the planet eater can finally rest after stuffing his face since the universe began. Refusing Galactus’ demands, the family escape, but can they come up with a plan to save the earth in the time that have left until the devourer of worlds finally catches up with them?
Not to continuously harp on about the state of the MCU, but it feels like the sprawling franchise really could use both a critical and commercial hit to ready itself for the upcoming Avengers movies that are about to bring this whole multiversal phase to a long awaited end. Oh sure, Deadpool & Wolverine kicked ass, but it essentially was an unhinged nostalgia fest and while Thunderbolts* featured the best Marvel script in years, lackluster box office placed it behind the far inferior Captain America: Brave New World. Yes, once again it’s time for the Fantastic Four to try and save everything and make a conflicted universe finally make sense.
While that would be a tall order for any superhero movie to achieve, it’s something of a relief to report that First Steps of Marvel’s First Family does a great job of finally presenting the group with the epic nature and optimistic fanfare they’ve always deserved. Of course, some might correctly suggest that making the best Fantastic Four movie shouldn’t be that hard a bar to pass, but the sheer love and dedication that Matt (WandaVision) Shakman has brought to almost every aspect of the production instantly makes up for every other, half-assed attempt Hollywood has ever attempted. Opening with a dizzily cheerful opening that speeds us through both the team’s origins and the first four years of their superhero careers, it’s a stunning way to avoid ground already covered that really does cement their importance in history. It also helps that this is the most meticulous world building Marvel has attempted in years – maybe ever – as we’re dropped into Earth-828, a 50s themed retrofuturistic world that proves to be just as fresh a concept since X-Men: First Class turned the mutant saga into a swinging, 60s set; spy film with groovy results.
Not only does First Steps manage to finally lay out the importance of theses characters, the four year jump means that the four fantastico are already veteran heroes and thus can skip a lot of the overused plots and give us fully formed versions of them that easily rank as their best. Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm has lost most of his depression and rage issues, but is the warmest version of the big, stone lug that exists, likewise Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm is less the womanising dickhead and more responsible despite having an eye for silver, surfing ladies. However, the real breakthroughs prove to be Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards as the special effects guys not only deliver stretching powers that aren’t visibly ugly, but the actor delivers a man so smart, his intelligence sometimes overrides his humanity leaving him socially awkward. Even better is Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm who, up until now has either been portrayed as a shy recluse or an out and out nag, but the decision to finally make an on-screen mother of Sue finally cracks the nut of possibly Marvel’s strongest member. Also joining them in the realm of cracked nuts is Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer who still remains defiantly comic accurate despite the gender shift is Shalla-Bal and Ralph Ineson’s gargantuan Galactus who earns every second of footage the movie manages to shoot in IMAX.
Are there issues? There’s definitely some unavoidable story overlap with 2007’s Rise Of The Silver Surfer which ostensibly adapts the exact same story after switching out Galactus’ giant, purple, space pharaoh look for a big, angry cloud and this story of cosmic stranger danger could have used more moments of Ben and Johnny just shooting the shit. However, whenever the movie fully embraces the full cosmic potential of the comic (black hole chase!) or focuses on the equally terrifying prospect of birthing potentially the most powerful being in the multiverse, it finally gives me the Fantastic cinematic experience I’ve been yearning for for decades.
Whether the fab four can manage to reverse the MCU fortunes in the closing years of the Multiverse Saga will be discovered soon enough, but for an extravaganza that’s been painstakingly visually crafted, Marvel Studios have seemingly achieved the fantastic and delivered the impossible. However, the team of Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben may now have finally gotten the outing they deserve, but there’s one last piece of the puzzle to get right. After perfecting clobbering time, Marvel still has to embrace out and out Doom…
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