It’s nearly impossible to articulate how groundbreaking Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s “Fantastic Four” comics were when they debuted in 1961. Gone were the handsome superhero loners and knights in shining armor, with their secret identities and simplistic problems. In their place was a bickering, dysfunctional family full of socially awkward nerds and grotesque abominations.
The Fantastic Four wrestled with self-loathing, the pitfalls of unexpected celebrity and, as a cherry on top, bizarre monsters and mind-blowing scientific breakthroughs. No story was too grand, no character beat was too small. The cover of every Fantastic Four comic was emblazoned with the words “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine” for decades and nobody questioned it because, yeah, this series earned it. The Fantastic Four changed the superhero genre forever.
But the problem with breaking new ground is, eventually, it’s hard to remember what the old ground looked like. That’s why it’s been so hard for Hollywood to crack the code to adapting “The Fantastic Four.” The series has been so influential for so long that it can’t possibly feel fresh anymore. We’ve had four adaptations now and they’ve all misfired.
The never-officially-released Roger Corman movie captured the right tone, but was too cheap to take seriously. The Tim Story versions leaned too heavily on family dynamics, coming across more like sitcoms than adventures. And the miserable “Fant4stic” foolishly tried to be low-key and edgy, two adjectives that have nothing to do with Marvel’s First Family. Only Brad Bird’s “The Incredibles,” a brilliant knockoff (but a knockoff nonetheless), nailed the essence of what made the Fantastic Four great — and ironically made it impossible to make a faithful Fantastic Four movie without younger audiences thinking it’s old hat.
Now that Marvel Studios finally wrested control of the characters back from Fox, who had three chances to get it right, they’ve decided to take a different approach. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” embraces the oldness of the hat. The film, directed by Matt Shakman (“WandaVision”), will never be groundbreaking so instead it’s retro, evoking the 1960s in style and tone, giving the whole film a wondrous vibration. It’s friendly. It’s huge. It may not be fantastic but it’s a heck of a lot closer than any film version of these characters we’ve seen, at least so far.
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is set on an alternate earth where there are no other superheroes, and the fact that this feels refreshing speaks volumes about how Marvel Studios has driven their crossover events into the ground. It’s been four years since the nerdy Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), the diplomat Susan Storm (Vanessa Kirby), her hotheaded brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and the sweater-vested Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) flew into outer space, got struck by cosmic rays, and became the saviors of humanity. And humanity loves them for it.
Matt Shakman speed-runs through the Fantastic Four’s origin, or at least it feels like he does. “First Steps” uses news reels as a shortcut, a way to dump as much exposition as possible as quickly as possible, but it takes an ironically long time to get all that accomplished. It’s fun to watch the Fantastic Four fight the Red Ghost’s super apes, for a split second anyway, but it’s just one part of an extended EPK. When we finally get back to the Baxter Building, Reed and Sue are fretting over their unborn son, because they don’t know if he’ll be human or not. Meanwhile Ben putters around the kitchen and Johnny Storm is there. That’s for sure. Johnny Storm sure is there.
Everything’s looking hunky-dunky for the F.F. until the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) arrives to say humanity is doomed, because Galactus is coming to eat our planet. The Fantastic Four fly into space to talk some sense into Galactus (Ralph Ineson), if possible, or beat him up if not, but they don’t realize how impossibly powerful and huge he is. When they do — and when Galactus reveals the only thing he’ll accept in exchange for leaving Earth alone — they flee for their lives, and start workshopping Plan B. Because holy crap, are they out of their league.
What “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” gets right is the scale of it all, the unthinkable odds and the even unthinkabler solutions it takes to beat those odds. The film evokes the grandeur of an early Fantastic Four comic, and the many moments of humanity, heft and even whimsy that come part and parcel with that legacy. If it wasn’t for the sometimes-unconvincing CG on The Thing, whose face lacks definition and often does a disservice to Moss-Bachrach’s cuddly performance, it’d be a top-to-bottom visual spectacle.
But although the cast is game, the script (credited to five writers) doesn’t push them very hard. The Fantastic Four argue, but not in a way that suggests they have baggage based on years of shared experience. Only Reed Richards has anything resembling meaningful inner conflict, and that’s completely unexplored. While the film deserves kudos for giving Susan Storm more to do than all the other Fantastic Four movies combined, multiplied by a factor of 10, her greatest strengths are sidelined in favor of familiar, frankly outmoded ideas about motherhood as the ne plus ultra of her existence. It’s not that her other achievements aren’t relevant to the plot, it’s that they aren’t especially relevant to her character, leaving her underserved despite her significant spike in screen time.
Still, there’s a lot to marvel at in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” Shakman’s direction harkens back to the 1960s, but not the references that have already been done to death elsewhere. The film owes more to the films of Godzilla creator Ishirō Honda than any other cinematic predecessor. The plot and even the space ships are so reminiscent of Honda’s 1962 sci-fi disaster classic “Gorath” that Honda probably deserves a special thank you at the end (although maybe he got one and I missed it, since the closing credits for these VFX spectaculars are as dense as a Dostoevsky novel).
Then again the influence of the 1960s is mostly visual. If there’s a Vietnam War raging, or any political protests, or any civil rights legislation that needs signing, it’s all off-camera. It’s more likely that this film is just rewriting history so it’s all sunshine and roses except for the giant aliens with rumbly tumblies and ludicrous hats. Which is the emptiest kind of nostalgia, and that’s saying something.
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” whatever its drawbacks, feels like a real Fantastic Four movie, and that’s no small achievement. It’ll never be as important or influential as the comics but it does feel like an idyllic summer afternoon, sitting under a shady tree and thumbing through back issues of a marvelous series with endearing characters. That’s more than enough. In fact, that’s a heck of a lot. And in capturing the vibe of the Silver Age — if not its actual spirit — Matt Shakman has done something Marvel Studios doesn’t do very well anymore. He’s made a superhero movie that embraces the “super” part. And the “hero” part. And the “movie” part.
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” opens exclusively in theaters on Friday, July 25.