Saving the World with Style (and a Baby on the Way)

Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a retro-colored superhero adventure that gets by largely on nostalgia and some decent performances, from a cast that is having the time of its life. Helmed by The Umbrella Academy’s signing Ben is Raphael, the film is vibrant and vivid, like a comic book ripped from the 1960s. It hums with energy, and the actors are enjoying themselves, particularly Pedro Pascal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. It’s a smart-looking movie that channels that Marvel sense of humor while never quite mustering any real tension or stakes, even when it’s an Earth-devouring monster at the movies.

Producer Kevin Feige was not wrong when he called the film “a no-homework-required” Marvel movie. Marvel has made an event out of understanding its movies, to the point that if you don’t know what the multiverse is or which red-skinned alien had the cameos and started the spin-off series, you might feel left out. First Steps, on the other hand, is self-contained and self-aware, a clean slate reboot for Reed Richards (aka Mr. Fantastic), Sue Storm (aka Invisible Woman), Johnny Storm (aka Human Torch), and Benjamin Grimm (aka The Thing). There’s no overcomplicated connecting tissue with previous adaptations here, which is great, if the film is done being interesting at the same time.

The film opens with a 1960s-style talk show hosted by Mark Gatiss, an anchor whose presence in the film has the convenient job of explaining to us how the Fantastic Four got to be where they are. We learn that four years earlier, the team of cosmic space explorers went on a mission during which they were bombarded with radiation that changed their DNA. Reed, played by a very thoughtful, very funny Pedro Pascal, has gained the power to stretch and bend his body like taffy. Sue (Vanessa Kirby) can turn invisible and project force fields of energy from her body. Joseph Quinn’s Johnny can set himself aflame and fly. And Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben becomes The Thing, permanently transformed into a rock-covered hulk with superhuman strength.

The four now live together in what we can only imagine is some sort of mid-century modern space compound, furnished with flying cars, chalkboard equations, and a toddler-sized robot that runs errands for them called H.E.R.B.I.E. The First Steps world is entirely retro-futurist: square television sets, no mobile phones, atomic-age kitsch baked into every aspect of its design. The world of First Steps is all hard edges and corner-cutting optimism, like something that was designed with The Jetsons in mind and realized by Lost in Space’s Robot.

It’s an adorable aesthetic, if there’s never much at stake in the actual plot. The heart of First Steps is the idea of family: the close-knit unit that the four lead characters form. Sue is pregnant from the opening act of the film, and the movie milks Reed’s initial panic at the news for both laughs and feeling. Reed has H.E.R.B.I.E. set about baby-proofing their house, science lab, and every other location the Fantastic Four might ever visit. Johnny and Ben play foil to the romantic leads, providing bro-happy bickering and comic relief, while also being fully into their role as doting uncles.

However, they don’t have time to be uncles for long. A familiar Marvel enemy has set his sights on Earth: Galactus, a muscular, armored being with orbs for eyes. Galactus is hungry and has come to Earth for the purpose of devouring the planet. But before he can eat, he sends his herald to tell the news: a silver-skinned mohawked human in motion capture played by Julia Garner, the Silver Surfer. Garner makes an impression as the Surfer, swooping into the film with an ultraviolent coolness that is undercut almost immediately by Johnny’s lustful infatuation with her.

As they flee from Galactus in space and from the Surfer’s attacks on Earth, the action stays retro-simple and retro-pretty. The visual effects are mostly squibs of light, smoke trails, and mushroom clouds, all rendered in an animated cartoon style. Sue even goes into labor at the height of the action, rocketing toward Earth in a nuclear-powered space suit and going into triage right in the command center, without the scene ever actually feeling tense. You’d be forgiven for thinking a baby's birth and a planet's end were the silliest combination.

It’s an apt description for First Steps as a whole. The movie has its earnest moments, but they are often lost in the soapy pastels that the movie otherwise uses to bathe every moment in. The stakes rarely feel like they are high, even when the fate of the planet is. It’s more Saturday morning cartoon caper than Marvel Cinematic Universe popcorn movie.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is pleasant and very well cast, but without much of the dramatic kick Marvel has perfected in its stronger entries. It’s accessible and heartfelt, but also silly and light on thrill. It may well be just the sort of Marvel caper some people are craving, but many will find it as full of empty calories as its Easter candy wrappings.