The Fantastic Four: First Steps Review

One of the main reliefs about the latest MCU film, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, was the fact that it was happening on a different Earth altogether, and hence you could take any of your friends who have no idea about the MCU to watch this movie. Much like how James Gunn avoided the origin Story idea for his latest Superman film, Matt Shakman’s Fantastic Four is also skipping that portion and taking us to another day in the lives of these superheroes. While the retro aesthetics of the movie give it a significantly different look from the other films in the universe, the Story’s focus leans towards emotional elements. When they try to compensate for that with the kind of banter humor through Johnny’s character, it sort of makes the movie a mixed bag experience.

So, the Story is happening on a different Earth, Earth 828. In the present day, our heroes Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Ben and Johnny Storm are all basically the Avengers of that universe, popularly known as The Fantastic Four. In the midst of that, Richards and Sue, who are married to each other, get to know the happy news that Storm is pregnant. While they were preparing to welcome their baby, a new threat started to hover over their planet, and what we see in this movie is the way they tackled that enormous challenge.

At a time when you have a zillion other YouTube videos explaining what you need to know before watching a popular superhero film, it is actually a wise decision to skip the customary origin Story thing unless you are doing anything different from the already known thing. In this movie, they are these superheroes with animated shows happening on TV about them, and we have instances in the film where the characters sort of say that in real life they don’t say stuff like flame on or it’s clobbering time. Such tweaks in the script are actually fun to watch, and the way they humanized Ben with his occasional lonely strolls down the street also felt nice. The issue is with setting up the conflict. We are getting introduced to the main threat almost in the first act of the movie, and everything has this hurried feel.

The script of The Fantastic Four: First Steps decides to jump into the conflict at a very early stage. So, in a way, the movie is trying to establish characters and their bonding to the audience almost in the reverse order. And the antagonist this time is Galactus, a gigantic planet-eater kind of character. While the visual representation of the enormity of Galactus was stunning (I wish I could have seen it on an IMAX screen), the way they negotiate with him and even the tricks they apply to mislead him felt a bit too silly. While the idea of Sue Storm fighting for her baby does seem very dramatic on paper, visually, it felt more like they took Galactus down when he was only warming up. Even the arc of the Silver Surfer feels familiar. The production design of the movie, combined with the retro elements, gave the film a sense of freshness, and the overall quality of the visual effects looked pretty good. Michael Giacchino’s score has that wow factor, but whether there was any scene that did complete justice to the kind of score he provided is debatable.

Pedro Pascal plays the part of the anxious and scientifically thinking Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic. Being in a constant dilemma is the emotional state of that character in this movie, and Pascal has done that neatly. Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm is perhaps the only actor who gets to portray a wide range of emotions in this Story. From being the cool sister to an emotional and fighting mother, Kirby portrayed all those bits convincingly on screen. Joseph Quinn plays Johnny Storm. While the over-enthusiasm is a characteristic of that character, sometimes the writing of the movie pushes the humor a bit too much. Ebon Moss-Bachrach has done the motion capture for the CGI-generated Ben. Ben, aka The Thing, is perhaps the most grounded and likable character in the whole lot.

If you look at the characters in the movie and the amount of time they are acting like these superheroes, the percentage of that footage is pretty low. You don’t have too many scenes of Mr. Fantastic stretching to save the world. You don’t have too many scenes where Sue Storm is invisible. Johnny Storm is not igniting himself every now and then, and Ben is not on a smashing spree. This minimal way of flaunting the cool stuff is actually making The Fantastic Four: First Steps more of an emotional setup, which sort of hurries through the action bits for a bigger showdown, which is the Doom’s Day movie. This movie’s runtime is under two hours, including the end credits.