I’ve read a lot of Fantastic Four comics in my life. I stand by the belief, and it’s not an unpopular one, that the originating Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run on the title remains among the apex of the medium. I’ve seen a lot of Fantastic Four movies in my life, too. None of them really approach “good,” though as a long-suffering fan, I’ve been willing to grab onto whatever positives I can find: the presentation of the Silver Surfer in the Tim Story films, the light body-horror aspects of Josh Trank’s bemoaned reboot, or even the cheapie charms of the Roger Corman-produced unreleased first stab at bringing these characters to life.
Now it’s Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios’ turn to revive the characters that have been the nexus point of the Marvel Universe since 1961. The studio itself is struggling lately, still wallowing in the post-Avengers: Endgame mire, with five years’ worth of projects that have failed to capture the same zeitgeist as Thanos trying to collect all of his blasted space stones. Of their last six films, four have been financial disappointments, an unusual place for the biggest movie-maker in the industry to find itself. In short, between that and some actual competition now, Marvel needs a big-screen hit. In the wake of the 20th Century Fox acquisition, they’re finally able to make Fantastic Four and X-Men movies, and while they’re not quite ready to break the emergency glass on the X-Men fully, we’ve now laid eyes on their version of Marvel’s First Family.
One of the ongoing takes you’d read on message boards and social media over the last few decades was that fans fervently believed the only way to make a Fantastic Four film work was to turn it into a 1960s period piece. You would hear this over and over again, and it even emerged in Ant-Man director Peyton Reed‘s unproduced version. It’s no surprise then that the browbeating of this idea finally emerged into reality as part of the MCU. But since there’s been no evidence of a team like the Fantastic Four having existed in the MCU’s past, Matt Shakman’s film takes place on a parallel earth (with a cute nod to its co-creator Jack Kirby). Yes, more multiverse hijinks.
Pedro Pascal‘s Reed Richards is the smartest man on earth, and a lengthy prologue at The Fantastic Four: First Steps‘ outset details how Richards and his best friend, Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), along with the Storm siblings, Sue (Vanessa Kirby) and Johnny (Joseph Quinn), all go on the interstellar journey that leaves them with superpowers. They become Earth’s protectors, yadda yadda yadda. All wrapped up in an early television aesthetic, it’s a fun, if overlong, way to get right into the status quo the filmmakers would prefer to play in. I particularly liked the references to early-issue FF villains (though we only get to see the Mole Man, more on that later).
Four years later (ha), the team is living in the Baxter Building in the middle of New York and going about doing superhero things when Sue drops the news on Reed that she’s pregnant. This becomes major news in a real Kate Middleton kind of way. In the midst of the American public’s baby fever, a silver-clad woman on a surfboard (Julia Garner) shows up and says that her master, Galactus (Ralph Ineson), is coming to devour Earth and they should all prepare themselves. Will the FF take this lying down? No way, say Reed and company! And so they go to space, meet Galactus, and to their surprise, he’s got an offer that might save Earth…if they dare take it.
Going into the film, I had a sense of where The Fantastic Four: First Steps would go, and to be honest, I was disappointed that the script basically met those expectations bit by bit. That may sound like odd criticism, but to shortchange the element of surprise in movies of this scale is to suffocate my interest. I don’t want to see a movie that is exactly the movie in my head, and yet, as a longtime reader, here it is and I’m disappointed in it. It’s impossible to shake the feeling that this film has been focus-tested to death in a way that ensures it’s as middle-of-the-road as possible. And after a Superman film that, while biting off more than it can chew, at least had some bite, Shakman’s effort, by contrast, tastes like formless mush.
The script, credited to four different writers (though one can only imagine how many hands actually touched this thing), goes through all the usual Marvel motions with the only actual wrinkle being the aesthetic. Credit where credit is due: Kasra Farahani and the art direction team designed a rich and fun Space Age environment. It distinguishes The Fantastic Four from the rest of the MCU’s green-screened-to-death environs, at least until they go into space and much of that wow factor is eliminated for the usual gray and drab tones. But the script never rises to match the atmosphere. Each of the team members is fairly one-dimensional: Reed is off-putting and sciencey, Ben is a lonely lug, Johnny is an impulsive hothead, Sue is a mom, and the subplots given to the two non-parents are perfunctory. Johnny is obsessed with space recordings for some reason, and then that loops into his relationship with the Silver Surfer. Ben just wants love and has a brief set of interactions with a local religious leader/rabbi (Natasha Lyonne) that, while making for a nice reference to Ben’s Jewish faith, barely makes a dent in the movie.
Instead, the main plot with Galactus begins to dominate the proceedings pretty early and never lets go. Largely this would be fine, but because the script doesn’t have much interest in the Fantastic Four as living, breathing characters, all of its eventual exhausting platitudes about the strength of the family unit fall flat. If we don’t have a reason to care about them individually other than being told that we should, it creates a hollowness at the film’s core.
It’s also difficult to shake the casting woes. While I believe Pascal is a wonderful actor, he is fairly miscast as Reed, which strips the actor of his trademark warmth in exchange for a halting, distant performance. It’s a stretch (ugh) to say the least. And the lack of chemistry between Kirby and Pascal is palpable, partially because of what Pascal is having to do, partially because Kirby just isn’t that kind of actress. It just leads one to wonder what this movie would have looked like if the rumored casting of Adam Driver and Margot Robbie had borne fruit. Maybe somewhere else in the multiverse. Still, as badly served as both actors are here, Quinn and Garner fare worse. Saddled with one of the worst wigs in the MCU, Quinn‘s Johnny Storm is brought to life through line readings that could have used a few more takes, and this version of the Silver Surfer is the blandest one yet. Garner is a fine actress, but this was clearly a paycheck role. It’s difficult to believe anything was going to be a downgrade from the early 2000s movies, but here we are.
And for a Marvel movie, it’s just not even that funny. You can see where the laugh lines are, but they don’t land whatsoever. Thank goodness for Paul Walter Hauser. When his Mole Man appears, the movie finally grabs onto something that approaches the old “writing movies the Marvel way.” Between all of those factors and structural wonkiness in the script (a sluggish second act gives way to a rushed third), and a plot that eerily reminded me of Ghostbusters II, this Marvel outing commits the cardinal sin of being not only predictable but, even worse, boring.
Maybe these guys just aren’t ever going to work on screen.