You can\u2019t fault the sincerity of this year\u2019s superhero films. Out with the cynical cameos<\/a>, the nihilistic antiheroes, and whatever Madame Web was meant to be<\/a> \u2013 it\u2019s time now for hope with a capital \u201cH\u201d. It\u2019s time for \u201csaving a cat stuck up a tree\u201d-type heroism, dreams of peace and solidarity, and, in the case of Thunderbolts*, maybe just a really big hug<\/a>.<\/p>\n Marvel could never go all that wrong<\/a>, then, with its First Family, the Fantastic Four (if you discount the time it really did go wrong with the unnecessarily dour 2015 film). Nor could it veer that far off track with its sleek, stylish retrofuturistic aesthetics and a cast as deliriously charming as Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn. In fact, all the ingredients are perfectly lined up here, and, in the right combinations, and with the pure wonderment of Michael Giacchino\u2019s score, The Fantastic Four: First Steps does shimmer with a kind of wide-eyed idealism. And that\u2019s lovely.<\/p>\n Yet it\u2019s unfortunate for Marvel that First Steps comes a few weeks after<\/a> DC\u2019s Superman. That movie had a single writer and director in James Gunn, and is so very Gunn-ish to its core<\/a>. Here, you\u2019ve got four credited writers and a director like Matt Shakman, who may have delivered similar earnestness-plus-Sixties-nostalgia with the TV series WandaVision, but who hasn\u2019t yet developed a strong enough voice to anchor such an incident-packed picture.<\/p>\n See, like Superman, First Steps has jettisoned the origin story. We\u2019re instead dropped into the middle of the alternative universe Earth-828 (what we\u2019ve been watching so far in the MCU, to note, is Earth-199999): where beehives and Pan Am airlines reign supreme, gadgets could conceivably be called \u201cdoo-hickeys\u201d, and even pregnancy tests come equipped with sleek chrome and blinking lights.<\/p>\n The Fantastic Four are already four years into their superpowered careers and are universally beloved for it: Reed Richards\/Mister Fantastic (Pascal) for being the smartest guy around and able to stretch like a rubber band; his wife Sue Storm\/Invisible Woman (Kirby) for her force fields and ability to broker a peace deal with the subterranean kingdom of the Mole Man (Paul Walter Hauser, hilarious in his brief appearance); her brother Johnny Storm\/Human Torch (Quinn) for his screen idol good looks and the most intense blue contacts you\u2019ve ever seen; and Reed\u2019s best pal Ben Grimm\/The Thing (Moss-Bachrach) for being a big rock who\u2019s fun with the kids.<\/p>\n Sue discovers she\u2019s pregnant, but before the family can even finish off baby-proofing their headquarters, with the help of their robot assistant H.E.R.B.I.E. (R2-D2\u2019s natural heir), an extremely shiny woman on a hoverboard (Julia Garner\u2019s Shalla-Bal\/Silver Surfer) turns up. She quickly lets them know that their planet will be the next meal of a 14-billion-year-old cosmic entity with a bottomless appetite known as Galactus (Ralph Ineson, employing that beautifully rumbling, seat-shaking voice of his). So it\u2019s back to space and back to work they go.<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Vanessa Kirby as Susan Storm in \u2018The Fantastic Four: First Steps\u2019 (Marvel Studios)<\/p>\n The interiors by Kasra Farahani are a space-age dream, Alexandra Byrne\u2019s costumes are enviable, and even Galactus\u2019s realm has a nice HR Giger-tilt to it. These films are always at their best when they embrace the cosmic and the supernatural, and despite the occasional awkward bit of effects and a cowardly refusal to let Mister Fantastic bend into any truly goofy shapes (not even a corkscrew? Come on!), this is a fun world to potter around in.<\/p>\n The journey through it, though, jerks around far more than it needs to. There\u2019s an oddly binary attitude here, where we can do plot or character, but never both at the same time. If we\u2019re dealing with the former, in particular, the dialogue seems to disintegrate largely into unfunny banter between Ben and Johnny. It\u2019s ironic that Ben\u2019s so reluctant to deploy his catchphrase, \u201cit\u2019s clobberin\u2019 time\u201d, considering everything else he\u2019s saying is basically \u201cMarvel Quip 101\u201d.<\/p>\n When the film slows down for a moment, there\u2019s truly lovely work being done by the cast. Quinn allows Johnny, who presents himself to the world as the bratty brother with his hand in the cereal box minutes before dinner time, a kind of unspoken nobility. Moss-Bachrach, when Ben\u2019s putting his grumpiness to the side, steals a little time for himself to visit his synagogue and share some tenderness with Natasha Lyonne\u2019s Rachel Rozman.<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Pedro Pascal as Mister Fantastic in \u2018The Fantastic Four: First Steps\u2019 (Marvel Studios)<\/p>\n Pascal allows Reed\u2019s struggle between logic and emotion to come to the forefront \u2013 he\u2019s always privileged the first, but the gift of casting Pascal is that you never doubt the second. He can pour out gallons of love with nothing but a scrunch of his brow. And Kirby, perhaps the true soul of the film, offers us a portrait of motherhood as tender as it is ferocious, culminating in one of those rare feminist fist-pump moments that feels natural, and not like the writers are waiting for you to pat them on the back. <\/p>\n It\u2019s Reed and Sue\u2019s marriage that also births one of the most fascinating ethical quandaries Marvel\u2019s ever put to screen \u2013 and, yet, it\u2019s somehow happily solved about three scenes later. Truly, angst isn\u2019t on the cards for Marvel as of now. And it\u2019s nice, admittedly, to see the genre embrace wonder once again.<\/p>\n Dir: Matt Shakman. Starring: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn, Julia Garner, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser, Ralph Ineson. Cert 12A, 114 minutes.<\/p>\n \u2018The Fantastic Four: First Steps\u2019 is in cinemas from 24 July<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-284430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114900971282307958","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Vanessa](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/TMT2460_TRL_comp_SPI_v0017-1033_R.jpeg\")
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