The Fantastic Four: First Steps review – goofy wonder

For many comic book fans, Jack Kirby’s most beloved creation is Marvel’s first family, the Fantastic Four

Having cut his teeth on sketching Betty Boop and Popeye at Max Fleischer’s animation studio in New York, Kirby – Jacob Kurtzberg at birth – left for the sunnier climes of Florida just before the cartoon house created the first Superman screen adaptation.

He would go on to co-create, with Joe Simon, one of Marvel’s mightiest heroes in Steve Rogers AKA Captain America, for the then-Timely Comics, also having a hand in imagining Black Panther, Hulk, Thor, the X-Men and more, as well as DC’s New Gods of the Fourth World saga, including Darkseid.

First appearing in 1961, the Fantastic Four, as scientific explorers, gained unusual powers after their space rocket was hit by a cosmic ray. There was stretchy-limbed boffin Reed Richards – AKA Mister Fantastic – and his partner (eventually wife) in life and villain-smashing, Sue Storm – AKA The Invisible Woman. Sue’s flammable brother Johnny – AKA the Human Torch – was on board, as was his best mate, the boulder-like Ben Grimm AKA The Thing, with H.E.R.B.I.E. (Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-Type, Integrated Electronics) as their robotic butler.

Kirby created them in collaboration with Stan Lee before their relationship notoriously curdled. Notably different from the usual mob, they eschewed secret identities and even, in the first few issues, costumes. Occasionally sniping at one another, as with any family, they had each other’s backs.

Fantastic Four: faltering steps

Adored on the page, the Fantastic Four have had a rocky road (sorry Ben) on the big screen, following successful cartoons. Their first movie (flagged for 1994) didn’t even get released, partly because it was so cheaply made, but mostly because it was a legal-easy way for then-rights-holder Bernd Eichinger to keep control of the IP.

Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis depicted Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben in two largely forgettable films delivered by Tim Story during the noughties, also featuring the late Julian McMahon of The Surfer and The Residence as primary villain, Doctor Doom. The least said about Chronicle director Josh Trank’s 2015 reboot with Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell, the better.

Fantastic Four: 2025

A decade on, and things have shifted in the multiverse. For one thing, Disney has consumed 20th Century Studios like supersized Fantastic Four villain Galactus devours worlds, thereby gaining control of both the family and the X-Men.

Directed by WandaVision helmer Matt Shakman, marking his big screen debut, The Fantastic Four: First Steps more successfully pulls off a course correction for the long-floundering Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) than Thunderbolts, or rival DC’s Superman reboot.

Watch The Fantastic Four trailer.

Both of those films certainly have their charms, not least in bringing back the fun to super heroics, but they were also cluttered with callbacks to a jillion previous films, in the case of Thunderbolts, or by attempting to jump-start a shared universe, as with Superman, thereby losing sight of Lois and Clark following a strong opening act.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps wisely jettisons all that mess and noise. Co-written by Foundation adapter Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson (Thunderbolts), Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer – seriously, what’s with the sausage-fest for a super team that’s 25% woman? – in favour of a standalone film focused squarely on the gang. You know, 101 filmmaking, or at least it should be…

Fantastic Four: meet the family

The so-ubiquitous-you-have-to-wonder-if-multiversal-variations-are-in-play Pedro Pascal plays Reed to The Crown star Vanessa Kirby’s Sue, with the adoring and adorable couple discovering there’s a baby on the way. When she uses her invisibility powers to check in on him in her womb, it’s deeply affecting, as is the usually confident Reed’s impending fatherhood jitters. He tasks H.E.R.B.I.E. (cute R2-D2 whirring and clicking by actor and sound designer Matthew Wood) with safeguarding their Baxter Building home (basically Avengers Tower).

A Quiet Place: Day One actor Joseph Quinn is a plucky-but-not-boorish Johnny, much better than Skyler Gisondo’s icky spin on Jimmy Olsen in last month’s Superman, only gently riling his adopted brothers. The Bear lead Ebon Moss-Bachrach is the gnarly but big-hearted Ben, who must sand down his ever-growing rock beard and has an unspoken crush on Natasha Lyonne’s lovely though underused teacher Rachel.

They live in New York in an alternate reality Earth known as 828, a retro-futuristic place that recalls Hanna Barbera’s cartoon The Jetsons as much as it does Disney’s Tomorrowland park. From the opening shot – as we see the fam fight a bunch of comically goofy baddies, including Paul Walter Hauser’s Mole Man – it’s clear that Marvel took their goddamn time with this one for once.

In an arguable first for the MCU, The Fantastic Four: First Steps actually looks luscious. An infinitely detailed Big Apple is equal parts gleaming Metropolis and West Side Story, aided by lived-in computer graphics that convince.

Hot Fuzz cinematographer Jess Hall captures choreographed action sequences your eye can follow, unmauled in self-defeating cuts by savvy editors Nona Khodai and Tim Roche. There’s even an honest-to-goodness stirring score from The Batman composer Michael Giacchino. In other words, it’s an actual film, not a marketing ploy.

Sure, the plot is basically the same as Tim Story’s 2007 sequel, but it’s much better. Mark Gatiss, as a Johnny Carson-like chat show host, gets us up to speed with the basics, deftly swerving origin story snores. As this world’s only known heroes, the Fantastic Four have never been truly tested. The Subterranea-dwelling Mole Man and co are mild irritants, rather than maniacal monsters, easily dealt with by the gang.

Fantastic Four: fire and brimstone

Until, that is, the sky erupts with flicked off not by Johnny, but instead marking the arrival of the Silver Surfer (The Royal Hotel star Julia Garner, making the most of a surprisingly minor role), herald of aforementioned planet-munching menace Galactus (gravelly voiced by the magnificent Ralph Ineson).

A dark titan of Godzilla proportions towering higher than New York’s skyscrapers, he’s a different sort altogether from what the Fantastic Four are accustomed to facing. Getting around in an Asimov-ian starship that’s like if 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Hal had an unloved child with Sauron’s baleful eye, it’s bigger and badder than the Death Star, ploughing directly into planets the Surfer is forced to choose on his behalf, churning them up in great grinding machinery to feed Galactus’ insatiable hunger.

As we’re already privy to the Fantastic Four eventually moving over to the MCU we know best, there’s real planet-ending risk here, more so than even Avengers: Endgame could muster. That exhilarates, as these goofy goodie two-shoes are suddenly confronted with a very Old Testament bargain: hand over their cosmically powered unborn son or their world will be undone. A panicked populace begins to turn as the family refuses, with the rousing speech that follows from Kirby’s Sue a real high point. 

Even the eventual face-off in Manhattan is infinitely more engaging than 90% of the MCU’s notoriously muddy CGI smackdowns, with a desperate fix nevertheless setting up a thorny moral dilemma the family will surely have to confront down the line.

For now, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a lovingly styled, spirited and cheerily sweet, out-of-time capsule unbothered by the minutiae of the MCU. While that can’t last forever, Shakman’s first step into the FF hall of fame is a bright and breezy treat with a beating heart and a generous dash of wonder.

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The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in Australian cinemas from 24 July 2025.