You can’t fault the sincerity of this year’s superhero films. Out with the cynical cameos, the nihilistic antiheroes, and whatever Madame Web was meant to be – it’s time now for hope with a capital “H”. It’s time for “saving a cat stuck up a tree”-type heroism, dreams of peace and solidarity, and, in the case of Thunderbolts*, maybe just a really big hug.
Marvel could never go all that wrong, 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’s score, The Fantastic Four: First Steps does shimmer with a kind of wide-eyed idealism. And that’s lovely.
Yet it’s unfortunate for Marvel that First Steps comes a few weeks after DC’s Superman. That movie had a single writer and director in James Gunn, and is so very Gunn-ish to its core. Here, you’ve 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’t yet developed a strong enough voice to anchor such an incident-packed picture.
See, like Superman, First Steps has jettisoned the origin story. We’re instead dropped into the middle of the alternative universe Earth-828 (what we’ve 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 “doo-hickeys”, and even pregnancy tests come equipped with sleek chrome and blinking lights.
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’ve ever seen; and Reed’s best pal Ben Grimm/The Thing (Moss-Bachrach) for being a big rock who’s fun with the kids.
Sue discovers she’s 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’s natural heir), an extremely shiny woman on a hoverboard (Julia Garner’s 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’s back to space and back to work they go.
The interiors by Kasra Farahani are a space-age dream, Alexandra Byrne’s costumes are enviable, and even Galactus’s 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.
The journey through it, though, jerks around far more than it needs to. There’s an oddly binary attitude here, where we can do plot or character, but never both at the same time. If we’re dealing with the former, in particular, the dialogue seems to disintegrate largely into unfunny banter between Ben and Johnny. It’s ironic that Ben’s so reluctant to deploy his catchphrase, “it’s clobberin’ time”, considering everything else he’s saying is basically “Marvel Quip 101”.
When the film slows down for a moment, there’s 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’s putting his grumpiness to the side, steals a little time for himself to visit his synagogue and share some tenderness with Natasha Lyonne’s Rachel Rozman.
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Pascal allows Reed’s struggle between logic and emotion to come to the forefront – he’s 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.
It’s Reed and Sue’s marriage that also births one of the most fascinating ethical quandaries Marvel’s ever put to screen – and, yet, it’s somehow happily solved about three scenes later. Truly, angst isn’t on the cards for Marvel as of now. And it’s nice, admittedly, to see the genre embrace wonder once again.
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.
‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ is in cinemas from 24 July
