And Baby Makes Five
THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS delivers a movie worthy of the characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Third time’s the charm…or so goes the saying. But when it comes to the multiple big screen adaptations of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s creation The Fantastic Four, the fifth time is actually the charm.
Poor Reed Richards, Sue and Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm (a.k.a Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch and The Thing, respectively): what was meant to be their first big screen outing in 1994 (produced by Roger Corman) was never released, although it’s available in YouTube if you want to venture into those dark waters. Their second big screen outing, the 2005 Fantastic Four starring Ioan Gruffud, Jessica Alba, a pre-Captain America Chris Evans and Michael Chikilis as the titular characters and the recently departed Julian McMahon as Doom, fared much better, grossing over $330 million in the box office worldwide. It was a fairly entertaining film but nothing to write home about. Then came the 2007 sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer which, although it did okay at the box office, did not deliver the kind of numbers that could justify a third film, much less a Silver Surfer spinoff as originally planned. Then came the disastrous 2015 reboot Fantastic Four with Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Michael B. Jordan and Toby Kebbell, whose rocky production history would make for a great tell-all book, starting with the hiring of a director who did not care much for the superhero genre, continuing with multiple studio-mandated reshoots, and the critical pummeling it received upon its release.
We are back to square one with another reboot but this time with a stronger cast, a more compelling story, and a brains AND brawn approach to its superheroic antics. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the first movie from the Marvel Studios I felt fully onboard with since Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. They both tell stand alone stories, eschewing any and all mythology or tie-ins to whatever master plan producer Kevin Feige has in mind…which is why the mid-end credits sequence felt so off in its attempt to tie in The Fantastic Four: First Steps with future MCU films.
Like that other superhero film taking over screens everywhere, The Fantastic Four: First Steps starts in media res. But, unlike Superman, director Mark Shakman and writers Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer start their film on a narrative high note: after trying for God knows how long to have a child after their fateful trip to outer space alongside Johnny and Ben, Sue is pregnant. Their origin story is dealt most expediently via a talk show host’s introduction (with a film within a film shot in the style of all those documentaries about the Apollo missions) to his special interview with the quartet on ABC. We are reminded of the superpowers they acquired after that trip scrambled their DNA: Reed (Pedro Pascal), the group’s leader and scientific genius, can stretch his body; Sue (Vanessa Kirby) not only can turn invisible but can create force fields and blast things off; Johnny (Joseph Quinn) turns to fire and Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) has turned into a man of stone and can grow a mean beard. We also learn of how they quickly became not only the saviors of this parallel Earth known as Earth 828 but the symbols of everything good mankind can offer and do.
Once the preliminary background information is delivered, the film settles into a nice sense of domesticity as Reed and Susan prepare for the baby’s imminent arrival in their own unique ways, Reed by delegating to his trusty robot H.E.R.B.I.E. his responsibilities as a soon to be father while running tests on his wife to make sure there are no abnormalities in the baby as a result of the cosmic radiation that changed their lives. Everything seems to be going according to plan until the Silver Surfer (Julie Garner) surfs her way to this parallel version of early 1960s Times Square and, like the Vogons in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, announces that the planet will be demolished by the planet-hungry godlike mechanical entity Galactus (voiced by the magnificent Ralph Ineson).
Tracing the Surfer’s origins to a series of planets destroyed by Galactus, the Four jump into their rocket ship and head towards that spot in hopes of negotiating with him. After Galactus’ scan detects hidden powers in the unborn's body, he makes them a counter-offer: the baby in exchange for leaving the planet alone. Galactus wants the future Franklin Richards to take over his planet-destroying business so he can finally rest in peace. Reed’s and Susan’s response paves the way to a suspenseful, rather psychedelic and at times rather comical outer space chase and childbirth sequence near a potential black hole, and to the moral crux of the film as soon as they make it back to Earth 828 in one piece. More, I won’t reveal; however, that quandary sets up some wonderful intimate scenes between Kirby and Pascal and another where Susan speaks as a mother to a crowd of critics.
True to its science-fictional roots, The Fantastic Four: First Steps focuses far more on problem-solving and the frustrations behind the right scientifically ethical solution than in beating the crap out of the enemy. We are presented, in the film’s second half, with a Reed Richards who doubts his own knowledge, his own scientific instincts, who, maybe for the first time in his career, feels out of his league. Even Johnny gets in on the game, overcoming the vain pretty boy cliché of past iterations of his character in actually figuring things out on his own as he deciphers the messages contained in signals sent from the destroyed planets. Ben may be doing most of the clobbering by the end of the film, but he also proves himself useful in other ways when it comes to implementing Reed’s plans. Again, brain AND brawn. Ben also seems to be far more comfortable in his own body than past film versions of the character.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is by no means a perfect film. It introduces a character sweetly played by Natasha Lyonne hinting at a potential romance between her and Ben. And that’s how it stays as: a hint until the quartet’s next solo adventure. Galactus’ planet destroying device is not exactly a brand new idea: it looks like a distant cousin to Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s massive mechanical entity known as V’ger and the big alien artifact that turned the power off every spaceship and space station in the Solar System in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
But I dug it. Not only does the film vindicate these characters on the big screen after so many failed attempts, but in casting its four leads, Shakman and his team paid far more attention to their chemistry than the casting team behind past iterations of the franchise. They also gave the Fantastic Four a wonderful world to play in, a world that evokes, in its retrofuturism, the optimism this country embraced back in the early days of the space race. The Fantastic Four: First Steps feels like a natural summer companion to James Gunn’s Superman: they both embrace the light, even though there is far more brawn than brain in Gunn’s film. But The Fantastic Four: First Steps takes it one step further. This is a film that believes that science can solve our problems, that our imagination is a valuable tool, and that, yes, there is no place like home. Too bad about that mid-credit sequence: I want to spend far more time on Earth 828 and with this family and see how they tackle their version of the 70s and 80s, than in another metahuman, multiverse reunion.