The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Those crazy bastards did it! They finally made a good Fantastic Four movie.
After multiple failed attempts by various filmmakers over the past 30-plus years, veteran TV director Matt Shakman (WandaVision; Game of Thrones), his writers, and an imaginative team of production design and effects artists combine forces for the very cool, very retro, and extremely heartfelt The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
In addition to an elevated visual and narrative quality that was missing from Josh Trank’s baffling Fantastic Four (2015) but is almost inherently baked into most MCU productions, the key to this fourth (how appropriate!) different cast and crew at long last getting these characters and their narrative “right” is a script that nails each of the Four’s distinct humanities.
Off and running in 1960 on Earth-828 (is one of the writers a WNC native?) four years after astronauts Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, The Bear), and Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn, Gladiator II) returned home from space with superpowers, First Steps is the first iteration of this story to depict Ben as anything more than a rock-skinned freak. Instead, this version is a caring, loving human who’s dedicated to his friends and community, and such characteristics likewise define his specially abled colleagues.
That foundation and slick, Tomorrowland-esque details — such as flying cars and the Four's charming robot assistant H.E.R.B.I.E. — carry the film as our heroes pivot from primarily prepping for the birth of Sue’s and Reed’s child to news from the mysterious Silver Surfer (Julia Garner, Ozark) that their planet has been marked for destruction by world-eater Galactus.
Shakman and his four (!!) writers nicely balance these complementary storylines of life and death, and ramp up the suspense as the Four (heroes, not writers) return to space and attempt to defuse this threat. But the entity (Ralph Ineson, essentially playing a giant metallic version of his iconic Green Knight) has other plans, and the horrible bargain he proposes raises intriguing ethical questions that haunt the Four (who soon become Five, following the birth of Franklin) upon their return to Earth.
Augmented by stunning action sequences in which the Silver Surfer and our crew show off their jaw-dropping abilities, First Steps maintains an active pace, establishing these characters and their world without getting distracted by excess mythology or too many characters. Such additions are almost surely coming in their future adventures, but for this initial outing, it's tough to find fault beyond its adherence to basic comic book movie conventions.
Grade: B-plus. Rated PG-13. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co., Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.
(Photo: Walt Disney Studios)
