Baby ‘Steps’
The whole baby thing worked for the cousins at Pixar so why not give it a try in the MCU, right?
The Fantastic Four: First sTeps
Director: Matt Shakman • Writers: Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer, based on the Marvel comic by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Starring: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn, Julia Garner, Ralph Ineson
USA • 1hr 55mins
Opens Hong Kong July 23 • IIA
Grade: B
Everybody loves The Incredibles, the animated actioner whose family-forward messaging and antics, and adorable super-powered baby Jack-Jack powered Pixar’s (so far) duology to critical (mostly raves) and popular (nearly US$2 billion in box office between them) glory. So it’s not surprising that Marvel, in its desperation to right the MCU ship that’s been drifting aimlessly since Avengers: Endgame, is tapping the same retrograde nuclear family bullshit the Pixar films did, which ironically owe a lot to Marvel’s Fantastic Four. They are, after all, “the first family of superheroes.” So with the hand-clapping glee that can only come from re-acquiring the rights to potentially lucrative IP, god king Kevin Feige is ramming the FF into the flailing MCU, welcoming them in with The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
And it is as introductory as the title suggests, though blessedly light on the origin story that we all know so well from the mythic 1994 unreleased German film, the mid-2000s pair by Tim Story that turned Marvel on to Chris Evans (and set up Deadpool & Wolverine’s best joke), or Josh Trank’s notorious Fant4stic in 2015. Television grinder Matt Shakman (WandaVision, The Boys, Succession, Mad Men) and a squad of writers including Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds) and Eric Pearson (Thunderbolts*, Thor: Ragnarok) have hit on a curious mix of intellectual and hokey for a fairly rote Imperilled World adventure that has legit stakes and intimate moral choices, but at the same time can be actively irritating and wears its shameless hopefulness on its sleeve. It makes a nice throwback double bill with James Gunn’s Superman in many ways, as a period piece set in a time when the world was more forward-looking. You know. Like the 2000s.
Retro analogue is so chic
Kidding (not kidding). First Steps unfolds in an alterna-MCU, specifically Earth 828 (a shout-out to Jack Kirby), which is a ringer for the space age, the years between the 1950s and 1960s when the promise of technology was more Jetsons convenience than Elon Musk despair. Following a DNA-altering cosmic event – all this is recapped in the requisite “news report” – Reed Richards, or Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal, teetering on the cusp of overexposure but delivering Emotionally Available Secure Cis Het Man as well as ever), his wife Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), her brother Johnny, AKA Human Torch (Joseph Quinn, Gladiator II) and Richards-Storm clan adoptee Ben Grimm, better known as The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, doing a discount version of Richie on The Bear) are global heroes, making life better for everyone. They’re also the only known superheroes in the world, so when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner, Wolf Man, posing hard rather than acting) flies in one day saying a dude called Galactus (voiced by the unmistakable Robert Eggers favourite Ralph Ineson) is on his way to eat the planet, everyone looks to The Four for help. Their heroics are complicated by the sudden arrival of Franklin, Reed and Sue’s unexpected bundle of joy. Uh oh, kid’s special. Galactus wants him, if the Reeds give him up he’ll spare the Earth. Easy call, right? In a Vulcan “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one” way it is. But babies and families are sacrosant in movies, so the Four needs to find another way to send Galactus packing.
There’s a lot that’s cool and entertaining about The Fantastic Four: First Steps, most of it coming from the visuals. Relatively green production designer Kasra Farahani announces himself as no joke with a gorgeous mid-century modern inspired palette, all primary colours, curvilinear Le Corbusier interiors (I’d kill for that sofa) and retro-futurism signalling physical and mental innovation. It’s utterly spectacular looking, and is the ideal complement to the film’s NASA-friendly space sequences involving gravity wells and neutron stars that look just as spectacular; this is some (new) Star Trek/Christopher Nolan level space imagery right here. The film practically luxuriates in the wiz-bang cartoon culture of the time, and if I’m honest the picture of a world (of a USA) in thrall to education, science, social progress and tolerance is the kind of nostalgia I can go for right now – even if it was bullshit then too. It’s nice to think we don’t deserve to be eaten.
But there’s just as much that Shakman and Co whiff on, rendering a final judgement of “It’s fine.” Not great, not terrible. Fine. Alas, the majority of the action is Earth-bound, pivoting on the Four’s goal to stop Galactus, save the world and keep the damn baby (which, in fairness, has roots in the comics). It doesn’t leave a lot of space for anything beyond positioning the FF within the MCU (of course there’s a stinger) and placing the pieces on the game board for later. In just a few minutes Paul Walter Hauser as Reed’s nemesis and Subterranea leader Mole Man steals the show, wrestling a character from almost nothing and making you wish he’d come back. Natasha Lyonne is very nice teacher Rachel Rozman, who gets even less to do than Hauser even though she’s clearly supposed to be sad and lonely Ben’s love interest. And this guy… It’s fortunate that Moss-Bachrach can do so much with vocal inflection, because he’s overwhelmed by Thing’s CGI, which is a shame when he and Quinn demonstrate a delicately sardonic dynamic when Johnny isn’t being “horndog”. That’s his entire character. That and “I’m not dumb.” Hopefully they’ll all get more to do in the sequel, so for now Kirby is First Steps’ emotional anchor (duh, she’s a girl and a mother) and to her credit she sells the conundrum. She’s frustrated with Reed’s contemplation of the mathematics of it all but her commitment to him never wavers; she addresses the masses honestly when telling them she will not give up her baby nor will she give up anyone else’s. It’s a bit of a high wire act, because if Kirby blows it Sue’s just another insufferable new parent. But let’s circle back and end on a high note, of which there are many: First Steps bucks the recent MCU trend and clocks in at under two hours long – barely, but it does – and above all it stands on its own. There’s nothing here that relies on knowledge of a Marvel series or obscure Phase 3 reference. That has to count for something.