Only seven months after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the earth in 1961, transforming the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union from the Space Age into the Space Race (Destination: Moon), Marvel Comics's editor-in-chief/writer Stan Lee and artist Jack “King” Kirby introduced a brand new superhero team, the Fantastic Four -- Reed Richards, a big-brained scientist and serial inventor, Sue Storm, Richard’s soon-to-be spouse and intellectual equal, Johnny Storm, Sue’s younger, physically gifted, quick-tempered brother, and Ben Grimm, Reed’s rock-steady best friend, and ace-level airplane/space jet pilot -- to comic-book readers.
Soon dubbed Marvel’s "First Family" by the superhero team's fervid fanbase, the Fantastic Four reflected the hope, optimism, and positivity of early 60s America. (More myth than reality, but one Lee and Kirby earnestly, unironically embraced in the myriad superhero comics they created together during the decade.)
They were the science-heroes-turned-superheroes comic-book readers didn’t realize they needed or wanted at the time. Once brought to two-dimensional life in four-color, comic-book form, though, the Fantastic Four became the cornerstone of Marvel Comics’s modernized superheroes. Within a decade, sales of Marvel's superhero comic books surpassed their crosstown rivals, DC Comics.
Despite the new super-team’s popularity among Silver Age fans and a rapidly expanding stable of superheroes ripe for merchandising, branding, and non-comic-book media, the Fantastic Four’s multiple big-screen appearances have left fans disappointed., Beginning with Roger Corman’s low-budget, unreleased effort in 1994 (solely produced to hold onto the characters's expiring film rights), middling mid-oughts series (2005 and 2007), and the misguided 2015 one-and-down franchise-ender, it felt like Marvel’s First Family would never receive a big-screen adaptation worthy of Lee and Kirby's singular superheroes, leaving their full potential unrealized onscreen except as a Platonic ideal.
Until now, that is. Thanks to uber-producer Kevin Feige, director Matt Shakman (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, WandaVision, The Great), and a four-deep screenwriting team (Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer), plus theme park attraction-ready, retro-futuristic world-building courtesy of production designer Kasra Farahani, Alexandra Payne’s bright, pop-flavored costumes, and composer Michael Giacchino’s properly bombastic score, The Fantastic Four: First Steps unequivocally lives up to the “fantastic” in the title and every superlative that can — and should — be mentioned in the same breath.
Like James Gunn’s recent Superman reboot, The Fantastic Four: First Steps thankfully sets aside the super-team’s oft-told origin story and their subsequent adjustment to their new superpowers, instead opening four years after Reed (Pedro Pascal), Sue (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny (Joseph Quinn), and Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) returned from outer space transformed by cosmic rays into Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing have been saving the world from a variety of threats, local, national, and international.
Introduced in the opening moments of The Fantastic Four: First Steps via an Ed Sullivan-inspired linear TV show hosted by Ted Gilbert (Mark Gatiss), the Fantastic Four, popular celebrities sans otherwise obligatory secret identities, exemplify superheroes in their purest, ideal form, dedicating themselves to the greater good: Not only keeping their iteration of Earth (828, not the 616 prime universe) safe from supervillains, but also using their diplomatic skills to establish global peace and their scientific talents to improve the world for everyone.
Shakman leans heavily on Farahani’s keen-eyed production design to inform his conception of an alternate, comic book-inspired past. Shakman's conceptualization extends the sleekly designed Baxter Building where the Fantastic Four live and work, a 60s-era Times Square updated to mix old and new stylings, the title characters's Fantasticar, a world dominated by various hues of blue, the Four’s favorite color, and clever, retro-futuristic tech extrapolated from their 60s-era analogues (among others).
Despite the Fantastic Four’s reputation as a sometimes squabbling, sometimes dysfunctional family, there’s little of that here. Instead, there’s healthy disagreement, usually resolved through the equivalent of talk therapy, before tackling the next personal or professional problem. All of which stops working the moment Shall-Ball (Julie Garner) appears in the skies over Times Square, heralding doom and destruction when Galactus (Ralph Ineson), an insatiably hungry, god-like being billions of years old reaches Earth in several weeks.
Pitting the Fantastic Four versus inarguably their biggest (size-wise) comic-book foe in Galactus proves, like the decision to set their first entry in the MCU in a utopian 60s-era alternate universe, a brilliant narrative move by Marvel’s Powers-That-Be and not just because of the world-level stakes. Shakman and his screenwriting team still deliver on an effects-heavy punch-em-up in the finale typical of MCU fare, emphasizing teamwork, logic/reasoning, and science, while also thoughtfully exploring an ethical, moral, and political conundrum that turns on sacrificing one life to save the world and its inhabitants.
While it might have taken five films, four decades, and three reboots (the last thanks Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox six years ago), to finally give Marvel’s First Family the big-screen treatment they’ve long deserved, lifelong and casual comic-book fans alike should be happy, possibly even ecstatic, at The Fantastic Four: First Steps refreshingly irony-free blend of superheroes, epic-scaled world-building, and stakes-heavy comic-book action.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens Friday, July 25, only in movie theaters. Visit the official site for more information.