The Fantastic Four: Great Looks, Forgettable Threats

Marvel’s new movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, is a cute, stylish, and inoffensive ode to one of the company’s first superhero teams. It’s packed with good acting (especially from Pedro Pascal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and a lot of style that it winks at as well. But after two hours of not much happening, it never really gets tense, scary, or emotional enough to become something more.

Producer Kevin Feige called the movie “a no-homework-required” entry in Marvel’s busy Cinematic Universe, and he’s right. As much fun as the blockbusters are, they also ask a lot of homework. Keeping track of multiverses, random cameos, and endless spin-offs can feel exhausting, even for the most dedicated Marvel fan. First Steps, which debuted in theaters on Friday, is a nice way to take a break from the hubbub. It’s a freestanding story that reintroduces Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm without having to get tangled up in decades of continuity from earlier comic book and movie adaptations. It’s fine with just sticking to the basics, and in some ways, the film never asks for more than that.

The story kicks off with a kind of talk show hosted by Mark Gatiss, an actor whose onscreen personality is the perfect fit to deliver a breezy catch-up of how the Fantastic Four became who they are. Four years ago, a group of astronauts from all four characters got beamed into space on a mission, but a radiation leak gave them all mutations that changed their DNA. Reed (smartly played by Pedro Pascal with a nice balance of thoughtfulness and wry humor) can stretch his body like silly putty. Vanessa Kirby’s Sue can make herself invisible and project force fields with her hands. Joseph Quinn’s Johnny can set himself on fire and fly. And Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben has turned into The Thing, a big, hulking mass with rocks growing from his skin, and is stuck that way.

They all now live together in a building that looks like it was ripped from a mid-century modern compound of space, complete with flying cars, a chalkboard full of equations on one wall, and a little robot called H.E.R.B.I.E. who can bust out of the closet when needed to help with household chores. The look of First Steps is retro-futuristic with old-fashioned square television sets, people waving at each other instead of looking down at their phones, and a cartoonish optimism to the props, sets, and costumes. It’s The Jetsons meets Lost in Space with a Marvel Comics art style slapped all over it.

The movie’s big hook is family. The four leads seem like an incredibly tight-knit unit. Sue reveals that she’s pregnant early on in the film, and Reed gets all anxious and earnest in how he handles the news. He even has H.E.R.B.I.E. come up with a master plan to baby-proof both their house and science lab (a montage shows the robot knocking over beakers of chemicals). Johnny and Ben act like old siblings with all their bickering, but it’s clear they also love their partners and are looking forward to being uncles.

But there’s not much time to be sentimental. The Earth is in danger once again from one of those space-y cosmic threats Marvel likes to throw at its heroes. Galactus, a huge armored being with light-up eyes, is on a collision course with Earth to munch the planet whole. Before he can arrive, though, he dispatches a messenger: a silver-skinned female (played in motion capture by Julia Garner) with wild red hair. As the Silver Surfer, she swoops in (literally on a surfboard) with sleek menace, though she’s more of an object of wonderment (and lust) for Johnny.

Even though that sounds dramatic, it’s not. As the heroes track Galactus through the vacuum of space and take shots from the Surfer, the action stays on-brand with the retro-futuristic look of the film: camera flashes of light, fire shooting behind them as they speed up, and colorful but stylized explosions that don’t feel as destructive as you’d think. Sue’s big, climactic moment of giving birth while on the mother of all rescue missions is more surreal than tense or suspenseful. A baby being born while an entire planet is on fire (and maybe being destroyed) is an interesting juxtaposition. But it’s all wrapped up in warm space-age color schemes.

In many ways, that warm sincerity, combined with the cutesy aesthetics, is the tone of the film. There are some good emotional moments, but there’s so much nice lighting and pastel-colored wonderment that it sometimes sucks the air out of the room. There’s almost no tension, and the stakes feel low even when the fate of the planet is at risk. It’s more of a kids’ adventure movie than a big-budget superhero action blockbuster.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a fun ride with good performances and gorgeous cinematography, but it lacks a lot of the dramatic juice that made Marvel’s best films stick with you. It’s a popcorn flick you can take your grandparents to and not worry about it being too intense or violent. It’s accessible, nostalgic, and has a good heart, but not much thrill. It might be just what someone is looking for when they want a lighter, sillier adventure than saving the world. For others, it’s a beautiful gift box that doesn’t have much inside it.