First Steps’ Review — Nothing Fantastic About This Dull MCU Snoozefest

So many pieces worked really well in Marvel’s latest MCU film that it’s almost a shame to give this one a thumbs’ down, but here we are. The script, dearest readers. The script is to blame, as is so often the case. In Fantastic Four: First Steps, things happen and then other things happen and then there is a conflict that is quickly resolved with little to no ingenuity or effort on the part of the good guys and they win and the bad guys lose. The end.

There is no real tension in this movie, either between the core characters or between our heroes and villains. Like Superman, which came out earlier this month and which had a similar vibe and plot structure, our heroes are beloved by the masses until they aren’t and then, in the end, are beloved once again. Public opinion has an on/off switch that it abuses only slightly less than Superman.

Spoilers follow, though I bet you could easily guess the plot of this movie just by watching the trailers.

All Style, No Substance

The best thing about First Steps is the aesthetic. It’s far and away my favorite part of this film, and that’s a problem because as much as I do enjoy a solid retrofuturistic aesthetic, it’s not enough to make a mediocre movie worth watching. This is all style over substance.

The film does a really good job at establishing Earth 828. It’s the 1960s but everything is very Jetsons. That midcentury modern veneer makes everything pop. It’s very pleasant. I want to live there with the red, rounded cabinets and the funky fridge and the weird science that’s somehow managed flying cars before flat screen TVs. I dig it. It’s very groovy.

We’re introduced to our heroes four years after their big space trip that resulted in super powers thanks to genetic modification. Like Superman (again) we don’t get an origin story. Just some exposition to help us get into the story quickly. Like Superman, we quickly move past all the humdrum of daily life and into a conflict where the very world and survival of the human race is at stake. Like Superman, this drains the movie of all tension.

End Of The World Conflicts Kill Suspense

I am going to keep shouting this at Hollywood over and over again: If every superhero movie involves saving the world, pretty soon audiences tune out because it becomes so very, very obvious that the good guys will win and the world will be saved. The one time this didn’t happen was Infinity War and that was awesome, but 99 times out of 100 making the stakes this high only has the opposite effect. Instead, superhero movies need smaller, more intimated stakes that present heroes with real tough choices. Think Logan, The Dark Knight, Superman: The Movie etc.

In any case, we learn that Galactus is coming. The end is nigh.

Of course, since this is the multiverse and a different version of Earth, we think maybe it will. But even if it does, the main version of Earth will be okay and since we saw the Fantastic Four showing up there in the post-credits scene of Thunderbolts, we know that whether or not Earth 828 survives, our heroes will.

So Reed Richards /Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), his pregnant wife Sue Storm / Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm / Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm / Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) learn that Galactus is coming via the Herald / Silver Surfer / Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner) who comes to warn the people of Earth that their days are numbered and they should spend those days wisely. Galactus, you see, is a powerful celestial being who devours entire worlds as he wanders across the stars. He’s one of the most powerful entities in the entire Marvel universe. It’s going to be pretty tough for our heroes to stop such a powerful being from killing everyone and literally eating the planet . . . .

No, actually, it’s going to be super easy. Barely an inconvenience.

Our heroes track down Galactus and we get some fun space sequences involving them trying to escape after he reveals that their baby is actually super powerful. He says he’ll make a trade for the survival of Earth if they just hand the infant over. They say no and Silver Surfer chases them, but they Interstellar her directly into a black hole and then Back To The Future their ship back to Earth. All of this is fun. There are so many fun moments throughout this film. They just never congeal into something special.

They get back and rather bizarrely tell the people of Earth about the trade Galactus offered them. Shockingly(!!) the billions of people about to die think this is kind of a selfish call on the Fantastic Four’s part and their popularity dips in the polls. It’s going to be pretty tough to get the people back on their side, right?

No, actually, it’s going to be super easy. Barely an inconvenience. Sue just gives a few hundred people in NYC a little speech about family and then everything’s okay. Sue’s real power is oratory. Or Earth 828’s population is a bunch of suckers.

In any case, Reed, who has learned how to teleport an egg, comes up with a plan to teleport the entire planet and everyone on it to a totally different star system. All they need to do is get the whole world to chip in and build a few hundred teleportation stations across the globe and then, before Galactus arrives, using all the power sources in the whole world at once, teleport everyone and everything to a random star system they’ve never been to. See, super easy! What could go wrong? This is an awesome plan that absolutely won’t inadvertently kill everyone.

Thankfully, Silver Surfer shows up and knocks out a bunch of the teleporters, probably saving the lives of everyone on Earth 828 in the process. Reed comes up with a new plan using the last teleporter: They’ll just trick Galactus, the powerful godlike supervillain they just met, into standing inside one of their teleporters that just happens to be the perfect size for Galactus (who is only a little bigger than a full-sized Ant-Man in this movie) and then they’ll teleport him to that far-off star system instead of the entire planet. This is, admittedly, a better plan though successfully carrying it out makes Galactus seem like a pretty lame supervillain.

Fortunately, Galactus isn’t fooled into standing in the teleporter (which he could have easily just stepped right out of since there’a a 45-second countdown timer before it actually works). Instead, Sue goes all Mama Bear and uses her powers to knock him into the teleporter and then Silver Surfer has a change of heart and knocks him back in when Galactus tries to get out. He basically just stomps around NYC for a minute, knocks down a few buildings, grabs the baby and then gets beat up by a handful of moderately powerful superheroes.

It’s deeply annoying.

A Galactus-Sized Villain Problem

The MCU spent so many years and so many films building up to Thanos. They made him this overarching threat for multiple phases of the MUC. They sprinkled in the Infinity Stones. They built and planned and prepared until finally Thanos came roaring onto the scene in Infinity War . . . and won. Our heroes lost. After all this time, they lost and had to come back and try again in Endgame. Galactus is more powerful than Thanos and gets one movie to show up and get his butt kicked by the Fantastic Four because Sue Storm gets protective of her baby. It’s such a waste of a supervillain’s potential. Marvel clearly knows how to set up amazing villains (and maybe they’ll do that with Dr Doom, though I’m deeply concerned at this point) but this was not it. Even if Galactus returns in a future MCU film, he was so poorly used here that I’m not sure anyone will care.

Fans will eat it up, I’m sure. The Fantastic Four did stuff together! There were callbacks and Easter Eggs! Pedro is so handsome! Vanessa Kirby is Sue Storm, heart emoji heart emoji heart emoji. It’s so comic book, I love how this and Superman are so comic book, just comic booking at me in every frame, wow, just wow! (A comic book movie being “so comic book” is the latest thing fans say that’s just vague enough to be meaningless but can magically let a film off the hook for its lousy script).

I didn’t hate it, mind you. The pacing was decent. It moved along at a nice clip but gave you lots of character moments along the way. And it didn’t beat you over the head with its humor. There’s a genuinely funny moment at the end of the movie where the men all try to put a fancy car seat into the car and it’s this whole gimmick and quite funny. Mole Man / Harvey Elder has some scenes played by the always entertaining Paul Walter Hauser. Lots of little moments that are fun or funny or cool or heartfelt, some decent action scenes, and yet the movie just felt empty in the end. I felt nothing. Stuff happened to characters that I didn’t really care about. Besides, I knew they’d all be fine and they were. The world was fine. Everything was fine but I felt no sense of relief over this. Galactus could have eaten Earth 828 and the Fantastic Four and their little baby, too, and at least I would have felt surprise. The cast was fine, but they didn’t really connect like a family. The chemistry wasn’t really there. Only Thing felt really true to the character here.

I always ask myself these questions after I see a film these days. First, would I watch it again? Second, would I recommend others go see it in theaters or, if not, when it comes to streaming?

The answer to the first question is “no.” I have no reason or desire to watch First Steps again. It’s not funny enough or exciting enough or unique enough or well-written enough to watch more than once. I would also not recommend you see this in theaters, simply because even while it looks good, there is very little that warrants a trip to the big screen. Definitely give it a watch when it lands on Disney+ because it’s an okay superhero movie with a cool aesthetic and decent performances from its leads. But you’re not missing anything by waiting a couple months. Fantastic Four: First Steps may be one of the best MCU films we’ve seen over the past few years, but this says more about the low bar Marvel and Disney have set than it does about the quality of this movie.

Superhero Fatigue . . . Or Superhero Formula Fatigue?

It’s possible I’m suffering from superhero fatigue, but I’d like to offer an alternative diagnosis: I’m suffering from superhero formula fatigue. These movies aren’t doing enough to surprise and delight us anymore. They’re falling back on cheap tricks.

Read my review of Superman right here. James Gunn’s film and Fantastic Four: First Steps have a very similar vibe, all feel-good “let’s come together to stop the bad guys” stuff but in the most generic, puerile way possible. It makes whatever our superheroes do feel much less super when the public just sort of echoes whatever the writers want them to about our heroes. Both films are also deeply formulaic and dull. Things happen, our heroes react, a potentially world-ending crisis is easily averted and everything is wrapped up in time for dinner. There is no friction, no tension between characters beyond brief, surface level disagreements. There are no consequences for our heroes’ actions.

And because there are no consequences, we never get heroes with any real agency. Where are the hard choices or sacrifices they’re required to make? Where are the mistakes made that lead to worse outcomes or hard bargains? Things just happen. That’s it. That’s the script. Things happen, the end. Just enough jokey bits are tossed, like scraps from the dinner table, to distract us from the lousy script, the disappointing villains and the lackluster heroics.

But hey, whatever. It’s just a comic book movie!