The Fantastic Four: First Steps
The skies are clear and clean save for the flying car which zips across the skyline in a blur of blue, followed sometimes by a streak of red fire which flies behind, Johnny Storm following his sister Sue, his brother-in-law Reed Richards and their best friend Ben Grimm, together the Fantastic Four, the pioneering space explorers who four years previously gained strange powers and celebrity when exposed to cosmic rays in orbit.
A circumstance for which Reed holds himself responsible, a man who calculates and plans everything, although he does not blame himself in an emotional sense, dealing in outcomes rather than guilt, they have used it to their advantage, now established as protectors of the world, their brand genial, trustworthy, approachable, kind people, a family who are the only superheroes in the year 1960, and when the skies darken it is their responsibility to step in.
Herald of the monstrous power Galactus, traversing the galaxy and consuming entire planets, with obvious sadness the metallic woman who floats atop a similar surfboard who can slip through solid objects and seems impervious to conventional weapons brings the news that the Earth is to be destroyed by her master and that there is nothing to be done about it except make peace with the fact and enjoy what time is left.
The fourth big screen iteration of the “first family of superheroes,” including the unreleased Roger Corman production of 1994, the Fantastic Four bring a dynamic different from that of the sometimes fractious X-Men or the hierarchy of the Avengers, set on Earth-828, named for the birthday of co-creator Jack Kirby, where science is very different, a retro-future of sleek design and apparently more co-operative laws of physics, rockets blasting off from a dock on the equivalent of the Hudson River and faster than light travel no big shakes, though perhaps the greatest achievement, unaddressed, is the malleability of costumes which adapt to circumstance without complaint.
Directed by Matt Shakman and starring Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Reed “Mister Fantastic” Richards, Sue “Invisible Woman” Storm, Johnny “Human Torch” Storm and Ben “The Thing” Grimm with Julia Garner as Shalla-Bal, the Silver Surfer, and Ralph Ineson as the voice of Galactus, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is exactly that, exciting, trepidatious, brave, ambitious and also prone to stumbling, hoping that blind optimism will grant sufficient momentum to reach the heights to which it aspires.
Like the recently released Superman, it aims for joyful, colourful and unashamed, even proud, to be a comic book movie, but as the first film in Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe rather than signifying a bold new direction it feels old-fashioned, the plotting facile and the threat unimpressive, more akin to the Fantastic Four films of twenty years ago starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis, not helped by the numerous parallels with Rise of the Silver Surfer which killed that brief series, though there are also other obvious lifts from Thunderbirds to Interstellar to The Day of the Doctor.
The menace of Galactus strictly limited to his colossal size, he is big, he is dumb, and he is hungry, eating entire planets apparently for the sake of it but now satisfied with a special tasty baby for afters, able to jump from star system to star system without effort but seemingly taking the longest time to traverse the distance from the Moon, allowing the heroic quartet generous time to micromanage their overcomplicated plan before moving to a more direct backup of simply knocking him into a big hole, foolishly leaving it open afterwards.
Shalla-Bel a more powerful and interesting adversary, her ability to phase through matter also allows her to vanish when her presence would make things more difficult, The Fantastic Four a film which seems content to settle for less than it is capable of, carried by the enjoyable cast and the chiming harmonies of the soundtrack but reliant on easy fixes, the thirty-seventh from Marvel and credited to four writers who by this time should know that baby steps are not enough when superlative excellence is the bar which has been set.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is currently on general release and also screening in IMAX
