.

This is now the fourth attempt to bring this particular group of comic book characters to cinemas so the question has to be, is it fantastic? 

Well, if you take the definition of that word to be fanciful and remote from reality then yes. For a long time when superhero stories were told on screen it was mostly in cartoon shows but when they started adapting them for cinema they tried to present everything in a slightly more realistic way. Of course these films were still outlandish to some extent or another but they tended to exclude a lot of the more of the OTT elements like giant monsters, cosmic beings, other dimensional gods, talking animals, subterranean creatures, time travellers and demons. Even as these things have gradually found their way in to the movies there has always been some attempt to explain their existence with physics and science in a way that just never seemed necessary in a Saturday morning kids show. Not now though, with The Fantastic Four: First Steps and last month’s Superman everything has come full circle and almost nothing, how ever silly, is off the table. I remember wondering how Marvel Studios would ever be able to bring Rocket Racoon into a film alongside Iron Man without it being jarring and I criticised Wonder Woman 1984, which was the last of these these movies to feature Pedro Pascal, for having a plot built all around magic but we are way past all of that now. The films of this type we are watching this Summer are essentially live action versions of those old cartoons. I mean this one ends up that way more than most, in a post credit scene that seems to demonstrably wear this idea on its sleeve. One of the previous versions of this story, 2007’s Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, struggled to find a way to bring big bad (really big) Galactus convincingly to the silver screen but here they have just lifted him as he is right off the page with his gigantic purple handlebar helmet, his funny glowing eyes and his preposterous booming voice. Up until now the only version of Fantastic Four that really succeeded was not one of those I counted earlier as it came in the shape of Pixar’s The Incredibles, which was of course animated. 

However we got here though, we are here and for all of its extreme elements it does hold up. It doesn’t own all of this quite as well as James Gunn’s Superman but it is a similarly fun ride. 

In fact one of the things that works in the movie’s favour comes right from the cerulean costumed quartet’s very beginnings. They first appeared in the Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created comic that debuted in 1961 and this film retains that historical setting. Then of course it was simply futurism, now it is the most wonderful retrofuturism. The style and design of the film is great and works further to make it feel quite unlike any of the other thirty six MCU movies that have come before it. The new Superman is a proper reset for rival DC studios but this feels, at least for the time being, like it does the same thing for Marvel.

While doing this it also returns to what made their first films so good; a focus on character over anything else. There is actually relatively little action here, with the running time being largely taken up by the relationship between Pascal’s Reed and Vanessa Kirby’s Sue and to a lesser extent their interactions with Joseph Quinn’s Johnny and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben. There is also quite a lot of time spent on their interactions with the public too which is not something you always see in these movies (although again, it is another thing that it has in common with Superman 2025). Pascal and Kirby are definitely the stars here although all the performances are good. This said Moss-Bachrach does unfortunately get a bit lost under the not always flawless and surprisingly weightless CGI. 

It is interesting that even with the mostly no holds barred approach to the source material there are still some areas where they show restraint. Showing a lot of Reed ‘Mr. Fantastic’ Richards powers was evidently thought to be stretching things too far and Galactus’ planet devouring is presented as mechanically assisted which has sometimes been the case in the comics but generally we’ve seen him just sucking them up which probably wouldn’t have worked on screen. What this shows is a control of the material and I give story writers Eric Pearson and Jeff Kaplan and director Matt Shakman full credit for walking this line. I also like they way they handled the heroes origin story, where like the makers of Spider-Man: Homecoming and yes, this year’s Superman, they have realised that after several other versions of this we don’t need to see this again. 

So even after all of the other MCU films, it does genuinely feel, as the name suggests, that we are taking baby steps here. Like the aforementioned mentioned Spider-Man: Homecoming and another of this Summer’s blockbusters Jurassic World: Rebirth the subtitle is more meta than it is narrative. There is a baby but we don’t witness it starting to walk. The narrative and thematic steps are taken with confidence though and they do not stumble. 

So now both of the big comic book studios done something that after a crowded decade you might not have thought possible anymore, and they have done it by embracing a certain boldness other films have slowly moved toward yet have steered away from. They have made superhero films feel fresh and exciting again

and that is fantastic.