Review: The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

I've never been too shy about making it known that comic book movies aren't exactly my cup of tea, despite having given decent enough reviews to a reasonable number of them over the years. I can point out something that's done well, even if I don't exactly love it. When it comes to these types of movie, it's not that I don't like them, but rather that they rarely excite me in the way other great movies of varying types can.

It's also been accepted, both critically and seemingly by audiences too, that Marvel movies have been on the decline in recent years. I missed this summer's "Thunderbolts," but have seen some of the lesser entries on streaming over the past few years.

There have been a handful of Marvel movies over the decades that I thought stood out - namely, Sam Raimi's first two "Spider-man" movies, the first "Iron Man," and, of course, "Black Panther" - but whenever a new Marvel movie was on the horizon, it wasn't necessarily a cause for celebration for me.

That being said, "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" is an overall good time and, in all likelihood, the best Marvel movie since "Black Panther." It doesn't deviate from the formula in any noticeable way - a group of heroes must rise to the challenge to defend the Earth from a sinister being from beyond that plans to destroy it - but the execution is more effective.

This is, in part, due to its visual and storytelling choices. The story is set on Earth 828 (don't ask because I couldn't explain even if I wanted to), not ours, so that gives the filmmakers free reign to present a society that seemingly has elements from the 1940s through the 1970s going on at any minute - there are newspaper clippings that seem straight out of the World War II era, a talk show host that gives off a '50s vibe and some needle drops ("The Oogum Boogum Song") from the 1960s.

"First Steps," which is the third attempt at a big-budget Fantastic Four movie and the only good one of the bunch, finds the four - Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm (Ebon-Moss Bachrach) - at a crossroads after Sue becomes pregnant with Mister Fantastic's child.

Shortly thereafter, the Earth is visited by a celestial being known as the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) who arrives to tell everyone that the planet will be destroyed by Galactus (Ralph Ineson), who eats planets to satiate his "relentless eternal hunger." Much of the rest of what takes place you can probably figure out on your own.

But while "First Steps" doesn't do much differently from any number of comic book movies of the past few decades, it has a vibe and style that makes it engrossing and watchable as well as a cast of likable actors who overcome the cliches of the genre. 

Much like the recent "Superman," this new "Fantastic Four" movie doesn't forget that movies of this type are meant to be silly and fun, and not necessarily the self-serious chores that some other entries in the genre have been in recent years. All in all, it's pretty decent.