Fantastic Four: First Steps (Matt Shakman, 2025)

Take four

You wonder why Marvel's First Family (and first collaboration between writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby) would have so much trouble transitioning to the big screen when predecessors (Captain America) and contemporaries (Iron Man; The Avengers) went on to cause a bigger splash; suspect it all stems from something folks behind those efforts remembered that folks behind this team's previous incarnations forgot: that it isn't the cosmic-ray powers that appeal to readers so much as the motivations they hold for fighting crime, supervillains, various forces of evil and injustice. Not the what, to paraphrase a key lesson taught in Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, as the why.

Maybe the best thing Matt Shakman and his writers (Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer, Kat Wood) managed to do with this umpteenth adaptation is to actually recall that lesson, at least for big portions of the picture. O there's the production design of course, setting the movie in a more optimistic version of what the '60s considered their future, complete with tailfinned baby-blue Cadillac convertibles and iconic checkered taxicabs maneuvering for parking at the foot of buildings that look like Oscar Niemeyer was given fifteen times the budget he had for Brasilia to overhaul Manhattan, and Eero Saarinen plunking every birdwinged building he always wanted to build (but couldn't due to budget) here and there, just because. Production designer Kasra Farahani said he was inspired by the look of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is ironic-- this movie shows no trace of Kubrick's cynicism about humanity's prospects. If the picture is channeling anything I'd say it's Hanna-Barbera's The Jetsons-- down to robot sidekick Herbie as an apronless gender-flipped Rosey.

At least for the first (and much better half) the focus is on family, and the community amongst which that family moved-- everyone from Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) and wife Sue (Vanessa Kirby) scrambling to become nestbuilders to Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Backhrach) teased by a gang of schoolchildren. The 60s brownstones and retro-futuristic buildings have their charm but what completes that charm are the well-scrubbed folk cheering their celebrities on in a harmonious symbiosis-- the Richards offer New Yorkers protection and some Kennedy-style glamor, the New Yorkers in return offer the Richards adoration and love. 

Enter planet-eating Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and (skip the rest of this article if you haven't seen the movie!) that relationship quickly collapses-- in arguably the dumbest press conference ever put on the big screen Richards unwittingly reveals that Galactus had offered to spare the Earth if and only if the Richards give up their only begotten son (would it have hurt Reed to tell the reporters 'We negotiated, he didn't go for it'?). I personally would have thought the Manhattanites' reaction to the failed deal would be more complicated, and it might have helped to show some of the other reactions onscreen, but hey, this is a veddy veddy expensive Marvel movie-- got to get this subplot resolved ASAP, get on with the anti-Galactus action right-quick before the kiddies get bored. 

And that's it, only I do object to the changes done to the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), not that they changed her gender but-- hair? The Surfer traverses vast reaches of space; why even bother with the suggestion of a bob (that can't even wave when you shake your head like in a shampoo commercial) when what you really want is a streamlined skull, to better surf the stellar winds? Not as if Garner couldn't rock a bald pate (see Persis Khambatta).

I'll admit it-- nitpicking. I do think making the Surfer female instead of male changes the dynamic of her role in the story, not necessarily in a good way-- Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) simply bats his pretty-boy eyelashes at her and she folds, where I thought there was real poetry in the way the Surfer has his trajectory queered by an ordinary blind sculptress. So okay the Surfer's now a girl and she and Johnny have a moment; could have at least spent more time on that crucial subplot, made it the dramatic highpoint it was in Kirby and Lee's original comic.

Maybe-- spitballing here-- let the Surfer have a moment with Sue instead? Sue in the comics occasionally had the supervillains falling for her (koff koff-- Harvey Elder) disrupting Reed's smug alpha male complacency, and having her realize her sexuality is still in development would've been a nice little loop-the-loop plot twist in the otherwise vanilla Marvel universe. Bet Kirby would've approved. 

I keep talking about visuals when I talk comic book movies, and considering what little I've seen of the previous adaptations yes I can easily say this is the best yet-- only I'd actually read The Galactus Trilogy, the three-part issue where the titanically talented Kirby conceived of this gargantuan purple-armored planet eater who wore a crazy weathervane headdress and his brilliantly reflective herald (Lee provided the two with appropriately nutty faux-Biblical dialogue), and I'm telling you right now no real filmmaker in his right mind would even dare come near what Kirby achieved. The wide-legged stances, the dynamic framing and staging, the cosmic sweep of the action and operatic feel of the drama-- I'd say only Kubrick on acid could come close, and find it appropriate that Marvel asked Kirby to adapt Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey into a taboloid-sized treasury edition (some passages-- the trip through the Star Gate for example-- suggest Kirby actually surpassed Kubrick). 

Otherwise the movie's okay. More fun than it had any right to be, thanks to Farahani and the cast and the script's hard work in that first half. Doesn't have the more singular voice of a real storyteller like James Gunn, more recognizably a corporate product that only slightly bends as opposed to breaking the status quo. But it'll do till something better (not holding my breath here) comes along.