‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ – A fantastic feat

After 10 years of dormancy following the travesty that was 2015’s Fantastic Four, a new cast and a new universe have emerged. Before the story even begins, The Fantastic Four: First Steps establishes itself in Earth 828, giving the audience a clue as to why the world they’re seeing is so different from the Marvel Universe they’ve come to know.

The team in blue are still global protectors, towering over New York City in their iconic Baxter building, but in a more ideal world. There’s a 1960s aesthetic with 2060s technology that creates a retro future paradise. More than anything else, the film deserves praise for taking the pages of the comics and transforming them into an unbelievably well-crafted landscape.

The world is so inviting and brimming with detail, it becomes genuinely devastating when it’s threatened by a cosmic being with an insatiable hunger. Fantastic Four: First Steps’ mastery of design continues as the four take a star trek to face off against the giant purple-plated antagonist Galactus and his chrome-covered herald, the Silver Surfer.

The film is equal parts wondrous as it is treacherous, a fact that’s understood by Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards. Pascal evokes a sense of dread in nearly every frame as the world’s greatest mind carries the responsibility to usher humanity through an apocalyptic threat. He’s not only concerned for the fate of the world but also for his family.

Fantastic Four: First Steps makes Reed’s companions far more useful than they’ve ever been in any previous adaptation. Vanessa Kirby achieves the honour of a definitive Sue Storm portrayal and the best performance in the film by a significant margin. Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are more subdued versions of the Human Torch and The Thing, even going so far as to resist saying their cartoonish catchphrases, as the film opts for more distinguished superheroes.

The film makes great strides in presenting an established group well into their careers as superheroes, but in exchange, you’re left to infer quite a lot. It’s a non-committal approach to characterisation that allows the characters to feel developed, thanks to well-written scenes that provide just enough context while maintaining an air of mystery. There’s a sense that the four years that precede the film’s events featured versions of these characters with less maturity, but the film makes no definitive statements to that effect.

Despite lacking definition, the Fantastic Four are adapted well. The cast fills the shoes of their iconic characters perfectly, and the depiction of global cooperation in the face of grave danger greatly aligns with the film’s overall message of unity. It’s light on action sequences, the humour is sparse, but what it lacks in punches and kicks, it makes up for with some of the most stunning images ever put in an MCU film. It’s escapism at its finest, with a heart-warming presentation of Marvel’s first family.

Rating: Big Screen Watch

Damian Levy is a film critic and podcaster for Damian Michael Movies.