Director Matt Shakman finds a way to make the Fantastic Four work on the big screen with a cast that has great chemistry together. But the interconnected nature of the MCU stifles some of this outing’s shine.
It’s 2025 and we are 37 movies deep into the experiment that is the MCU. The idea that you could build an interconnected film universe that would create tentpoles that would introduce characters to create a rich cinematic universe. In that sense, it has succeeded many times. From creating veritable superstars out of comic dud characters like The Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man that would shine in crossover films like The Avengers did in 2012.
But as these films came more often, there was a need to fish for the next blockbuster in every film. Post credit scenes became redundant and teased characters and ploTlines we’d never see and in many cases, creates scenarios that eroded the films they were in. Shang Chi is a great film, but its post credit scenes promised a storyline we never got.
And then we have Fantastic Four. A series that migrated from Fox and has had several starts and stops; no real successful outings on the big screen and this iks its fourth reboot. Matt Shakman, the film’s director, is an unabashed fan of the film and here we have a tremendous cast poised to really make the concept work. A family of astronauts and friends goes into space, they’re hit my cosmic radiation which turns them into heroes and they’re the First Family of Marvel. Shakeman places these heroes in a bubble universe where this can all be true and it’s the Marvel of the 1960’s complete with Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in a really well-crafted cameo. The Earth is threatened by the Devourer of Worlds, Galactus, an elemental being who wants to consume the universe. Can the F4 stop him.
Sure. Because that is never in doubt. They have to be in another movie after all.
And that’s what sucks about the MCU. This is two good movies in a row for Marvel. After a string of searching for a direction with several underperforming and boring movies like The Marvels, Captain America: Brave New World and disappointing TV projects like Secret Invasion and Ironheart. Thunderbolts* and this are good movies that unfortunately are undermined by Marvel’s hail-mary of having The Russos come back and rapidly develop Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Both this film and Thunderbolts* feature time jump mid credit scenes that undermine character growth and throw us into scenarios that these film’s creatives didn’t envision because they’re directed and written by The Russos. Mind you, when Deadpool and Wolverine ended, there wasn’t a scene wedged in to make you feel dumb about what you just saw and some might argue this film’s scene doesn’t. But it does make you feel like do you really need something to punctuate a film that wasn’t done by its creative team?
Especially when F4 is a good movie. It has the aspirational spirit of Superman and 2008’s Iron Man in creating a film that feels like it can lead the MCU in a new direction. All 4 actors do a tremendous job making you feel like you’re in a new world. Galactus is great and a great execution of the character. I feel less so about Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer, but the changes made are to service Joe Quinn’s version of The Human Torch. I love Ebon Moss Barrach in this as Ben Grimm and Vanessa Kirby and Pedro Pascal do a good job in their roles. The star is the film’s production design which does a lot of heavy lifting along with talking head exposition. But it does feel like a too serious version of The Venture Brothers cartoon (whose animators Titmouse do work on this) and less so of The Incredibles which is still the best version of the F4 we’ve seen.
Fantastic Four is solid and does give us hope for good movies from the film version of the House of Ideas, but let’s let things develop organically and maybe lose these post scenes in the future.
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THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (2025)
★★★ of ★★★★★ stars
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VIDEO REVIEW