It's over a week now since I saw the Fantastic Four movie, at the same Vue Cinema on Finchley Road where I saw Iron Man and Black Panther. I'd just arrived in London from Italy, and was enjoying some free time and mobility (living out in the country has its advantages, but the drawbacks are needing a car to get anywhere), so I took an afternoon to finally catch the movie.
There's two ways I can discuss it: first off, I can (and will) discuss it on its own, and then I'll talk about how it fits into the MCU. There are some spoilers, as usual, so read on carefully after the jump.
On its own merits, Fantastic Four: First Steps is fine. Not amazingly good, not abysmally bad. It doesn't leave me with a sense of excitement like the first Iron Man did, but nor does it flop like a limp fish the way the Marvels did. Comparing it to the other MCU films that came out this year, I'd rank it as better than Captain America: Brave New World but not as good as Thunderbolts.
One of the things that I thought they did well for this movie was setting it in an alternate universe from the regular MCU, but also not having it be about alternate universes. Instead it posits an MCU where the Fantastic Four are the only superheroes that have emerged, and what that means for society at large, from how they're embraced by the population, to how they change the New York skyline. There's even a lovely shot in the intro sequence that calls back to the cover of Fantastic Four #1, from way back in 1961.
It's interesting that, unlike the wider MCU, the population of Earth 828 really does take the FF to heart. At least at first: when Galactus reveals that he wants Reed and Sue's unborn child, Franklin, in exchange for not eating the Earth, the people of New York rebel against the FF and it takes a speech from Sue to calm things down.
In terms of the characters themselves, it's hard to identify an arc for any of the main cast. Reed might have one - he starts out as the confident, 60s-style science/pulp hero, then questions himself when trying to figure out how to ward off Galactus - even looking for a while like he's seriously considering giving Franklin up to the devourer of worlds - and then figuring out the answer. I generally love Pedro Pascal, but I still feel like Anson Mount would have been the better choice - still, Pascal makes for a solid, if unspectacular, Mister Fantastic. On the negative side, apart from the characterization I was a little disappointed with how they depicted his powers - in the comics Reed's malleable body can form objects and wrap around things, but here his limbs just stretched.
Vanessa Kirby as Sue Richards has probably the meatiest role, though it also feels like the writers struggled to give visualize her powers and to make them look like more than just her pushing at the air. Sue's the one who keeps Reed on the straight and narrow, and who plays den mother to Johnny and Ben, plus, as I mentioned, she gives the big speech explaining why the FF won't give up her child.
On the other hand, Ben seems to be missing the Thing's pathos - there's a subplot with a local Yancy Street teacher that doesn't really go anywhere - which is the main point about the character in that era. We see him mugging for a group of kids, and his catch-phrase, "It's clobberin' time!" is the subject of a runner throughout, but there's little of his angst over being trapped in a monstrous body, or the dichotomy of being the one member of the FF who's just there to hit things.
Johnny, meanwhile, gets something meaty to do, ie decipher the alien transmissions that accompany the Silver Surfer. But his skill at linguistics seems to come from nowhere, and it all seems to be in service of his having a major crush on the Surfer (who's a girl in this universe, though I hold with Ramzi Fawaz's The New Mutants that there's more than a hint of queerness to Johnny and his ability to "flame on").
Overall, as I said, it's better than Brave New World, but lacks the psychological depth of Thunderbolts. And if it's a nice love letter to mid-century modern architecture, retrofuturism and simple, non-grimdark storytelling, then it also lacks the thematic throughline of Superman's "kindness is the new punk rock". I've seen a lot of memes this summer placing FF and Superman together, and they do fit together thematically as two sets of characters that are considered hopelessly twee and outdated - but the difference is that James Gunn's film makes the case for why Superman should endure, while First Steps looks nice but doesn't really make the FF as essential to the MCU the way Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming did for Spider-Man.
Speaking of being essential to the MCU, I was hoping for more tie-ins to the upcoming Doomsday and Secret Wars movies. The FF's first appearance in the 616 was in the post-credits scene of Thunderbolts, which was a nice way to tease them as the next movie, but I was disappointed that this film didn't run with that. It would have been especially important for Marvel to strike while the iron was hot, because the next MCU film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, won't come out until July 2026, and we probably won't see the FF themselves again until Avengers: Doomsday, which is out in December 2026.
What we did get is a teaser to Doctor Doom, which is also a teaser to Doomsday, but he's not identified by name, just seen, in profile and with his green hood covering his features, hanging out with Franklin Richards. There was also a nice visual reference early in First Steps, where we see the FF addressing the UN, but the camera pans over Latveria's empty seat. I continue to have misgivings about Robert Downey Jr coming back as Doom, but even a Doom-agnostic like myself is kinda excited to see him finally enter the MCU. We'll see what happens.
As far as the future, it'll be interesting to see the lay of the land in the MCU after Secret Wars. I wonder if it'll lead to as big a realignment as Avengers: Endgame did; at the very least, playing with multiple universes should give the producers the chance to reset everything and recast any parts that they need to. But I'll also be interested to see if the Fantastic Four are considered important/bankable enough to keep going - Secret Wars will probably be the last we see of their own little world, which is a shame, but it remains to be seen how they'll fit in the regular old MCU.
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