Every once in a while, a studio executive gets that particular glint in their eye; the same one Wile E. Coyote gets before strapping himself to a rocket labeled ACME; and decides, “This time, we’ll get the Fantastic Four right.” And with that, the cycle begins anew. It’s cinematic déjà vu, only instead of reliving a romantic French summer, we’re stuck watching Marvel’s first family trip over their own capes for the fourth time in two decades.
Enter Fantastic Four: First Steps, a film that manages the impossible: it’s not quite as bad as the last Fantastic Four movie, but still feels like a punch in the pop-cultural prostate. It’s beautiful, yes. Gorgeously shot. Designed within an inch of its life. But so were many catastrophic failures in history; the Titanic, the Hindenburg, Jared Leto’s Morbius. Sometimes, polish just makes the implosion shine brighter.
The first warning sign is right there in the director’s chair. Matt Shakman; who gave us the absolute chaos of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the meticulous storytelling of WandaVision; has never directed a feature film before. This feels less like a red flag and more like a crimson billboard blinking maybe just rewatch The Incredibles. His sensibilities are all over the place, like a chef who’s brilliant with tapas but just got asked to roast a whole pig.
The writing team, a four-headed beast of Marvel TV alums, seems torn between honoring the gravity of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s legacy and writing an extended baby food commercial. The result is a tonal car crash: part Saturday morning cartoon, part slow-burn melodrama, with the occasional sex joke thrown in like a rogue firework. It wants to be earnest and silly and operatic and grounded all at once, and ends up feeling like a dinner party where everyone brought a different casserole and no one brought utensils.
Let’s break down the lineup. Pedro Pascal, usually a beacon of charisma, plays Reed Richards as if he’s doing long division while acting. He’s math in a man suit; distant, dry, occasionally whispering to himself about mathematical decay, which I imagine is also what Marvel executives do in the shower now. Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm is the closest we get to emotional resonance; she’s the group’s anchor, though she mostly spends her screen time cradling a CGI baby or making earnest eye contact with green screens.
Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm is somehow both underwritten and overwrought. His whole vibe is “horny pyromaniac in search of a subplot.” He delivers every line with the fevered energy of a man trying to order Taco Bell while already on fire. And then there’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who quietly steals every scene as Ben Grimm. He’s the only one here who seems remotely human; even after turning into a pile of gravel with eyebrows and a rocky beard. His romantic tension with Natasha Lyonne (yes, that Natasha Lyonne, playing… herself?) offers the film’s lone flicker of warmth. Unfortunately, that flicker lasts about as long as a cigarette in a hurricane.
And then there’s the baby. Oh, the baby. Franklin Richards, a staple of comic lore and a cosmic heavy-hitter in the source material, is reduced here to a plot device that wouldn’t pass muster in an episode of Full House. He’s born early in the film; on screen, no less, a Marvel birth scene in full soft focus; and quickly becomes the emotional center of the movie. The entire plot revolves around whether the team is willing to sacrifice him to stop Galactus, which is a choice, I guess. Nothing says family-friendly superhero romp quite like an infant sacrificial subplot. Somewhere, Darren Aronofsky is laughing.
Julia Garner shows up as Silver Surfer, a role she plays with admirable commitment, despite being styled like David Bowie cosplaying an Apple Store employee dipped in chrome. She glides in, mutters something ominous, and glides out. Her job, it seems, is to look worried in slow motion while cosmic destruction looms in the background. Ralph Ineson voices Galactus, which should be a slam dunk; his voice is gravelly, British, and vaguely apocalyptic. But Galactus looks like the love child of a lava lamp and a screensaver. He’s big, sure, but threatening? Not so much. I’ve seen more compelling villains on the SYFY channel.
What passes for action here is mostly CG gumbo: weightless, frictionless, and oddly sleepy. There’s a mid-movie set piece involving flying cars, collapsing buildings, and an asteroid made of what looks like caramelized styrofoam. The stakes are high, but your pulse stays flat. For all its $250 million price tag, the movie looks like a very attractive mid-budget TV pilot that somehow wandered into IMAX.
Then, mercifully, comes Paul Walter Hauser. Playing Mole-Man, a classic villain reimagined as a sort of weirdo anti-hero, Hauser shows up, delivers two minutes of pure comedic gold, and vanishes like a competent intern in an office full of legacy hires. His presence is so jarringly delightful that it feels like he was dropped in from a better version of this movie; a version where tone mattered, actors had freedom to play, and a two-month-old wasn’t the lynchpin of universal salvation.
The final act goes exactly where you think it will: self-sacrifice, swelling music, baby in peril, monologues about love and duty that sound like they were written by a high-school freshman after reading a fortune cookie. No one learns much. No one laughs. The post-credit scenes are so uninspired they make you nostalgic for the days when Nick Fury walking into a room felt like Christmas morning.
At the end of the day, Fantastic Four: First Steps is a beautiful failure. It looks fantastic. But as a film? It’s inert. Polished. Bloodless. It confuses reverence for storytelling, irony for wit, and seriousness for significance. And worse, it forgets what made the Fantastic Four special to begin with: fun. These characters were born in the nuclear glow of 1960s optimism; a team of misfits who loved each other, bickered like siblings, and saved the world with invention and heart. None of that is here.
Instead, we get a baby. A very important baby. A cosmic baby. A baby that holds the secrets of the universe, and also poops itself. Somewhere, Stan Lee is sighing.
If Marvel wants to course-correct, they could do worse than watch James Gunn’s Superman on loop for a few days. Or maybe, just maybe, stop adapting the Fantastic Four for a while. Let them rest. Let us rest. And for the love of Galactus, stop putting babies at the center of your superhero epics. So unless you’re redecorating your living room and need some mid-century inspiration, skip this one. There’s more excitement in an old Fantastic Four cereal box than in First Steps. I’ve been kicked in the nuts three times by Fantastic Four movies, each time with a little more flair, and a little less apology. Now comes the newest attempt with Fantastic Four: First Steps, and with it, a fourth, gleaming boot to the testicles. But I’ll say this: it’s a visually stunning IMAX nut-kick.
