The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
Hello dear readers!
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to review anything, what with starting a new job, taking care of a new baby, moving to a new state, and, you know… everything else happening.
But fear not! Life has settled down and I should be able to get back to a point where I can regale you with reviews of my media consumption with some kind of consistency!
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It’s been so very long since there was a superhero movie that I wanted to see from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Everything since “Spiderman: No Way Home” (2021) has felt neutral at best and like an absolute dog turd at worst.
And then “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” (2025) came along and it hit so many boxes for me!
Retro-futurism! A soundtrack by Michael Giacchino! Pedro Pascal as the leading man! And even though it was a Marvel movie, they made the very smart choice to set it in an alternate dimension, so they didn’t have to deal with all of the baggage that the rest of the MCU has been lugging around for 15 years!
Best of all: director Matt Shakman didn’t make this an origin story!
Everyone knows how the Fantastic Four got their super powers, just like we all know about Batman and Superman and Spiderman. Shakman included a maybe five minute backstory of their origins, shown as a retrospective in a TV talk-show before having them on as guests; but we, the audience, weren’t required to sit through yet another slog of a movie about four astronauts getting battered by space radiation and having to learn their powers.
Kudos to you, Shakman, for reading the room!
As you would expect, The Fantastic Four follows Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) on Earth-828, a reality similar-yet-distinct from our own and gorgeously built in the retro-futurism style. The movie starts four years since the Four gained their powers, and now they work to protect alternate-New York City from the menagerie of villains who are so key to comic book universes.
The plot kicks off when Sue finds out she’s pregnant and the population of NYC is thrilled. Meanwhile, strange radio signals have been reaching Earth; despite his best efforts, Reed can’t figure out what they’re saying. When the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) comes down in the middle of Time’s Square to let Earth know it’s been marked for consumption by Galactus (Ralph Ineson); Reed triangulates a location in deep space based on those signals and the Silver Surfer’s angle of departure, and thus the Four decide to return to space. Through the macguffin of a faster-than-light machine, the Four travel somewhere else, dropping out of hyperspace just in time to watch Galactus consume some other unfortunate planet. Galactus forcibly pulls in their ship for a face-to-face meeting where he declares that Sue’s unborn child will be the inheritor to his unspecified space curse; if the Four don’t hand over the baby, then he will consume Earth.
As the Four leave on their ship, Sue goes into labor and gives birth to Franklin (Ada Scott). Upon landing, Reed hosts a public speaking event where he tells the world what is being asked of them.
People, being people, start freaking out and asking why the Four won’t just hand over a baby.
I mean, after all, it’s just a baby, right?
Of course, it’s not their baby; the public’s para-social relationship with the Four doesn’t override the human desire to sacrifice someone outside of the monkey sphere in exchange for protection.
Eventually, in a wildly stupid and dangerous stunt, Sue confronts the crowds while holding Franklin, speaking to the great unwashed masses about how she won’t sacrifice her child any more than she’d willingly sacrifice any of the random citizens of NYC.
Somehow, that works and everyone just decides to chill while Reed comes up with a plan to stop Galactus.
Watch the movie to see where it goes from there.
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The soundtrack was composed by Michael Giacchino, which means that it was amazing.
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps Main Theme” has been stuck in my head for weeks since I first heard it. And, because Giacchino is a true master of his craft, he was able to weave it into the entire soundtrack, regardless of how tense or emotional a scene was.
It’s also a fun coincidence that Giacchino wrote the soundtrack for “The Incredibles” (2004), which was also about a superhero family in a retro-futuristic world!
The special effects for this movie were the worst kind of mixed bag. There were plenty of scenes where the cast were surrounded by actual props and practical effects and everything looked fine. Gorgeous, even, given how thoroughly redesigned everything was to match the retro-futurism theme.
Then there was the CGI which was so painfully, obviously CGI, it’s like Disney didn’t even try. There were moments where it wasn’t as awful, and then there were moments where you could see the actors’ hands floating around something that was rendered in later and it was so distracting!
I get that you can’t make an infant act, so getting Franklin to cry on command wasn’t possible, but they could have put a little more effort into not making him look like an uncanny valley golem.
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I feel like it’s worth noting that 20th Century Fox had the rights to the Fantastic Four franchise for decades and failed miserably twice at creating any good movies from the IP, but Disney/Marvel was able to knock it out of the park in one go and didn’t even have to pull characters from elsewhere in the franchise to make it work.
It’s amazing how refreshing a superhero movie can feel when it breaks the mold. No origin story. No series continuity to uphold. No giant sky-beam-laser-thing. No unnecessary city-wide destruction.
This movie was a breath of fresh air and I hope that if there’s a direct sequel that Disney lets the Shakman (or whoever) continue to build out that world.
Because the CGI is so bad, it can’t get the highest rating, but I will gladly give this movie 4 Claws; I watched it on Disney+, but I would have loved to see it in theaters and I will be buying the 4K disc.
