Even die-hard Marvel fans can't get excited about The Fantastic Four: First Steps - but surprised critics are giving it 5-stars and say it's funny, clever and even quite moving!
Verdict: Relentlessly daft, but these retro heroes are super-fun
Rating:
A rebooted superhero franchise from the Marvel Cinematic Universe might not be near the top of the list of the things you want most in life. It might even be close to the bottom.
But wait. The Fantastic Four: First Steps, while not likely to send even diehard Marvel fans into a state of rapture, is so pleasingly and jauntily retro that it falls only just short of boasting 'Pow!' and 'Zap!' captions.
Even the special effects look a bit ropey, I presume deliberately, and while the plot is of course monumentally silly, it is also blissfully easy to follow.
At the heart of it is one of the oldest themes in the book: the unwavering ferocity of a mother's love.
Vanessa Kirby, in real life so exquisitely and quintessentially English that she comes from Wimbledon, again flaunts a pure American accent as Dr Susan Storm, the astronaut who returned to Earth with superpowers after a cosmic storm compromised her DNA, as cosmic storms will.
Sharing that fateful journey into space were her brilliant scientist husband Reed Richards (the ubiquitous Pedro Pascal), her brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and their friend Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach).
The Fantastic Four: First Steps, while not likely to send even diehard Marvel fans into a state of rapture, is so pleasingly and jauntily retro that it falls only just short of boasting 'Pow!' and 'Zap!' captions
They all gained other-worldly abilities up there, transforming them in turn, when it suits them, into Invisible Woman, Mister Fantastic, Human Torch and The Thing.
Mister Fantastic may have copped the worst superpower (he's very stretchy), but poor Ben definitely got the worst name, not to mention an unsightly dermatological condition. Made entirely from rocks, he's not much to look at. On the upside, he is spectacularly strong and has his own catchprase, which as all fans of the original comics will know, is ... 'it's clobberin' time!'
The quartet live together in a pastiche of 1960s Manhattan, where the fashions are very Mad Men but nobody smokes, or talks about civil rights.
They are formidably equipped to protect New Yorkers from criminal gangs, but still have worldly problems of their own.
For instance, Reed and Sue have been trying for two years for a baby, which you'd think would be the very least that a pair of copulating superheroes could expect. But no dice, until now. At the start of the film, hallelujah, she finds she is pregnant. And soon there is a real gurgling baby. We don't see her give birth, which might be just as well. Imagine telling a superhero to push.
It is not long, however, before a silver-skinned inter-galactic emissary arrives on a turbo-charged silver surfboard with decidedly bad news. A gigantic baddie called Galactus who roams the galaxy devouring planets has decided that it's time to gobble up Earth. 'Your planet is now marked for death,' the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) tells the Fantastic Four, gravely.
However, there's a potential get-out clause. If Reed and Sue will just hand over their super-cute baby boy, Galactus will turn his cataclysmal attentions elsewhere. Not unreasonably, he thinks that, as the progeny of Invisible Woman and Mister Fantastic, it will be blessed with faculties that could help him conquer absolutely everything.
Just as reasonably, and despite mounting public pressure, Sue will not countenance the idea.
Sharing that fateful journey into space were her brilliant scientist husband Reed Richards (the ubiquitous Pedro Pascal), her brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and their friend Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach)
'I will not sacrifice my child for the world, but I will not sacrifice the world for my child,' she declares, a line surely intended to evoke JFK's 1961 inauguration address: 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.'
Anyway, a huge battle ensues as our heroes try to get the better of Galactus, albeit at the expense of great swathes ofManhattan, trampled underfoot in the brouhaha.
It's a relentlessly daft movie but never less than engaging, and infinitely better than the botched 2015 reboot Fantastic Four. The calculated retro feel works nicely, and so does the motherhood theme, Sue Storm leaving us with the reassuring message that she's a mum first, and then a superhero, just as it should be.
Matthew Bond reviews The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Rating:
Just when you thought it was safe to be properly world-weary, even cynical about the seemingly endless stream of Marvel films (36 and counting) along comes The Fantastic Four: First Steps and it almost takes your breath away. Never mind that it is the third iteration of this particular set of comic-book characters in 20 years, this is by far and away the best and so, so good.
Set in a deliciously depictedretro-futurist version of early 1960s New York, when the future was going to be bright, shiny and often spherical, the production design alone deserves awards, major awards. This is still a world of cassettes, vinyl records and cathode-ray-tube televisions but it's also a world where four pioneering astronauts have been transformed into superheroes by a cosmic storm and now park their gorgeous space rocket in the East River.
It's notable that in this latest incarnation, the four are more often referred to by their real names – Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) his wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) her brother Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Reed's best friend, Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) rather than their comic monikers.
This may be a source of regret for fans of super-stretchy Mister Fantastic but it's certainly good news for the mineral-muscled Grimm, whose nickname, The Thing, now seems cruel and dated. The Fantastic Four have arrived, with Pascal and a beautifully styled Kirby doing a wonderfully watchable job of leading both team and film.
We begin with Sue discovering she is finally pregnant, but no sooner has Reed begun researching whether the baby will be born with superpowers or not, Earth has more serious problems to face. A mysterious intergalactic traveller known as the Silver Surfer – this time female, possibly naked and played by Julia Garner of Ozark fame – arrives with a terrible warning of impending doom. Can the Fantastic Four possibly save the entire planet?
What ensues is funny, cleverly constructed and even quite moving. It's a delight to look at from beginning to end and a picture that director Matt Shakman, who cut his Marvel teeth on the TV spin-off WandaVision, can be rightly proud of. One of the unexpected treats of the summer.
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The Independent
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