‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps' is the movie I've been waiting 60 years to see

San Francisco Chronicle​

3 days ago

I approached ' The Fantastic Four: First Steps ' with ridiculous hope and more than a little trepidation. As much as I've spent my adult life identifying as a sophisticated cineaste, this adaptation of my favorite comic book is the movie I've been waiting 60 years to see.
I was a kid when Marvel writer and editor Stan Lee and co-author and artist Jack Kirby revolutionized the superhero genre in 1961, with a quartet of very human (for comics, anyway) characters who got blasted by powers-bestowing cosmic rays.
Stretchy genius and leader of the team Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic; his disappearing/force field-throwing fiancée Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman; her volatile younger brother Johnny, the Human Torch; and their gruff, wisecracking friend Ben Grimm, whose soul was trapped inside a mighty rock monster called the Thing, had relatable personalities and problems. They didn't wear masks and lived in a recognizable New York City, not some made-up metropolis.
As Marvel applied similar formulas to new characters such as Spider-Man and the Hulk, the Four's adventures grew increasingly epic in scale. The series — many of us say the art form — reached its pinnacle in 1966 with a multi-issue arc that introduced the world-devouring Galactus and his conflicted herald, the Silver Surfer.
It blew my 11-year-old mind. And it set a high bar for visual narrative that stuck with me after I outgrew comic books. Would I have appreciated what Kubrick, Altman, Coppola, Scorsese and many others did with moving images in the ensuing decade without what Lee and Kirby had shown me? Maybe, but it's just as possible I may never have gotten interested in film.
That Galactus story is the one 'First Steps' more or less tells. It's been done onscreen before, disappointingly, in 'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer' (2007). That and Fox Studios' two other attempts at Fantastic Four movies failed to translate the awesomeness of Kirby's dynamic artwork. Worse, they had no feel for how Lee made Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben seem like a real family.
So boomers like me rejoiced when Marvel Studios regained the film rights to the publisher's premiere intellectual property in 2019. Studio boss Kevin Feige clearly understood what made the imprint's characters work, and had produced numerous comic book movies that wowed this old-school fan (a couple ' Captain Americas,' ' Black Panther,' most of ' The Avengers ').
But there's been concern since then. Marvel lost its way after 'Avengers: Endgame' (2019), with its woebegone Multiverse initiative and mostly indifferent retreads of past glories. Were Feige, director Matt Shakman — who captured the Marvel-ous wit, psychology-plus-spectacle equation well on ' WandaVision ' — and company still capable of doing the Fantastic Four justice?
The first act of 'First Steps' did not convince me. Set in a multiversal (eek!) alternative 1960s New York that has a lot of retro-future design fun but little resembles Kirby's Manhattan, the new film boasts well-defined portrayals of expectant marrieds Reed and Sue by Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, and an OK incel spin on Johnny by Joseph Quinn.
But I missed Ben's repressed, understandable anger, which sporadically erupted in some of the comics' most harrowing stories. Ebon Moss-Bachrach's lovable foodie, though wonderfully expressed through layers of orange computer-graphic generated granite, just isn't my Thing.
Other stuff this old man wanted off his lawn: the turtleneck uniforms (and why is the Thing even wearing a shirt?) and that cutesy little H.E.R.B.I.E. droid that belongs in ' Star Wars,' not something we more discerning adolescents of the preceding generation cherish.
However, matters rapidly improve once Julia Garner's Surfer shows up to warn of Earth's impending doom (changing the character's gender makes her behavior extra credible, by the way). Action, visuals and most crucially drama ramps up in ways that only Lee and Kirby, and sometimes Feige's gang, deliver.
When revealed, Ralph Ineson's Galactus is godlike and implacable. The space journey to confront him is informed by both the sci-fi grandeur of Kirby's drawings and ' 2001: A Space Odyssey,' Stanley Kubrick's unmatched cinematic masterpiece of the same era. Each member of the Four uses their power in great-looking special effects and character-motivated ways.
When our heroes must act on an impossible choice, 'First Steps' reaches the apex of comic book storytelling. It's a simple plot point that bears the most dire personal and world-shattering consequences, which the Four repeatedly fail to but persevere in figuring out.
I was rapt, though this is hardly the kind of human document I've grown to appreciate from an Ozu, Bergman or Bresson. The film's aesthetic — can anyone who's studied Hitchcock, Lynch or Welles even call it that?