Growing up with Marvel, one of my favorite superhero teams as a kid was the Fantastic Four. Outside of their many iterations throughout the comics and cartoons, though, it upset me for a while that Marvel’s first family wasn’t really being done justice in any other forms of media. The live-action films released in 2005 and 2007, while carrying a lot of nostalgia for me, weren’t the best quality wise. Another attempt at the Fantastic Four was executed in 2015, with that not yielding the best results either. Heck, even Pixar managed to make a better film at the time that followed a super hero family in the form of The Incredibles. (The Fantastic Four made their first appearance in a comic releasing in November 1961, with The Incredibles releasing in 2004 and heavily drawing inspiration in terms of its characters and setting.) However, something about The Fantastic Four: First Steps felt different. Other than the fact that its the first Fantastic Four film that will eventually tie into the MCU, kicking off Phase Six, this movie actually takes place in an alternate retro-futuristic reality that is reminiscent of the classic Fantastic Four comics themselves. The 1960s aesthetic that this film adopted was not only a visual treat in terms of the movie’s action scenes and sci-fi elements, but it also served to forward the film’s narrative in some pretty creative ways. Speaking of the narrative, seeing the Fantastic Four face off against Marvel’s planet eating supervillain, Galactus, is not a story that is relatively new to audiences, but it was beyond refreshing to see it done this way. For starters, it was nice to get a feature film iteration of the Fantastic Four that actually felt like a family as well as a team of superheroes. The endearing chemistry between Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Thing, and the Human Torch was definitely one of the film’s many highlights. I really liked what they did with Silver Surfer in this film in terms of her character arc and visual flare. It was also truly exciting to see the larger-than-life and intimidating scale of Galactus finally be done justice. (A huge improvement over the Galactus we got in the 2007 film.) In terms of the film’s flaws, the character driven nature of the narrative led to many moments in the film feeling a bit slower than I would’ve preferred, especially considering the movie’s shorter runtime. Overall though, everything about this film, from the character interactions to the visuals, just felt like a love letter to the classic Fantastic Four comics from the 60s and is easily the best Fantastic Four film to date. I can’t wait to see how these characters contribute to Avengers: Doomsday and I really hope to see more of this retro futuristic reality in upcoming MCU projects. Score: 8/10
