The Fantastic Four: First Steps Review

The term "superhero fatigue" is much thrown around to describe the last decade of Marvel films, marked by a glut of new characters, sliding quality of storytelling, and convoluted plots that require you to be bring along a superfan with you to the screening so you can lean over and ask questions like, "Wait how come why Chris Evans playing Johnny Storm in this film? Isn't he Captain America?", despite having already done your homework ("WatchMojo: 10 things to know before you watch Deadpool vs Wolverine").

Marvel knows things have been going south. Madame Web (2024) and Captain America: Brave New World (2025) felt like the dying breaths of what we can now see as a troubled era of mediocre excess in Marvel's long history. Fantastic Four: First Steps is supposed to mark the beginning of a new chapter for the franchise: clean storytelling, back-to-basics filmmaking, and a renewed focus on quality over quantity.

By those measures, First Steps shows real promise for what's to come. Directed by Matt Shakman (who also helmed WandaVision), the film follows the Fantastic Four as they try to save Earth from the planet-devouring Galactus (Ralph Ineson). But even before Galactus's scout, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), arrives with a warning of impending doom, the foursome are already global celebrities, loved and admired around the world, where everybody down to the last child knows the story of how four ordinary astronauts gained superpowers after experiencing DNA-altering cosmic radiation in a space mission.

Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), aka "Mr. Fantastic", whose superpower is stretchability is also the team leader and the world's foremost scientist. Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), who can manipulate force fields and turn invisible, is also supremely emotionally-intelligent to be brokering world peace. Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) is a flying fireball, and Ben Grimm aka "The Thing" (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is a rocky-faced version of the Hulk, whose version of the line "Hulk, smash" is an equally iconic "It's clobbering time", although unlike Hulk, he is a soft-hearted teddy bear of a man.

Part of the Fantastic Four's appeal is that they live together in a retro-futuristic skyscraper, but more than that, they're a real family. Sue and Reed are married. Johnny is Sue's younger brother. Grimm might as well be Johnny's. Their easy banter over Sunday-night dinner, cooked by their bleep-blooping robot H.E.R.B.I.E, offers a glimpse into their heart-warmingly wholesome dynamic of the foursome. Johnny and Grimm are the jokesters, Reed is the anxious nerd, and Sue is the sensible maternal figure. It feels like a portrait of domestic harmony - one that becomes even more touching when Sue and Reed announce they're expecting a baby.

From the get-go, the Fantastic Four feel like a cohesive team, working together where it matters. So when it's time for the obligatory "family sticks together" speech, the emotion actually lands. Especially as a fully-pregnant Sue or new-mother Sue strapping in and trying to save the world.

Also for a nice change, one doesn't have to be alert to the possibility of an intrusive cameo or a knowing wink. It also dials down the cocky, cynical banter and self-aware swagger in favour of genuine emotional stakes. (Though Johnny's crush on the Silver Surfer whom he calls "the sexy alien" is classic Marvel humour.) Also striking is the film's departure from the usual Marvel schtick (which started with Iron Man and never went away), where superheroes' relationships with the public are strained, choreographed, or micromanaged by teams of bureaucrats. Like the scene where Reed is asked to give a statement about their failed negotiations with Galactus. Instead of the evasive spin, he speaks candidly about the impossibly cruel bargain Galactus wants from them.

Here, openness and honesty define that relationship, and it's a refreshing change. That's also why setting the film in a 1960s-inspired retro-future world, with a jingling background score by Michael Giacchino ("Up"), feels just right. It conjures a sense of old-school optimism, a time when people believed the folks in charge could rally, work together, and defeat the big bad.

A big reason the film feels new is the cast: an eclectic mix of familiar TV and film faces, assembled with real vision. On paper, it's hard to imagine the loud-mouthed "Cousin" from "The Bear", Ebon Moss-Bachrach, sharing the screen with the soulful Joseph Quinn from A Quiet Place, or Vanessa Kirby, best known for playing Princess Margaret in The Crown, teaming up with Pedro Pascal, the reigning Latino-American heartthrob. These are actors known for their character work, not for anchoring blockbusters. But together, they click. Quinn and Moss-Bachrach's casting, in particular, pays off because their dramatic abilities add emotional depth. Julie Garner is another inspired choice to play Silver Surfer as she brings more soulfulness than such typical sidekick characters are allowed to have. Vanessa Kirby is scene-stealing as the badass-mommy-superhero, a combination of tenderness, poise and fierceness that is not easily referenced.

Righting the Marvel ship is no easy feat, but Fantastic Four: First Steps feels like a warm, open-armed welcome to the fans Marvel has lost over the years, and a surprisingly accessible entry point for new ones. Its boldness doesn't lie in the story it tells, but in the choices behind the scenes: its casting, its tonal shift, its visual style, and, most of all, its willingness to break from Marvel's worn-out formula of cameo-laden, emotionally-shallow superhero circuses.