Garland, TX – To be fair, “Fantastic 4: First Steps” had a few things working against it before it was even released. First, there are already two incredible movies about a family of superheroes that live up to the hype. The Incredibles movies from Pixar are among the greatest superhero movies ever made. Second, Marvel has fallen into a plot pattern that no longer resonates with audiences like it did when movies like Ironman and Guardians of the Galaxy put Marvel back into the Hollywood mainstream. Finally, F4FS was preceded by the best Superman movie to come out in decades, raising the stakes in the overall superhero zeitgeist (see the Garland Gazette’s review of Superman here!).
For all of those reasons, F4FS failed to live up to the expectations that a movie with such an outstanding cast and $120 million production budget carries with it. There’s no question that the cast delivered the goods, either, as Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) was brilliant as Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby (Mission Impossible) really sold the protective mom side of Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things) played the Human Torch with perfect pitch and the rest of the cast was brilliant. That’s not where the negatives came in at all.
The real issue with F4FS is that it covers a lot of well-traveled ground, with a number of characters who mirrored similar dramatis personae from other movies. The villain, Gallacticus, for example, bears a strong resemblance to Thanos, of Avengers fame. His messenger, Shalla-Bal, is a silver girl on a surfboard, so throughout the movie I was waiting for someone to label her the Silver Surfer, another Marvel hero. That never happened. Then we have Mole Man, who is extremely reminiscent of The Underminer from the aforementioned The Incredibles. The enormous bad guy, who flies around in a spaceship borrowed from Star Trek (The Doomsday Machine), starts kicking everyone’s butter, destroys New York and then, shockingly, is defeated. The finale is straight out of superhero movie plot 1A. Yawn.
All of those things aside, the visuals for F4FS are truly captivating, blending a kind of nostalgic 70’s decor in a futuristic context. The story is also well-written, with the mathematician Mr. Fantastic playing well off of the devil-may-care Human Torch and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm providing both brute force and comic relief along with a touching romantic side dish. There are a couple of overly simplistic plot devices thrown in to create tension and move the plot along, but otherwise, the story flows in a believable and relatable, if predictable, way.
Overall, it’s easy to see why F4FS had a huge opening weekend and has since fallen off. With better movies like Superman, Jurassic World: Rebirth (see our review here!) and Brad Pitt’s highest-grossing film of all time, F1, (GG review here) still in theaters, the second-watch crowd are opting for other things.
