You can use a word to describe The Fantastic Four: First Steps that isn’t easily applied to most Marvel projects: charming. The world Director Matt Shakman, writers Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson and Jeff Kaplan have created is so easily inhabited, it’s remarkable. Its combination of kitsch sentimentality and early comic book colours and art design is beguiling. It’s like the Jetsons coming to life in the best possible way, with the exception that their domestic robot is not wearing an apron.
The story arc revolves around the foursome’s reverent acceptance into the current society at large that is almost complete. This general consensus is, however, challenged when the Earth comes under attack from an alien presence and they make a personal decision that defies the common good. In a nod to the geniality of this fantasy land, they are not openly attacked; however, the press still has a field day.
Having the story so character-driven only works because the main cast of Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm are so well written. Their relationships and personal foibles are pleasantly believable and not completely angst-driven. They seem like they could actually be friends.
There is a world treating peril and heroic action on behalf of the four that saves our fragile blue and green marble (for the time being). It’s easily within comic book parameters. But by film’s end, when the words appear on the screen that state that the Fantastic Four will return in Avengers: Doomsday, it leaves you slightly disappointed that the next time out, this lovely little world will get folded into the Avengers ideology so soon.
Rob Hudson
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