“A No-Homework Marvel Movie” – and It Shows

Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a slick, stylish, and earnest romp through the adventures of one of its oldest superhero teams. The action stars are solid across the board, with particular highlights for Pedro Pascal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. But even as it relishes its lumpy charms as a superhero story cut from 1960s cloth, First Steps never manages to ratchet up the stakes or make its heart pump faster.

Producer Kevin Feige’s descriptor for the film was spot on. “No homework required,” he promised. In a franchise where that would once have meant something light and breezy, Marvel now means fans need to know multiverses, cameos, and sequels and spin-offs for spin-offs. The Fantastic Four is none of the above. It’s a self-contained reboot that assumes no familiarity with the messy continuity of its previous movie or the longer-running Fox films. The story takes the basic origin of Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm and sticks mostly to that. It is blissfully simple, and sometimes a little too much so.

A talk show by Mark Gatiss’s bearded, tweed-wearing comic book professor sets up how the four meet and become superheroes. Reed (Pascal), Sue (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny (Joseph Quinn), and Ben (Moss-Bachrach) were on a space mission together four years ago when radiation warped their DNA. Reed developed superhuman elasticity and can stretch his body like rubber. Sue can become invisible and create force fields by bending light. Johnny can now set himself ablaze and fly as the Human Torch. Ben’s body permanently hardens and bulks out to make The Thing, a green rock-skinned giant.

The family lives together in a house that is essentially a mid-century modern compound, with a flying car, chalkboards filled with equations, and even a toddler-sized robot assistant named H.E.R.B.I.E. who rolls around, tidies, and serves food. It’s retro-futurism in every sense: square television sets, wall-to-wall shag carpets, no smartphones, and the sleek shapes of aluminum kitchen appliances. The world of First Steps feels like the Marvel 616 has made a mash-up between The Jetsons and Lost in Space.

The visual style is a delight, and the characters are winning. But the story is another matter. The film is at its most earnest—and less successful—as an adventure about family, and the particular family of four it follows. The Fantastic Four of the title are deeply bonded. Sue and Reed have an easy intimacy, and Sue’s announcement early on that she is pregnant has both of them nervously gleeful. In a typically sweet beat, Reed tells H.E.R.B.I.E. to child-proof both their house and their science lab. Johnny and Ben fill the roles of less-than-serious siblings, clearly happy at the prospect of becoming uncles.

But then the world-saving business intrudes, as it so often does in comics movies. Galactus, an enormous, armored cosmic creature with glowing orange eyes, is heading toward Earth to feed on it. Before he arrives, he sends an emissary—a silver-skinned figure played in motion capture by Julia Garner—to warn off the humans. The Silver Surfer swoops and swishes into view, all ominous curve and sleek black. The figure quickly becomes a flirtation (and sexualized fixation) for Johnny, the least sensible of the group.

Action sets in, and the film remains surprisingly restrained. They track Galactus through space, and the heroes flee from and trade blows with the Surfer, but the special effects hew to the retro aesthetic: photonic zaps, purply flame tails, and stylized explosive smears. Sue giving birth while the Fantastic Four are on their space mission—yes, really—ends up feeling more like a fever dream than a race against time. Birth and the end of the world as we know it? At least it looks nice: a sepia-toned, alternate-universe version of deep space.

It’s the perfect summary of the movie: a mix of sincerity and silliness. There’s real emotion in the acting and the human drama, but it gets lost in a rainbow palette that’s just too comfortable and not threatening enough. The film just doesn’t build any real sense of tension or danger, even when the planet is on the line. It’s more a kid’s story than a pulse-quickening blockbuster.

Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps is fine, fun, and well-acted. But, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe itself, the film isn’t trying to be empty or without serious points of interest. It is earnest. But unlike the franchise’s best entries, it rarely earns the sincerity with moments of real drama. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is accessible, retro, and genuinely heartfelt. But it is also a little empty of thrill. It’s a film for when you want something a little silly instead of world-ending. For others, it’s beautiful packaging for a flat payload.