Why Fantastic Four’s Retro Reboot May Divide Marvel Fans

Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a glossy, retro take on one of the publisher’s earliest superhero teams. Aided by a uniformly solid cast (with particular standouts in Pedro Pascal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the film commits heartily to its 1960s-inspired nostalgia aesthetic. But for all its retro-styled charm and strong performances, First Steps never quite ratchets up the tension or emotional stakes to make it a memorable movie.

Producer Kevin Feige put it best when he described the film as a “no-homework-required” viewing experience. After a recent Marvel Cinematic Universe that has ramped up its more complicated elements (stretching across multiple multiverses, teeming with cameos and references, and bouncing out spin-offs at a dizzying pace), it’s refreshing to see a Marvel movie that doesn’t demand a working knowledge of where the key players have been or where they will go next. First Steps is a mostly standalone story that reintroduces Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm without much reference to the continuity or adaptation history of previous films and comics. The film is satisfied with a simple premise, and sometimes to a fault.

Opening with a talk show preshow hosted by Mark Gatiss, who playfully recaps for viewers the Fantastic Four’s journey to who they have become, the film begins four years earlier. The core four of Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben go on a cosmic space mission where they encounter radiation that seeps through their ship and changes their DNA. For Reed (played by Pedro Pascal with an easy patience and good humor), the radiation gives him the power to stretch his body like rubber. Sue (Vanessa Kirby) can turn invisible and manifest force fields with her hands. Joseph Quinn’s Johnny ignites and turns into the Human Torch, while Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm permanently transforms into The Thing—a towering mass covered in rocky armor with great strength.

The four of them now live together in a converted space compound that looks like something out of a mid-century modern home décor catalog. Floating cars zoom around town, and chalkboard equations share walls with a toddler-sized robot named H.E.R.B.I.E., who flits about their home offering assistance. The design and presentation of First Steps are unapologetically retro-futuristic. Square-shaped TV sets, chunky flying vehicles, and character outfits share an almost-cartoonish style. Aside from a lack of mobile phones and no mention of modern Earth events, the world feels trapped in the past.

It’s easy to fall into the aesthetic and less so into the plot. The theme of family—specifically, the foursome closeness of the title characters—is made central. Sue is pregnant, which she reveals early in the film, and to which Reed reacts with both parental anxiety and adorableness. He and Sue are shown to be a young couple living together for the first time as Reed talks H.E.R.B.I.E. through baby-proofing both their home and science lab. Johnny and Ben are more siblings in the bickering and comic relief, clearly embracing their roles as future uncles.

That moment of togetherness is, of course, not to last. The Silver Surfer, beaming in via a slick anti-gravity board, is not the first harbinger of doom to appear. First, Galactus, a massive armored entity with glowing red eyes and a screen-projecting center mass, is flying through space toward Earth and hungering for it as a meal. Before he can reach Earth, though, he typically sends a herald ahead to let the planet know. The Silver Surfer is motion-captured by Julia Garner, who mostly skims around in an easy, elegant menace as Galactus’s bald, silver-skinned harbinger. She becomes more an object of fascination (and for Johnny, something more) than the actual threat.

But even as Galactus and the Silver Surfer beam in and take to the skies, the action stays fairly low-key for Marvel standards. They mostly chase the sky-god through space as he bounces around planets and fend off the Silver Surfer’s blasts and projectiles. When the bursts of energy beam from their human adversaries, the effects are similarly retro-chic: sparkles and splotches of light, flame trails, and swooshes of color rather than realist 3D CGI explosions. Sue’s going into labor at the climax of the film adds a surreal spin to an otherwise low-key action climax: Can Sue bring a child into the world in the middle of saving the Earth? It’s a combination of planets falling and babies arriving in a decidedly space-age color palette.

In many ways, it’s an apt metaphor for the film’s broader tone. While there are moments of real emotional heft, they are often outmatched by the soft pastel visuals that blunt the feeling of danger. Galactus’s arrival is the closest First Steps gets to raising the stakes, but it still never feels like too high a danger. It’s a children’s adventure story more than an edge-of-your-seat superhero movie.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is pleasant and well-acted, but it lacks the dramatic weight of the best Marvel entries. It’s easy to watch, wholly nostalgic, and full of heart, but not exactly thrilling. For viewers in search of something more whimsical than planet-crushing, it might be just right. For most others, it may feel like a lovely wrapped gift without too much payoff inside.