Fantastic Four – First Steps (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
Jul 26
3 min read

Updated: Jul 28

FANTASTIC FOUR – FIRST STEPS (2025)

Starring Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn, Julia Garner, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser, Ralph Ineson, Ada Scott, Mark Gatiss, Sarah Niles, Alex Hyde-White, Rebecca Staab, Jay Underwood, Michael Bailey Smith, Brandon Burke, Robert Downey Jr. and the voice of Matthew Wood.

Screenplay by Josh Friedman and Eric Pearson and Jeff Kaplan & Ian Springer.

Directed by Matt Shakman.

Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. 114 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Hollywood has been trying – mostly unsuccessfully – to bring the Fantastic Four to film stardom every decade for the last 40-some years, making and rebooting the series four times over five films. (This is counting Roger Corman’s ill-fated low-budget 1994 adaptation of the comics which unfairly never was officially released due to studio back-biting and interference.)

It was rebooted in 2005 by Tim Story with smart casting of Ioan Gruffudd as the Mr. Fantastic, Michael Chiklis as The Thing, Jessical Alba as The Invisible Girl, and a pre-Captain America Chris Evans as the Human Torch. The film did fairly well – it was even popular enough to spawn a sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, but after the second film pretty much stiffed it was back to the drawing board.

The team arose again in 2015, with then-hot director Josh Trank (Chronicle) at the helm. After an infamously difficult shooting, and with some odd casting choices – Miles Teller as The Mr. Fantastic? Michael B. Jordan as the Human Torch? Jamie Bell as The Thing? – the movie was a complete flop.

Ten years later, they are back again – in an all-new adventure with yet another all-new Fantastic Four. The casting is decent, but sometimes a little bit head-scratching – Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the Thing? Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn as the Human Torch? Vanessa Kirby seems like she’d be a good choice for her character, although as written here she has much more of a mom vibe than the character normally has. And Pedro Pascal as the lead scientist; well, he’s in everything else, so why not?

The Fantastic Four is one of the several Marvel properties which were owned for years by Twentieth Century Fox rather than Marvel/Disney itself. Since Disney purchased Fox in 2019, Fantastic Four – First Steps is the first time that the superhero family is officially part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It’s an interesting time to finally make its debut in the MCU – considering that the film series is in the middle of a creative and popular slump. But can The Fantastic Four – one of the most beloved Marvel properties – help get the huge saga back on track?

Truthfully, umm, maybe?

Fantastic Four: First Steps is one of the better films to come out of the Marvel Universe in the last few years, although it is far from a perfect film.

Smartly, this new film is a mostly stand-alone adventure, not making the family get entangled in the tentacles of the infamously complex MCU. Also, like Superman, another similarly oft-rebooted franchise for the opponent DC films which came out a couple of weeks ago, the filmmakers wisely decided not to make this an origin story. Everyone knows what happened, why go through that yet again?

Fantastic Four: First Steps drops the audience off right in the action. The Fantastic Four are already established as a crime-fighting force, celebrities who are working hard to save the world. The storyline of First Steps is honestly pretty similar to 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, although it is mostly done better.

One of the best parts of First Steps is the wonderful kitschy retro art design that looks like something out of the fever dreams of Disney World’s Carousel of Progress. For this alone, First Steps stands out in the MCU.

The action was fairly well done – although there was way too much baby stuff here! The bad guy was massive – I’ll give him that – although he was not as horrifically scary as he was supposed to be.

However, if the new reboot of the Fantastic Four returns the group to the Marvel firmament – and apparently, they are already written into the next Avengers film coming out next year – then I’m glad to have them back.

Jay S. Jacobs