Director Matt Shakman gives Marvel’s First Family a charmingly weird new start.
By Jim Verniere/Boston Movie News

With three not-very-good films behind it, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” sounds a bit misleading. The steps have been aplenty and stumbling. Kevin Feige handed over the reins of the new film to Matt Shakman, likely due to the popularity of his “WandaVision” series on Disney+.

“First Steps” might best be described as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby doing “The Jetsons.” This is not another origin story. It’s a family sitcom set in a superhero multiverse version of New York City. The Fantastic Four—stretchable genius Mister Fantastic aka Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), force field-wielding Invisible Woman aka Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), fiery, flying The Human Torch aka Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn, “Stranger Things”) and super-powerful, monster-visaged Thing (“Its clobbering time.”) aka Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “The Bear”)—are celebrities in their New York City home in the film’s cool, retro-futuristic universe. They live in the mid-century Googie-style Baxter Building, high above Manhattan, with magnificent views, where they park their flying FanstasiCar and Excelsior spaceship. Looking after them is H.E.R.B.I.E. (voiced by Matthew Wood), an android who’s like Rosie the Robot from “The Jetsons.” The Fantastic Four have made their peace with subterranean-dwelling Mole Man (an amiable Paul Walter Hauser) for now (we’ll be seeing more of him).

Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch and Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps." (20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios.)
Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch and Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” (20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios.)

Reed and Sue are expecting their first child after having given up on becoming parents. Young and restless Johnny and brooding Jewish giant Ben are frenemies of a sort. Sad and lonely Ben befriends a woman (Natasha Lyonne) who works at a local synagogue. Soon, the chrome-skinned Silver Surfer (a wonderfully mysterious Julia Garner) arrives from space, heralding the approach of the planet-devouring entity Galactus (sepulchral-voiced Englishman Ralph Ineson, “The Green Knight”). Johnny is smitten by this film’s female, galactic-language-speaking iteration of the Surfer.

Galactus is an Empire State Building-sized metaphor for an extinct-level asteroid, and he resembles an Aztec god-like wonder with his great horned helmet surrounded by glittering lights on his vast mechanized throne. The original Fantastic Four with their cosmic ray-derived superpowers recalled events in Nigel Kneale’s groundbreaking “The Quatermass Xperiment,” which was a 1950s sensation on British TV. The visuals in “Fantastic Four,” by cinematographer Jess Hall (“WandaVision”) and production designer Kasra Farahani (“Loki”), are an awe-inspiring delight. The score by Michael Giacchino is sufficient, although lacking in John Williams-style cosmic grandeur. The team has chemistry and charisma, and the screenplay, written by a team of writers, keeps things moving along at a light pace. The outer space action, featuring the Fantastic Four’s speed-of-light spacecraft, also recalls “Star Wars.”

What Marvel superhero film encouraged kids to find out who Archimedes was? The Fantastic Four cook up a scheme involving plutonium and “teleportation bridges” to hide the Earth from the marauding Galactus. A Galactus cult springs up on Earth, of course. Ben grows a stony beard.

“First Steps” turns into a kaiju film with Galactus stomping around Times Square. I detected an homage to Ray Harryhausen’s “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963) in an attack on Galactus. Will the anti-woke crowd go after “First Steps” because they re-establish Ben Grimm’s Jewish status and make the Surfer female? Probably. By endorsing a child reading Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species” (1859), they practically invite it. Did these writers really huddle together and cook up a “save the baby” ending? Believe it. Where is Wes Anderson when you need him? I couldn’t help wondering what otherworldly fun he might have conjured here. These Fantastic Four are set to return in the Russo brothers’ 2026 film “Avengers: Doomsday” with Robert Downey Jr. suiting up as the sinister Victor von Doom. Flame on.

‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

Rating: PG-13 for action/violence and some language

Cast: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach

Director: Matt Shakman

Writers: Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer

Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes

Where to Watch: In theaters

Grade: B