Flying Cars and Chalkboards: Marvel’s Retro Future is Here

Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a fan-servicey, eye-candy vision of the company’s first superhero team. It features some genuinely excellent performances (particularly from Pedro Pascal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and it revels in a certain 1960s-chic shag-carpet cool. But it never really amps up the tension or stakes, even as it barrels toward its delightfully ridiculous climax.

Marvel producer Kevin Feige was right to call the film “a no-homework-required” entry in the company’s ever-expanding cinematic universe. For fans who are fatigued by increasingly obscure Marvel references, this is a nice return to basics. It’s a standalone story that reintroduces the Fantastic Four without getting mired in the continuity spaghetti of recent adaptations. This movie just wants to keep it simple—and sometimes, too simple.

After an opening credits sequence set at a chat show hosted by Mark Gatiss, the story essentially recaps for the audience how the Fantastic Four became the Fantastic Four. Four years ago, a space mission gone wrong exposed the foursome to cosmic radiation that gave them superhuman DNA. Reed Richards (portrayed with care and comic chops by Pedro Pascal) gained the ability to stretch his limbs and torso like a rubber band. Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm can become invisible and project concussive force fields around her. Joseph Quinn’s Johnny can ignite his body and fly at incredible speeds. Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm gets stuck in his permanent body-hulk form: a six-foot-four chunk of rock with the strength of ten men.

The group now lives together in a vaguely mid-century modern space compound, outfitted with jetpacks, flying cars, chalkboard equations on their living-room wall, and a toddler-sized robot named H.E.R.B.I.E. who mans the coffee machine. The world of First Steps is pure retro-futurism: square television screens, no smartphones, and a candy-colored arcadia where the furniture is modern art and the kitchen cabinets are pastel Mondrian. First Steps is Marvel’s idea of anamnesis—the fan service act of reminding viewers of what they know. The time is the future (circa 1967), and the place is somewhere close to a certain reimagined 1960s Marvel comic brought to life.

The cute costumes and space-age set design can’t mask how the movie’s plot lacks urgency. The film’s core theme is family, specifically the close-knit familial bonds that tie the foursome together. Sue is pregnant (we learn this at the start of the film), and Reed’s response to the news is both adorable and fraught. In a silly scene that any expectant parent will recognize, he programs their home-help bot, H.E.R.B.I.E., to child-proof the house and their on-site science lab. Meanwhile, Johnny and Ben act like a bickering sibling pair of brothers, with their brand of reactive comic relief. They relish the chance to be future uncles, and their delight in their future selves is charming.

But the family fun is soon interrupted by an apocalyptic cosmic event. Galactus, a towering hulk of armor and glowing eyes, is set on a collision course with Earth. He plans to devour it. Before he arrives, Galactus (voiced with intimidating bass by Ol Burgess) sends a silver-skinned herald to deliver the news. A woman in motion capture who will be familiar to fans of Ozark, Julia Garner, plays the Silver Surfer. She floats in, all sleek lines and subtended menace. Johnny falls in love (or lust) with her, though his ogle-fest is quickly cut short by interdimensional duty calls.

The action sequences are quieter than one would expect, even as the heroes chase Galactus through space and evade blasts from the Silver Surfer. The visual effects hew closely to the retro visual palette. Light bursts look more like spasms of color, flame trails look stylized, and explosions often seem tempered by CGI. The film’s climax is a remarkable one: Sue goes into labor on a mission to stop Galactus from reaching Earth. Her birth-and-death dance with an interdimensional threat is more weirdly surreal than edge-of-your-seat. The combination is odd: life-giving birth and death and destruction on a planetary scale, bathed in the colors of Epcot Space-Something-or-Other.

That’s the film in a nutshell: sincere and silly, all at once. The emotional beats are real, but the movie can’t seem to commit to them. Even when the planet is about to be eaten, the stakes don’t feel high. This is more kids’ adventure than Marvel thrills.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is enjoyable and well-acted. It’s accessible and nostalgic, and it’s full of heart. It’s just also not very thrilling. For those looking for something lighter than the usual multiverse-world-ending action, this movie may be just the ticket. For others, it may feel like a beautifully wrapped box with very little juice inside.