The Fantastic Four First Steps, Mark Kermode’s film review (video).
Mark Kermode steps in to have a look at the superhero film, The Fantastic Four First Steps.
And once you’re watched his take, prepare yourself for our. Well, it only took 37 films, three reboots, and enough false starts to power Galactus’s breakfast blender, but Marvel has finally done it. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is—brace yourself—not only a functional Fantastic Four film, but one that’s funny, heartfelt, stylish, and oddly moving. It’s the cinematic equivalent of Reed Richards solving time travel and learning to use a toaster without vaporising the kitchen. A miracle.
Forget the clunky origin stories. This time, we meet the titular quartet four years into their superhero career—already famous, already fabulous, and already mid-baby shower. Reed (Pedro Pascal, rocking scientist-as-space-dad vibes), Sue (Vanessa Kirby, all maternal gravitas with a hint of Malice), Johnny (Joseph Quinn, delightfully cocksure but with a modern edge), and Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, somehow channelling pathos through a boulder suit) are navigating life, love, and intergalactic planetary doom like a dysfunctional Brady Bunch in jumpsuits.
Director Matt Shakman wisely ditches any attempt at modern grit and dives headfirst into a retro-futurist 1960s aesthetic that feels like Mad Men built a moon base. This is the Fantastic Four as envisioned by Stanley Kubrick, if Kubrick had a thing for blue spandex and sentient toasters. The design work is glorious—curved chrome corridors, soft analogue blinking lights, chunky rocketships, and a talking robot named H.E.R.B.I.E. who is one Jaffa Cake away from becoming the film’s breakout star.
The plot, loosely adapted from the classic Galactus arc, hits all the cosmic beats: enter Julia Garner’s mesmerising Shalla-Bal as the Silver Surfer, issuing your classic “surrender your world or else” ultimatum on behalf of the universe’s hungriest celestial. Enter Galactus himself (Ralph Ineson, voicing him with all the weary resignation of a man forced to queue at Greggs behind six schoolkids). Galactus, mercifully, is not a cloud this time, but a towering, gloriously purple, Kirby-correct demigod in planet-stomping boots. Praise be.
The film’s emotional anchor is Sue Storm. Pregnant, determined, and unwilling to sacrifice her unborn child to a cosmic vampire, Kirby gives the Invisible Woman actual substance—imagine that. A standout scene has her stepping in front of a furious crowd with baby Franklin in arms, declaring, not unlike a politician with actual backbone, that the team will save the world or die trying. And nearly do.
Shakman delivers set pieces with verve and economy—an orbital standoff with Galactus, a Times Square showdown using Reed’s teleportation tethers (a wild mix of Einstein and Grand Theft Auto), and a final, bittersweet sacrifice that sees Sue burn herself out saving the planet. Don’t worry, though. In true comic book fashion, baby Franklin’s cosmic awakening pulls off the ol’ Lazarus touch. It’s as sentimental as it is satisfying.
The performances, thank the Watcher, gel. Pascal gives Reed an exhausted brilliance that’s more “overworked single dad” than “detached genius.” Kirby grounds Sue with complexity and strength. Quinn’s Johnny has been defanged just enough to make him loveable rather than insufferable. And Moss-Bachrach’s Thing? Easily the most endearing rock monster to ever date a schoolteacher and cook eggs in a robotic sidekick’s frying pan.
And yes, Marvel being Marvel, there’s a sneaky post-credits scene involving a green-caped visitor with a metallic mask and, if rumours are true, Robert Downey Jr.’s best Eastern European accent. Doctor Doom is incoming, and for once, it doesn’t feel like an afterthought—it feels earned.
Here at SFcrowsnest, we’ve suffered through many a mangled Marvel outing (Morbius, we still remember), but First Steps feels like a proper return to superhero cinema that dares to be optimistic, bright, weird, and (gasp) family-friendly without losing its bite.
In short, it’s not just clobberin’ time—it’s about bloody time.
