The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Welp, here we go again.

For the past couple decades, Marvel has painstakingly attempted to reboot and relaunch the Fantastic Four on the big screen, with new casts and new films coming every 10 years. This third adaptation, starring some of the most charming and talented folks around, still fails miserably to stick the landing. I mean, what gives, Marvel?

Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby lead the Fantastic superheroes, playing scientist Reed Richards and Sue Storm, respectively. The film opens with a flashback montage covering the handful of years leading up to the present, a Cliff Notes of their origin story. Reed, Sue, Sue’s playboy younger brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn), and their collective best pal Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) were a crew of astronauts that got accidentally zapped by radiation, giving them superpowers. In brief: Reed is smart and stretchy, Sue can turn invisible (and apparently “push” forcefields with her hands), Johnny flames like a torch, and Ben is now a Hulk-y pile of rocks. They are a family. (This is reiterated over and over in the most Furious of ways.)

One day, a spooky and sexy messenger from space shows up in the form of the Silver Surfer (this time in female form played by Julia Garner). She drops out of the sky to warn of a galactic menace named Galactus (Ralph Ineson) coming their way. Galactus has an insatiable, planet-sized appetite, literally chomping his way through the universe, and is on course to chew through Earth next.

The plot circles around the protection of Reed and Sue’s baby, Franklin, a tot played by a blend of at least a handful of infants as well as some disconcerting CGI. The baby makes his debut in the most unintentionally weird and hilarious birthing scene this side of M. Night Shyamalan’s Old—a zero-G bloodless push as the team’s ship slingshots around a star after meeting Galactus for the first time. Let’s just say, I wasn’t the only one snickering.

The normally appealing cast is burdened by a dull, erratic script (it had four writers, and it shows), with action and adventure that seems recycled from other Marvel films. Jokes don’t land (like, at all), and of the leads, only Quinn manages to make an impression, in no small part thanks to looking great in white Levi’s. Pascal’s “It Boy” charms are nowhere to be seen. His Reed is a one-note bore, spending much of the film clutching a piece of chalk and staring at a chalkboard, his brow furrowed in worry. Kirby, whom we first meet on the toilet (not joking), fares slightly better, getting to finally kick some ass and take names with unleashed mama-bear energy. Moss-Bachrach as Ben? Well, he mostly mopes around, shrugging off Johnny’s horseplay. Ben is given a glimmer of romantic spark with Natasha Lyonne as a schoolteacher, but this optimistic moment is dropped immediately. She disappears for pretty much the rest of the film.

You can see that a lot went into the art direction of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, but even that feels inconsistent. Sure, there are Jetsons-type fonts and flying cars interspersed with retro ads and mid-century modern furniture. But newsreels (the F4 seem to always be Breaking News whenever they step out of their fancy skyscraper) look like they could be shot anywhere between the 50s to the 70s. I found myself distracted enough to think about other retro entertainment that has done it better, from Ewan MacGregor’s charmer Down With Love, to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

By the time Galactus makes it to Earth (as you know he will), my friend held up his hand in disbelief as the planet-eating bad guy was now Godzilla-sized, stomping through the streets of Manhattan. Wait… is this the same guy who was on a massive throne inside an even more massive planet-sized space machine? Whatever. The continuity folks clearly left the planet long before we got this far.

With The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Marvel attempts—yet again—to kick-start what should be an appealing franchise. But, yet again, they’ve created a film no one will remember in five years. Or even five months. Superhero fatigue is real, y’all. Marvel’s going to have to up their game—a LOT—to keep audiences invested.