1 hr 55 minutes, PG-13 for cussing and the mildest most hygienic pregnancy ever
Fair Value of Fantastic Four: $6.00. It’s a capable Disney ride at Tomorrowland.
It is more difficult to measure the median and the middling than it is to explain the excellent or the execrable. There is versatility in the language for the superlatives and the extremes; it is more difficult to engage with the entertainment that does not provoke.
The streamlined space age aesthetics of the new Fantastic Four underlie this problem in a film that is as smooth and easygoing as an Autopia ride. It’s comfortable, all-ages, focus grouped, largest common denominator fare- and as such, it’s as digestible and as forgettable as a fast food hamburger. There’s no real message here, no moral other than the simple message that family matters most. One can almost imagine a cameo by Vin Diesel to chant ‘family’ over and over again.
What is this film about? The Fantastic Four are the superhero family: four astronauts mutated by cosmic radiation, who now are global mega-celebrities. Fantastic Four goes as big as you can by having the complacency of the Four confronted by Galactus (Ralph Ineson), the giant planet-eating space god who is older than the universe itself. The Four journey to confront this being aboard his planet-sized spaceship. And as insane space gods and faery kings are wont to do, this colossal wielder of the Power Cosmic is willing to bargain for the first born son of Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) and Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby). Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), the Human Torch, meanwhile tries to see if there’s a way to get through to the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), the herald of Galactus, who acts as the courier and messenger of Galactus. Will the genius and preparations of the Fantastic Four be enough to save earth from this titanic menace?
Much like James Gunn’s Superman, this film reflects a Hollywood more willing to engage in the bright and simple nature of the source materials than the MCU has previously been. For decades, Fantastic Four has been considered a cursed franchise; arguably, the best adaptation of the concept remains Pixar’s The Incredibles. First Steps succeeds by anachronism, placing the Fantastic Four back within an early 60s world of hope, super-science, and global engagement.
The best parts of the film are the engineering: the fight sequences and chase sequences are unremarkable, but watching the four discuss and plan how to solve an unsolvable problem are the most intriguing bits, almost evocative of Interstellar or other cosmic films. And Galactus is a visual treat: he’s a Godzilla-sized villain, and having him stride across Manhattan is kinetic and gripping.
Beyond that, much of the delight of Fantastic Four lies in the charms of Earth 828 (a separate setting from the MCU universe): from nostalgic supporting characters like the tape-driven robot H.E.R.B.I.E. to the wheedling deuteragonist of Mole Man (Paul Walter Hauser), First Steps gives us a world that is more hopeful, functional, and advanced than our own. For once, it’s a world where the inventions of Reed Richards have actually changed everything for better.
Reveries of a Dead Empire: there is a retrogression in the nostalgia of Fantastic Four; one can feel the baby boomers reverting to thumb-sucking delight at this revisitation of their childhood comic books. This film is MAGA in a sense that it is attempting to inhabit an optimism and a capability that modern America has left behind; but the pageantry strikes me as just as hollow and as hopeless as the posturing of the last of the Roman Emperors during the barbarian invasions. Fantastic Four imagines the American atomic family conquering a cosmic purple titan, when in reality we cannot even impede a sniveling orange oligarch. It seems less like a tonic for our times and more like willful escapism.
Who Will Get the Most of This Film? Classic Jack Kirby fans who love their super-heroes to be square-jawed, four-colored, and crackling with evanescent radioactive power.
Who Is This Film Not For? Batman and Wolverine fans, you’ve had more than your fill with grim deconstructive exercises such as Logan and The Dark Knight. This is a ‘turn off your brain for two hours’ kind of flick.
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