“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” slots into summer blockbuster season like a square peg in a round popcorn bucket. Prestige TV director Matt Shakman (“WandaVision”) isn’t inclined to pretzel himself like the flexible Reed Richards to please all four quadrants of the multiplex. His staid superhero movie plays like classic sci-fi in which adults wearing sweater vests solemnly brainstorm how to resolve a crisis. Watching it, I felt as snug as being nestled in the backseat of my grandparents’ car at the drive-in.
This reboot of the Fantastic Four franchise — the third in two decades — is lightyears closer to 1951’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still” than it is to the frantic, over-cluttered superhero epics that have come to define modern entertainment. Set on Earth 828, an alternate universe that borrows our own Atomic Age decor, it doesn’t just look old, it moves old. The tone and pace are as sure-footed as globe-gobbling Galactus, this film’s heavy, purposefully marching into alt-world Manhattan. Even its tidy running time is from another epoch. Under two hours? Now that’s vintage chic.
“First Steps” picks up several years after four astronauts — Reed (Pedro Pascal), his wife, Sue (Vanessa Kirby), his brother-in-law Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and his best friend Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) — get themselves blasted by cosmic rays that endow them with special powers. You may know the leads better as, respectively, Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing. For mild comic relief, they also pal around with a robot named H.E.R.B.I.E., voiced by Matthew Wood.
Skipping their origin story keeps things tight while underlining the idea that these are settled-down grown-ups secure in their abilities to lengthen, disappear, ignite and clobber. Fans might argue they should be a bit more neurotic; screenplay structuralists will grumble they have no narrative arc. The mere mortals of Earth 828 respect the squad for their brains and their brawn — they’re celebrities in a genteel pre-paparazzi time — but these citizens are also prone to despair when they aren’t sure Pascal’s workaholic daddy will save them.
Lore has it Stan Lee was a married, middle-aged father aging out of writing comic books when his beloved spouse, Joan, elbowed him to develop characters who felt personal. The graying, slightly boring Reed was a loose-limbed version of himself: the ultimate wife guy with the ultimate wife.
But Hollywood has aged-down Lee’s “quaint quartet,” as he called them, at its own peril. Make the Fantastic Four cool (as the movies have repeatedly tried and failed to do) and they come across as desperately lame. This time, Shakman and the script’s four-person writing team of Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer valorize their lameness and restore their dignity. Pascal’s Mr. Fantastic is so buttoned-down that he tucks his tie into his dress shirt.
The scenario is that Sue is readying to give birth to the Richards’ first child just as the herald Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner), a.k.a. the Silver Surfer, barrels into the atmosphere to politely inform humanity that her boss Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson) has RSVP-ed yes to her invitation that he devour their planet. In a biologically credible touch, the animators have added tarnish to her cleavage: “I doubt she was naked,” Reed says evenly. “It was probably a stellar polymer.”
Typically, this threat would trigger a madcap fetch-this-gizmo caper (as it did in the original comic). Shakman’s version doesn’t waste its energy or our time on that. Rather, this a lean showdown between self-control and gluttony, between our modest heroes and a greedy titan. It’s at the Venn diagram of a Saturday morning cartoon and a moralistic Greek myth.
The film is all sleek lines, from its themes to its architecture to its images. The visuals by the cinematographer Jess Hall are crisp and impactful: a translucent hand snatching at a womb, a character falling into the pull of a yawning black hole, a torso stretched like chewing gum, a rocket launch that can’t blast off until we get a close-up of everyone buckling their seatbelts. Even in space, the CG isn’t razzle-dazzle busy. Meanwhile, Michael Giacchino’s score soars between bleats of triumph and barbershop-chorus charm, a combination that can sound like an automobile show unveiling the first convertible with tail fins.
There is little brawling and less snark. No one comes off like an aspiring stand-up comic. These characters barely raise their voices and often use their abilities on the mundane: Kirby’s Sue vanishes to avoid awkward conversations, Moss-Bachrach’s Ben, in a nod to his breakout role as the maître d’ on “The Bear,” uses his mighty fists to mash garlic. Johnny, the youngest and most literally hotheaded of the group, is apt to light himself on fire when he can’t be bothered to find a flashlight. He delivers the meanest quip in a respectful movie when he tells Reed, “I take back every single bad thing I’ve been saying about you … to myself, in private.”
Yes, my audience giggled dutifully at the jiggling Jell-O salads and drooled over the groovy conversation pits in the Richards’ living room, the only super lair I’d ever live in. The color palette emphasizes retro shades of blue, green and gold; even the extras have coordinated their outfits to the trim on the Fantasticar. Delightfully, when Moss-Bachrach’s brawny rock monster strolls to the deli to buy black-and-white cookies, he’s wearing a gargantuan pair of penny loafers.
If you want to feel old, the generation of middle schoolers who saw 2008’s “Iron Man” on opening weekend are now beginning to raise their own children. Thirty-seven films later, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has gotten so insecure about its own mission that it’s pitching movies at every maturity level. The recent “Thunderbolts*” is for surly teenagers, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is the drunk, divorced uncle at a BBQ, and “First Steps” extends a sympathetic hand to young families who identify with Reed’s frustration that he can’t childproof the entire galaxy.
Here, for a mass audience, Kirby gets to reprise her underwatched Oscar-nominated turn in “Pieces of a Woman,” in which she extended out a 24-minute, single-take labor scene. This karaoke snippet is good (and even a little operatic when the pain makes her dematerialize). I was as impressed by the costumer Alexandra Byrne’s awareness that even super moms won’t immediately snap back into wearing tight spandex. (By contrast, when Jessica Alba played Sue in 2007’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” the director notoriously asked her to be “prettier” when she cried.)
This reboot’s boldest stride toward progress is that it values emotionally credible performances. Otherwise, Pascal aside, you wouldn’t assemble this cast for any audience besides critics and dweebs (myself included) who keep a running list of their favorite not-quite-brand-name talents who are ready to break through to the next level of their career while yelling, “It’s clobbering time!”
Still, this isn’t anyone’s best role, and it’s a great movie only when compared to similarly budgeted dreck. Yet it’s a worthy exercise in creating something that doesn’t feel nostalgic for an era — it feels of an era. Even if the MCU’s take on slow cinema doesn’t sell tickets in our era, I admire the confidence of a movie that sets its own course instead of chasing the common wisdom that audiences want 2½ hours of chaos. Studio executives continuing to insist on that nonsense deserve Marvel’s first family to give them a disappointed talking-to, and send them to back their boardrooms without supper.
The post ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ is a grown-up glow-up for the superhero genre appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
