If at first you don’t succeed. The comic book characters known collectively as “The Fantastic Four” have been puttering around the Marvel Comics universe since 1961. They eventually appeared in a grouping of feature films that didn’t generate much audience excitement.
There’s even an unreleased version, titled appropriately “The Fantastic Four,” which is a German production in the English language from the early 1990s. It is executive-produced by the legendary American director and low-budget movie producer Roger Corman. The contretemps over the completed motion picture never officially being seen in public has to do with contract disputes involving Germany’s Bernd Eichinger over the ownership rights held by the celebrated American comic book impresarios Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. They created the Fantastic Four concept. Bootleg versions of the film have circulated for years and clips can be found online.
For his part, Corman alluded to the ownership issue being a ridiculous red herring. On a personal note, Corman was the first person associated with the making of movies I ever interviewed. This was at a bygone film festival that was held in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, the home of the theater world’s vaunted Shakespeare Festival.
Over the years, a number of directors and screenwriters have worked on various scripts and attended myriad production meetings for a potential Fantastic Four reboot. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has been rolling along for decades, but seemingly no one could get the Fantastic Four into workable shape.
The quartet of the so-called fantastic characters is considered a “family,” which consists of Reed Richards, also known as Mister Fantastic, who can stretch any part of his body to great lengths; his wife Sue Storm, a.k.a Invisible Woman; her younger brother Johnny Storm, a.k.a Human Torch, who can control fire and fly; and Ben Grimm, a.k.a. The Thing, whose body is comprised of layers of orange-colored rock, granting him superhuman strength and ceaseless durability.
The foursome are former astronauts who received their astonishing powers after being exposed to cosmic rays while traveling through outer space. Richards (played by Pedro Pascal) is a scientist who is considered one of the most intelligent men in the known universe. Sue (Vanessa Kirby) is preparing to give birth to her and Reed’s child. Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are mostly just hanging out in a retro mid-1960s world. The four of them are popular celebrities and perform good deeds. Everything changes after their home planet, known as Earth-828, is threatened with destruction by a gigantic space-traveling behemoth called Galactus, who is voiced by Ralph Ineson and looks like a bizarre cross between the Wicker Man and a bellowing pile of garbage cans.
After many fits and starts, the new entry was put into shape and is titled “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” This isn’t a particularly interesting reference to the impending baby. I assume Marvel Studios didn’t want to use the too familiar “New Beginning.” The film is directed by Matt Shakman and written by Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer, four men who seemingly have never seen the birth of a child, which would explain the fluid-free arrival of the baby.
The movie is the 37th entry in the MCU, and good for you if you can rattle off all of the titles and multiverse add-ons in the string of cinematic productions. Asking you to name all of the features involving the Fantastic Four is a trick question because they sometimes showed up in other movies in only a cameo. Another MCU character that has a major part to play in “… First Steps” is the Silver Surfer, acted by Julia Garner, who is sort of like Paul Revere, letting the “family” know that “Galactus is coming! Galactus is coming!”
We end up with a film that generally looks good, although so did the television series “The Jetsons,” which “… First Steps” resembles visually. Cool cars and sets that reek of design overdrive are fun to look at. For a while, anyway. What the movie lacks is a reason to be excited for 115 minutes. The dialogue is stilted, and the destruction of Earth-828 is relegated mostly to what passes for Times Square in Manhattan. The acting offers action-style performances, nothing more. The core cast goes through the paces, although I never actually felt that they were a so-called “family” in the accepted meaning of the word. Their cohesion seemed lackluster. I had high hopes for Pascal, who is the king of show business buzz these days, but he seemed uncomfortable with his role. Or was he bored with the weirdly mechanical, almost passive dialogue that was scattered throughout the picture?
Where I think this acceptable, but hardly groundbreaking science-fiction monster movie really fails is in not exploring the characters’ superpowers with some depth. What are their thoughts about what they can achieve? Alas, no help from the director or the writers. There is so much that could have been done with the parallel universe concept, but the entire enterprise seems like a waste of good opportunities to tell a deeper story. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is rated PG-13 for continuous violence and adult language. Young children need to be kept from the theater.
True blue fans should at least stay through the first segment of what is a two-segment end credits sequence. Someone pops up. This film is essentially a tease for what’s going to show up in theaters sooner than you think. Remember when most action movies told complete stories? Not anymore. The MCU has entered its huckster phase.