Review Tuesday: The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

  

 

The Fantastic Four

First Steps

(2025) 

The Fantastic Four has to defend the Earth from Galactus.

I am going to be honest, I am not a huge collector / fan of FF. My friend, however, IS so when he asked if we could shoot over for a bargain matinee and some wings at Hooters afterwards, how could I say no? 

 

Set during the 1960s on what we must assume is an alternate Earth, The Fantastic Four are headed to a variety TV show to mark four years since they gained their powers in a cosmic event that lead to them being defenders of peace on Earth. And Sue (Vanessa Kirby) announces to Reid (Pedro Pascal) just beforehand that she's pregnant. That kinda set the pace of Sue being in charge and Reid seeming to be baffled the entire time. 

 

To be fair, it was fun on a superficial level. There was space travel. Battles. Galactus looked AMAZING. The female Silver Surfer didn't harm the story. Gallantry. Good special effects. Fun. Family. It wasn't another origin story, thank goodness. They briefly went over their history in an exposition scene. That was pretty good! 

 

However... are these true to The Fantastic Four?

 

After the movie was over, my friend and I initially agreed the movie was good. There was some fun in this. We also agreed there were a lot of problems with this movie. Reid always looked baffled. Sue was written to portray a real bitch. While she isn't bad to look at, she dominates the film as a cunt. Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is a kinder / gentler Thing. Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) is also a mild character. The Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) is okay. She does a good job but the special effects for the Silver Surfer seemed spotty. Sometimes she looked smoothly chromed, and other times it looked like crummy AI. There were several parts of the movie that you want to ask why are [they] doing this? but are given no information / exposition to solve the questions. 

 

The biggest problem? THE BABY!!!

 

They could easily rename the movie FRANKLIN and the Fantastic Four. The child is the main character in almost every scene. To me, a dude who doesn't care for "kid movies" I found myself getting frustrated with all of that pretty quickly.

 

In the end, I would call it okay. It's a comic book movie. If you watch it and not THINK about the content then it's not too bad. If you walk into this with even a little bit of FF knowledge, you are probably going to be pretty disappointed.