Franchise Fixations is a recurring column by Will Ashton that digs beneath the surface of today’s latest franchise films—unpacking what they add, subtract, or accidentally reveal about the ever-growing universes they inhabit. Sometimes it’s praise, sometimes it’s therapy. Always, it’s personal.
It’s not often a studio movie requires an entire studio to be swallowed just to exist. And I’m not talking about a Heaven’s Gate–style disaster—a shoot so wildly over budget it burns a studio to the ground. I’m talking about a flick producers are so hungrily, maddeningly eager to make that they yank one of Hollywood’s oldest studios into their meaty paws, tear it up for scraps, and will a movie into being through sheer legal force. That, more or less, is how we ended up with the MCU’s Fantastic Four: First Steps, in that Disney consumed 20th Century Fox, Galactus-style, to make this.
Was it worth it? Depends on who you ask.
Critics and audiences have—generally speaking—been receptive. Unlike previous iterations, First Steps boasts an 87 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s Certified Fresh. The audience score sits at 91 percent. Even the Metacritic average—a weighted blend of review scores rather than a simple positive/negative—lands at a healthy 65. That’s far better than the woeful nine percent the last Fantastic Four feature (a decade ago) holds on the aggregate site. So why isn’t this movie catching fire like Johnny Storm? Isn’t a “good” Fantastic Four movie what superhero fans have been begging for?
“Superhero fatigue” has been a buzz phrase for about as long as Marvel has tried to make a well-liked Fantastic Four film, but from roughly 2020 on, the dread has felt real. Marvel had a Thanos-esque grip on the wider public’s interest with 2019’s cumulative Avengers: Endgame. It never truly felt like an ending, even though it would’ve been the ideal curtain call. Back then, billion-dollar superhero movies were practically monthly. Interest was at an all-time high. Inevitably, the super-house of cards collapsed.
Formula isn’t what did them in. Nor the rubbery grasp on reality. The real problem arrived when Marvel expanded into the void of streaming. Their earlier TV efforts were extra credit. You could watch them to enrich the big-screen stories, but you didn’t have to. WandaVision changed that, making it damn near imperative to keep up with Disney+ to understand the ongoing films. Then there were nearly a dozen of these shows coming out over the last five years.
Here’s the simple truth: Bob and Johanne from Huetter, Idaho, aren’t going to watch all six episodes of Ms. Marvel to parse the dynamics in The Marvels. If they go to the movies at all, they want something that doesn’t require homework. Marvel’s interconnected universe was a gamble that initially paid off because it was handled with care. Even as the house style grew monotonous, the studio took time to endear characters to the public. The fact that a low-rent gang like Guardians of the Galaxy powered the biggest blockbuster of summer 2014 is no small feat. Credit where due: Marvel built enough goodwill to turn minor characters into major events. But unlike Mr. Fantastic, you can only stretch that so far. Eventually the wear shows, and streaming accelerated it.
That helps explain why First Steps opened handsomely with good notices, then dipped, ultimately proving—much like Thunderbolts*—a lackluster financial effort. The other reason may be (Tony) stark: the public might be over this group.
First Steps is, fittingly, the fourth cinematic attempt to bring Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s creations to the big screen and only the third to actually reach theaters. (For the scrappy story of why Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four never played theatrically, see the appealing, if imperfect, documentary Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four.) The characters are among Marvel’s most famous, but that hasn’t guaranteed success. Tim Story’s mid-’00s films did fair business without leaving much of a mark; 2007’s Rise of the Silver Surfer withered on release. By default, those were nevertheless the most profitable of the bunch, an indictment of how disastrous the 1994 would-be movie and the 2015 boondoggle were.
With a current worldwide gross of $490.1 million, First Steps is easily the highest-grossing Fantastic Four film to date, topping the oddly symmetrical $333.5 million of the 2005 movie. So why the Doctor Doom-and-gloom discourse? Expectations. Marvel wanted something grander.
You don’t buy 20th Century Fox just to get a lukewarm success. Yes, last summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine was a much richer hit (if more divisive overall). Marvel wants to be the big dog again, to reignite the cultural conversation. But if First Steps is any indication of what to expect as new Avengers movies loom, the public isn’t as captivated by this newest batch of characters. They can see the seams.
We’ve never had a proper, quality-wise introduction to the Four on the big screen. Now, five movies in (counting the unreleased one) and on our fourth variation, there’s still a lingering “been there, done that” to their origin. First Steps understandably skips ahead and treats itself as a quasi-sequel rather than a true introduction. It’s not a faulty choice; it just doesn’t feel earned the way James Gunn’s Superman does, which came out just a couple of weeks prior.
Superman’s mythos is as American as apple pie and the Fourth of July; everyone knows it. Introducing a new version mid-stride—cape on, job underway—feels logical there, even if a bit funny. The blockbuster still works. But sadly First Steps doesn’t land with the same dramatic punch.
Amusingly, the film is at its best during a montage showing how this ’60s-era Fantastic Four emerged and became public fixtures. Through pulpy B-roll and a hammy announcer, we get the cheesy, stylized character beats you’d hope for. The Fantastic Four are cheeseballs (said with affection). One thing that sank the ’00s films was the compulsion to make the team cooler and hipper than they are. They’re science nerds who went to space, hit intergalactic gobbledygook, and came back as mutants. It’s classic B-movie stuff, and First Steps works whenever it leans into that.
After that spirited (re)introduction, the movie is too often sanded down by the dull, uninvolving MCU format. Director Matt Shakman—an accomplished TV hand making his sophomore feature—earned Marvel fans’ trust with WandaVision, a hit in part because of its retro-themed decorum. Each episode riffed on a pastiche of classic sitcoms, which lent Shakman credence to helm this period piece. The production design is stellar, and the kitschy details are a fun quirk, but decor isn’t the same thing as style. Style is tone, mood, rhythm. This can feel like a cool old-fashioned pop-up: fun to look at, fun to linger in for a bit, but ultimately modest and fleeting. You need something more to make it count.
Otherwise it’s just pretty set dressing. What’s in the foreground matters, and here it’s…fine. The cast doesn’t bring a lot of jazz, but they’re generally commendable. Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm) gets the most emotional weight. Ebon Moss-Bachrach is easily the highlight as a chilled, down-to-earth Ben Grimm (The Thing). His weathered-but-not-withdrawn take is one of the few ways the time jump pays off. We rarely see a version of the character who’s made some peace with his lot, exploring his loves—cooking, the occasional brush with fame—without the default moodiness. Ironically, The Thing is the one character here who isn’t moody. Everyone else is pretty dour and, well, grim.
Johnny Storm is typically the spark plug—cracking jokes, being the goofball amid the more serious crew. Joseph Quinn plays him more mature and mindful, aiming to be an active teammate beyond pyrotechnics. There’s thought there: as a soon-to-be uncle, he wants to step up. But it feels hasty. Chris Evans was a standout in the ’00s films; we still haven’t seen Johnny get his full due. Fast-forwarding to a more glum, mannered Johnny skips the fun and lands us in heavy-handed seriousness. Interesting on paper, rushed in execution.
Likewise, Pedro Pascal feels miscast as Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic). He hits his marks but never reads authentically dorky or elastic-minded. You miss the silly charisma he brings to interviews but rarely to screen roles. It’s like watching the high-school jock lead the fall play: he’s doing what’s expected, but you don’t quite buy it. It’s a wonky fit.
Other choices fare better. Julia Garner and Ralph Ineson are inspired picks for Silver Surfer and Galactus, respectively, and Paul Walter Hauser has fun in sorely limited screen time as Mole Man. I can only assume John Malkovich was a hoot in his deleted sequence, but in this era of trimmed extras rarely making physical releases, we may never know. Maybe it finds its way online, maybe it won’t.
More often than not, the film is serviceable rather than satisfying. Is it the first Fantastic Four feature to live up to its name? Certainly not. The first good Fantastic Four film? Perhaps—by default—for some. But there’s something to appreciate in the corniness of the Corman curiosity and Tim Story’s entries. They weren’t good, or even passable, but at least they had the low-rent charm of the B-movies the comics emulate.
Even Josh Trank’s misfire took giant swings—misses, yes, but swings. First Steps, despite its expedited timeline, ’60s period design, and a couple of interesting character beats, rarely risks much. It’s so focused on being the first “good” Fantastic Four movie that it ends up well-produced but oddly hollow. There are highlights—a birthing scene in outer space that finally owns the intended silliness—but overall the film feels muted and downbeat, lacking the sustained spark you expect from a superhero feature of this size and scale, especially with so much on the line.
Marvel sacrificed a lot to bring this Fantastic Four to the biggest screens in the world. So why doesn’t it feel particularly unique or inspired, even with a few amusing ideas? Perhaps because you can consume all you want, but what are you giving back to the audience in return? It’s hard to make a great Fantastic Four film when the producers mirror the galaxy-consuming appetite of the villain rather than craft something that lives up to the plucky central quartet at the not-so-fantastic forefront.
